MIKAMI, KAN - Bachi - From Oak Village

Universal songs. Beyond language and meaning stands the blues. Not the one the GIs brought with their pack in Japan, but Kan Mikamis own vision seen through the prism of enka music. Such songs we cannot find in popular music nowadays. The blues, its spirit and its agonizing mood comparable to the Portuguese fado. Black songs, free form songs, with their beauty and violence, rudimentary electric enka ill-treated Blues tore to pieces. We could almost hear Blind Willie Johnsons ghost activating the guitar and the voice. Kan Mikami strums his guitar with violence and sensuality, telling stories hardly ever told in Japanese songs, at the edge of black humor, surrealism and Dada. And his voice is unique, nearing violence, screams and a sticky melancholy. Bachi was recorded by Fran-ɬßois Dietz at the end of Kan Mikami French tour at studio CCAM in Vandoeuvre-lès-Nancy. Nine songs where the voice bears new inflexions never heard on his previous recordings, maybe close to an exotic folklore as dreamt by our western imagination. Sombre and moving Chants skinned by his harsh voice, with guitar on the background, haunting lavish blues. - Turtles Dream.