Postcards from No Man's Land, by former_airline

Postcards from No Man's Land

by former_airline

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Cassette + Digital Album
An aggressively pink cassette tape with this album on it.

Includes unlimited streaming of Postcards from No Man's Land via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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1.	In Today's World 04:46	buy track
2.	Geometries of the Imagination 06:40	buy track
3.	Insane Modernities 04:20	buy track
4.	On the Sea of Fog 04:24	buy track
5.	Dubby the Heaven 05:43	buy track
6.	Paint This December Blue 05:06	buy track
7.	Destroy What Destroys You 06:12	buy track
8.	Walking Mirrors 04:20	buy track
9.	S. Sontag in the Psykick Dancehall 10:14	buy track

about

CASSETTE VERSION AVAILABLE HERE (depending on Japan Post international shipping restrictions due to COVID-19): callandresponse.jimdofree.com/releases/former-airline-postcards-from-no-man-s-land/

Masaki Kubo has been exploring and developing his sound since the 1990s through various bands and his own experiments with guitar, electronics, tape and more. This sonic cosmos came together under the name former_airline towards the end of the millennium’s first decade, which has drawn comparisons to author J.G. Ballard and been referred to as “sci-fi psycho-eroticism” or "dystopian snapshots”. Focusing on cassette tapes, he has released eight albums from labels in Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, France and other countries around the world.

Some of the songs on Postcards from No Man's Land were recorded in 2019, with most recorded at home during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, and Kubo explains that this transitional situation was something he felt it was important to express with this album:

‘It's a work that I really wanted to release “now” as a record of the sounds before and after the disappearance of casual everyday life into the space occupied by distant memories and the world’s drastic transformation into this new normal. It's like a letter from someone staring into an unknown emptiness.’

While focused on instrumental music, former_airline’s music expresses the panic and information overload of 21st century life, but goes beyond that into the psychic dream-space whose hopeful but half-forgotten futures still haunt the waking world. In Postcards from No Man’s Land, the claustrophobic, motorik, urban and industrial bleeds seamlessly into the dreamlike, psychedelic and trancelike. Influences from post-punk, krautrock, minimal wave, shoegaze, dub and acid house filter through, but Kubo takes them and crafts his own sonic universe, both optimistic and rooted in the chaos of present reality.

久保正樹によるソロ・プロジェクト。いくつかのバンド活動を経て、90年代後半よりギター、エレクトロニクス、テープなどを使用した音作りを始める。
2000年代後半よりformer_airline名義で活動開始。J・G・バラードにも例えられる音世界は、ときに「サイファイ・サイコ・エロチシズム」、「ディストピアン・スナップショット」などと称されたりもする。カセットテープを中心に、日本、イギリス、アメリカ、ドイツ、フランスほか世界各国のレーベルより8枚のアルバムをリリースしている。
今回のフルアルバム「Postcards from No Man's Land」に収録された曲のいくつかは2019年に録音され、多くは2020年に新型コロナウィルスによるパンデミックのなか自宅にこもり録音されたもの。

久保は、この過渡的な状況において、アルバム制作を通じて表現をすることが重要だと語る：
「このアルバムは、何気なかった日常が遠い思い出と消え行き、新しい普通とともに世界が大きく変わってしまう前後の音の記録として、どうしても『いま』リリースしたかった作品で、そこに残されたいまだ知らない空虚を見つめ、したためた便りのようなものです」

former_airlineの音楽は、21世紀のパニックと情報過多を表現しているが、それを超えて希望に満ち忘られている未来が、世界を悩ましている精神的な夢の空間へと導いているよう。アルバム「Postcards from No Man’s Land」では、閉所恐怖症的な感覚、モートリック、アーバン、インダストリアルな要素がドリーミー、サイケデリック、トランスの要素へ途切れなく溶け込んでいく。
ポストパンク、クラウトロック、ミニマルウェーブ、シューゲイズ、ダブ、アシッドハウスからの影響を受けていながらも、former_airlineはそれらを受け入れて、楽観的で今のカオスに根ざした彼自身の音の世界を作り上げている。

credits

released October 28, 2020

Written and performed by Masaki Kubo 2019-2020, COVID-19 situation in Tokyo
Design by Takeshi Yamamoto

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Call And Response Records Tokyo, Japan

Indie, post-punk, new wave and underground music in Koenji, Tokyo since 2005.

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