Morio Agata

Morio Agata is a friend of Haruomi Hosono's from the very earliest days -- Hosono plays bass on Agata's debut 1970 album (The Gramophone) (for comparison, 1970 is when the first Happy End record came out), produces an Agata double album (Zipangu Boy) in '76, arranges a few songs on an Agata triple album (That Everlasting, Far-Off Land) in '85, has vocal guests spots on an Agata double album (Zipangu Boy 2000) in '99, plays bass again on an Agata album (Urashima 64) in 2014, and blurbs a 2024 book of Agata interviews by saying "almost fifty years since I co-produced Zipangu Boy, Morio Agata is still the most energetic one of us all."

There are Agata records produced or co-produced variously by Takashi Matsumoto (of Kazemachi Roman fame), Keiichi Suzuki (of Moonriders, of which Agata was also a founding member), Soichiro Suzuki (of Hosono-produced band World Standard), and Makoto Kubota (chronic collaborator of Hosono's in the 1970s and beyond).

He's released tons of live records and compilations and B-side collections and archival releases and things, and I haven't figured all that out yet, so I can't give an exact number for this next factoid, but in the 54 years since his first record came out, he's put out around 50 albums of original songs. The quality has apparently never dipped. I've sampled records from each decade he's been active and there is no fluctuation in quality. He's as restless and searching an artist as you could desire.

He's said that, if he had to unite his entire output in a single genre term, it'd be "punk." Listen to any of his albums and you'll see what he means, even when he's channeling pre-Showa Japan or making tango records (there's a trilogy).

One of the most wonderful things about him (but I haven't done a great job of distinguishing these wonderful things yet, I'm still pretty overwhelmed -- and very curious how good his lyrics are; my copy of Zipangu Boy on CD, with lyric booklet, is arriving tomorrow, so in the next few months I'll start to get a sense of it; he's certainly extremely adventurous when it comes to song topics) is his voice. He's in my top ten favorite singers already, maybe top five (haven't thought that through in a bit). As one friend & admirer put it, he's the kind of vocalist who'll break down crying in the middle of a take, and call THAT the master take. And is there anything better than that in songwriter music? A good writer so moved by his own song, and what it means to him to sing it, that the emotion overflows?

When he was an up-and-coming live performer in the early '70s, sharing bills with Hosono & Family, Hosono and Kyozo Nishioka (another Sayama friend & neighbor whose Hosono-produced albums are worth your all's while if you're into the Hosono House vibe) would watch him from the side of the stage and say to each other, "Agata's about to cry, he's on the verge" -- "Look, Agata's crying, look!"

Takashi Matsumoto produced Agata's third album, from 1974 (English title Les Miserables / Japanese title translates to Alas, No Mercy), and -- like each of the other albums Matsumoto produced back when he thought he could make a living off of production (having designed Kazemachi Roman and understood that all the praise the album got was warranted), it has the sound of an eternal, absurdly beautiful masterpiece, sorrowful and funny and punk-as-fuck. Hosono liked it so much that he volunteered to co-produce Agata's next album, which was 1976's Zipangu Boy -- "a terrifying double album," in Hosono's words. This one is another insane masterpiece.

I'd tried Zipangu Boy a few times because one of its songs appears on the 20th Century Box, but the voice was a barrier -- Agata really leans fully into the "I'm gonna cry my fucking way through this material" approach. It took falling in love with Alas, No Mercy (which I think is more accessible, not least in being a single LP, with more "normal pop" versus "tropical experimental folk" songs) for me to get back into Zipangu Boy and be torn to bits by how beautiful, ingenious, and tender THAT album (Zipangu Boy) is too.

Agata's English-language Bandcamp profile proudly proclaims that he's put out a record almost every year *since* those heady, Happy End family-adjacent days. So of course I got to wondering, "...and has he stayed good?" only to be blown away by album after album after album. His newest record Orion's Forest, which came out this November, is my AOTY.

I'm pretty sure he's as great a genius in his own way as Hosono or Sakamoto, but I really mean "in his own way." Where Hosono and Sakamoto in the later '80s and '90s (and, for Sakamoto, beyond) eventually ended up more devoted to sound than to song, Agata leaned into the "songwriter" role. He's gone on experimenting with sound too (try Boys' Calendar from 2003, for instance, or something even weirder like The Perfect Socks and Ships from 2018) but for Agata, the song is always at the forefront: lots of lyrics, vocals mixed high (usually with fantastic harmonies, either his own or soulful, down-to-earth group back-up in the cosmic/psych/folk Fire on Fire vein), almost always guitar accompaniment. Like Hosono and Sakamoto both, he's a wonderful melodist, as are his chronic collaborators the two Suzukis, so album after album is full of lush, layers-upon-layers of lovely catchy keyboard/guitar/various-folk-or-electric-or-electronic instrument melodies, and always with that VOICE in the center.

A word he's used to refer to his releases, instead of the customary "albums," is "voyages." That gives a good sense of things.

I've been putting off making this thread because I'm not sure how to go about encouraging people to listen: pushing a particular album? But there's no obvious starting point -- I fell hard for Alas, No Mercy but I was coming at it from a place of deep Takashi Matsumoto fanhood, and that made it easy; I'm not sure it's really all that accessible. Zipangu Boy is huge and weird and doesn't try to befriend you, it just IS. There's that Encyclopedia of Vehicles album from 1980 that Stirmonster likes, but it's not very characteristic. There's the Virgin VS band Agata formed when the spirit of Yellow Magic Orchestra was at large in Tokyo and EVERYBODY was fronting a synth-heavy band, but -- wonderful though it too is -- the zany new wave stuff also didn't end up being his mainline. After the new wave he did/started his Tango Trilogy and god knows that's probably not a natural starting point either. And after the return from tango, he was already so deep in his own world, and he kept going deeper and deeper, so crazy as I may be about Orion's Forest (his record from last month), I think it helps a lot to already love his dense and auteurist '70s material...

So maybe I can just push different songs from different eras and you all can see what sticks, and which direction you might want to go exploring in yourselves. Apparently you can't actually go wrong. Agata got weird, but never boring, never bad.

Stirmonster, want to say something about Encyclopedia of Vehicles, the album you have?

Frogbs, what of his have you been listening to and what do you think so far?

I'm listening to Otome No Roman - dunno if it's a good starting point, but I figured you want to go with one of the early ones, plus it has a beautiful cover. In fact looking through his catalogue now I think his covers really stand out.

I appreciate how bare it is - reminds me of some early 70s Italian stuff - but yeah, when the band picks up is when it really shines. The use of strings is great. You're right about his voice, it's an acquired taste, he doesn't seem to have much of a range, but his voice is pretty in its own way. Anyway, will probably check out Zipangu Boy next - this one ain't 'synthpop' in the least :)

As good a starting point as any. Otome no Roman is an innaresting one. Colorful -- ambitious -- against-the-time enough to make me think "1972, you say?"

I think it's a case of Agata trying on clothes that would fit him much better on the next two albums (1974's Alas, No Mercy / 1976's Zipangu Boy). But it's been growing on me. He's busy working out his preferred balance between crazy and gentle / loud and quiet / full-band and solitary. And then he goes and does amazing things like overdub himself onto a gramophone playing a grainy old record:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCaPIHv_nq4

He pulls a similar trick on Alas, No Mercy. The opener is a cover of a tune from a 1925 operetta, except with the lyrics rewritten in Japanese. The arrangement is all cinematic pomp, over-the-top operatic group vocals, no sign of Agata himself -- but he takes a verse when the song's almost over, and that moment when the chorus of singers goes silent and Agata's frail, emotion-laced voice suddenly picks up the melody instead, singing just behind the beat, gives me chills every time. Gave me chills just now as I listened again:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sdxq4A6pmTw

But in case the European '20s throwback feel of the song frightens you off -- the opener is a fake-out. The rest of the album is a lush (thanks to arranger Makoto Yano) and layered (thanks to producer Takashi Matsumoto) take on folk-rock (except with some sea shanties, and one noise/punk freak-out about the invention of radio), Agata really stretching his wings.

plus it has a beautiful cover. In fact looking through his catalogue now I think his covers really stand out.

Looks like it's by Seiichi Hayashi. Wracking my brains for why Agata's name was familiar to me despite not being very familiar with the YMO orbit, and then remembered his first big hit was based on Hayashi's Red-Colored Elegy manga, and that decades later he directed films based on it and a short manga by Oji Suzuki, another alum of avant-manga magazine Garo.

The influence of manga on early Japanese rock! One of the first songs Takashi Matsumoto wrote for Happy End (Haru yo koi, the Ohtaki song that opens their first self-titled) was directly inspired by a Shinji Nagashima manga. I adore unabashed fanfiction in songwriting, especially when the band/artist *doesn't* think their music has to become parody / self-effacing to accommodate the content.

I haven't looked into Agata's film work yet, but there's lots of it, and it seems well-regarded. Here's a clip from his '75 independent arthouse film I'm No Angel (Boku wa tenshi ja naiyo). Agata is the animated, smiling one. The others are Eiichi Ohtaki of Happy End, with moustache; and Tadanori Yokoo, with cat; this is the guy who brought Hosono to India, got fully co-credited on Cochin Moon, and did the cover art. Agata's the only one of the three who looks comfortable acting. Watching it as my Agata obsession was beginning made me think, "No wonder the dramatic monologues on the '70s records are so good."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGmQ8R-nALc