Yuta Matsumura - Red Ribbons LP

Yuta Matsumura’s Red Ribbon landed in the shop in 2022 at a particularly odd time. I remember it as a time that record production was relatively slow, Liz Truss was bombing the GBP in the UK (important only because this LP appeared as one of the final releases from the killer London-based Low Company), talk about a “dub wise” or “trip hop” revival prevailed among those trying to draw a link between certain underground or DIY music trends and a kind of lockdown mentality/mode of production, and in terms of Yuta’s output, it emerged after the demise of Orion and before the live debut of The Lewers (amongst his involvement with Low Life, Oily Boys, and Th Blisks).

In that period I (and a bunch of others working here at Repressed) flogged Red Ribbon endlessly in the shop and at home—I’m pretty sure it made most of our end of year “Best Of” lists for ’22—but only a few years on have I been able to revisit it. Partially because Yuta is playing a rare solo show of this material up the road at the Vanguard in a week, partially because it felt like about time to revisit it.

Spending the last few days relistening to it, I can’t help but associate these tracks with something closer to  Eno’s “Before and After Science” and the Cale & Riley “Church of Anthrax” LPs than any prevailing pseudo-genre of “dub wise.” Maybe it’s Yuta’s voice that sounds close to Eno’s strangely affectless but affecting singing on that album, the drifting pop of Naoki Zushi’s back catalogue, or even that much-underrated tape of guitar meditations on “Curious Music” by else-where collaborators Michael Grossman and Jai Morris-Smith.

Just as good now as it was back then! –Mitch

Yuta Matsumura (M.O.B., Oily Boys, Low Life) solo debut Red Ribbons is on one hand a pleasant surprise, but from following his output, especially Th' Blisks LP from earlier this year, you could feel this collection of "dubwise avant-pop structures" was somewhere within him.Need to scratch that Flaming Tunes itch? Got a hankering for another YL Hooi record? Wish Drunk Elk made a Wyatt produced Digital Reggae album? Then grab this undeniably great album. - Nic

From Low Company...

Low Company begins its final descent with Yuta Matsumura’s Red Ribbon, a sequence of introspective, lavishly melodic dream-songs and amphibian atmospheres recorded in scattered periods over 2018-21.

Having played in bands like Low Life, M.O.B. and Orion, and the duo Jay & Yuta (with Jay Cruikshank), Red Ribbon is Matsumura’s first solo outing, and represents a conscious effort to move away from guitar-based songwriting. He composed its nine tracks mostly on piano - layering vocals, bass, keyboards, flute (courtesy of Maeve Parker), violin/cello (Laurence Quinn) and clacking drumbox rhythms into dynamic, dubwise avant-pop structures which are supple and spacious but fizzing with detail and ultra-vivid inner life.