JAPANESE SONGWRITING LEGEND SHINTARO SAKAMOTO SHARES VIDEO FOR OBSCURE NIGHTCLUB, THE FEELING OF LOVE EP OUT JULY 17, 2021 VIA ZELONE RECORDS, 12″ VINYL RELEASE TO BE RELEASED AS OFFICIAL RECORD STORE DAY DROP
Praise for Shintaro Sakamoto
Sakamoto’s mission is an expressive palette he has carefully made for himself with a ship-in-a-bottle-like focus. – Pitchfork
[How To Live With A Phantom’s] glimmering alloy of post-hippie global pop, soft-rock, lite-funk, Tropicalia, feels both meticulous and sly, vaguely evoking similar efforts by Beck. – The New York TImes
By deliberately amplifying the foreign strangeness that composers built into easy-listening exotica and that dilettantish listeners imposed on bossa nova and Latin jazz, the Japanese musician Shintaro Sakamoto seems to ask, ‘What if this alien music were made by actual aliens?’ – SPIN Magazine
Japanese psychedelic rock legend Shintaro Sakamoto is proud to share the official video for Obscure Nightclub from the new The Feeling Of Love EP, due July 17, 2021 via his own Zelone Records. Watch the video HERE, listen to the title track HERE, and look out for the EP’s vinyl release as a Record Store Day 2021 Drop this weekend. View the list of participating Record Store Day stores HERE.
The video was directed by Kensuke Ide, also a musician himself. Both this video and the next one (to be released soon) were shot on Super 8mm film by the director. Obscure Nightclub is a song depicting an image of Sakamoto gazing at the lost visions of the nightlife. The textures of Ideߣs 8mm film perfectly illustrate the character of the songs made during the pandemic.
The four-track EP features the laid-back style for which Sakamoto’s solo material has become known, but as always, the songs bear the marks of restless experimentation. The title track features characteristic elements like steel guitar and heavily-effected vocals, while Obscure Nightclub is a ballad enveloped in a catchy flute melody. By Swallow Season opens the B-side with its mid-tempo jazzy boogie, accompanied by wah-wah guitar and saxophone. The EP ends with Don’t Tinker With History, a funky number complete with a James Brown-worthy guitar riff.
WATCH THE OBSCURE NIGHTCLUB VIDEO
HEAR THE FEELING OF LOVE
Shintaro Sakamoto is a Japanese music composer, producer, writer and singer based in Tokyo. He began his career in 1989 as a member of the psych/rock band Yura Yura Teikoku, where he played guitar and sang.
Yura Yura Teikoku released 10 albums over the course of 21 years, disbanding in 2010. The following year, Sakamoto launched a solo career and started his own record label, Zelone Records. He released his debut solo album How To Live With A Phantom, where Other Music Recording & Co. licensed the album for the US/EU/UK release in 2012. In 2014, Sakamoto released a split 7-inch single with Mayer Hawthorne for Record Store Day, and then released his 2nd solo album Let’s Dance Raw.
Once again, Other Music Recording & Co. licensed the album for the US/EU/UK release (and it reached #2 on Billboard’s World Chart in October, 2014). Sakamoto’s 3rd solo album Love If Possible was released in Japan, and digitally worldwide in 2017, and a split 7-inch single with Devendra Banhart was also released in Germany. Shintaro Sakamoto gave his first solo live performance at the WEEK-END Festival in Cologne Germany. In 2018, Sakamoto went to tour in China, Netherlands (Le Guess Who?), London, and Mexico (Tropico Fes.).
In 2019, Sakamoto participated in a song on a new album ATRAS / ALEM by O Terno, a band based in Sao Paulo. In the same year, new single Boat was released with a successful US headline tour (SF, SR, Chicago and NY). In 2021, he participated on a 50th-anniversary musical tribute to beat poet Allen Ginsberg’s The Fall of America: Poems of These States 1965-1971.
EP cover illustration by Shintaro Sakamoto
SHINTARO SAKAMOTO
THE FEELING OF LOVE EP
(ZELONE RECORDS)
Side A:
- The Feeling Of Love
- Obscure Nightclub
Side B:
- By Swallow Season
- Don’t Tinker With History
Connect with Shintaro Sakamoto via the official site, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube.
