NAGAMATZU

Thanks to music lovers from all around the world, forgotten gems from the analogue era hidden in basements have been popping up in the digital age. We have witnessed (re-)discovery and (re-)appreciation of new age, library music, acid house, post-punk and many others. One of those hidden gems from the 1980s is Nagamatzu with Stephen Jarvis and Andrew Lagowski (known for his ambient/electronica releases on Zoharum amongst the others). In their 10-year tenure, they pioneered their own peculiar instrumental version of the so-called dark wave, a mixture of goth-tinged post-punk with pulsating, danceable electronica. Nagamatzu released 3 tapes and a 12" vinyl back in their heyday. They gathered good reviews, small but devoted following, but once they drifted apart, their music was lost. Fortunately, not to all. First, some tracks kept popping up on Andrew Lagowski's website. Later, Josh Cheon from San Francisco-based label called Dark Entries re-released their two cassette-only album on vinyl. Now, it is time to present their analogue output in its enirety on CD. "Neural Interval" collects all the three tape albums from Nagamatzu: "Shatter Days" (1983), "Sacred Islands of the Mad" (1986) and "Igniting the Corpse" (1991). It also adds "Space Shuttle Shuffle" 12" (1987) and an unreleased version of "Lift Off" as bonus tracks. It gives you an insight into still little known work by this excellent duo (or trio at times) who should have been a mainstay of 4AD, Beggars Banquet or Factory back in the 1980s. We hope that thanks to the vinyl reissues of Dark Entries and Zoharum CD anthology the band will achieve such a kind of recognition they truly deserve. The CDs are housed in a digipak with an additional poster booklet inside. This edition is strictly limited to 500 copies. "Neural Interval" was mastered by Łukasz Miernik and George Horn. The whole production process was overseen by Michał Porwet. (label info)