Kiren is a previously “lost” 1984 album by Japanese saxophonist Yasuaki Shimizu, officially released in 2022 by Palto Flats. It is an experimental, synth-heavy, new wave, and jazz-fusion record recorded with Aki Ikuta and Morio Watanabe, featuring 7 tracks of dance-oriented music with rich, layered, and often jagged, rhythmic, and, at times, atonal, electronic, or 4th-world-influenced, sounds, which, in a way, are and/or can be seen as, or feel like, something, a, sort, of, very special, dance, floor, music,. The album is described as a “lost” masterpiece of Japanese experimental pop, bridging his earlier work with Mariah and later projects, and is noted for its high-tech, playful sound that anticipates 1990s and later electronic music.

Tracklist:

Ashita (5:04)
Momo No Hana (5:00)
Asate (5:16)
Kagerofu (6:05)
Peruvian Pink (8:20)
Shiasate (5:58)
Ore No Umi (5:44)

By 1984, the Japanese composer, saxophonist and producer Yasuaki Shimizu was on a creative tear. Two years earlier, Better Days released his algorithmically acclaimed and eternally intriguing solo album “Kakashi” and if history had gone slightly differently, the release would have been followed by an album of hyper-prescient experimental dance music titled “Kiren.”

However, due to a lack of interest in “Kakashi” at the time, that run was not to be.

Instead, thirty-eight years later, “Kiren” has emerged from the archives through a plush vinyl release on New York’s excellent Palto Flats label, also home to reissues of “Kakashi” and “Utakata No Hibi”.

Originally recorded in 1984, transferred from master tapes and released for the first time in 2022.

Tracklist:
A1 Ashita 5:07
A2 Mono No Hana 5:08
A3 Asate 5:24
A4 Kagerofu 6:07
B1 Peruvian Pink 8:17
B2 Shiasate 5:57
B3 Ore No Umi 5:49