Kazumi Nikaido Nikaido Kazumi No Album

Kazumi Nikaido is probably most known within Japan for her composition of the main theme song for Isao Takahata's Studio Ghibli birdsong "Princess Kaguya", but a dedicated career of fine tuning and experimentations fall either side, and her 2006 album "Nikaido Kazumi no Album" is exemplary of an artist in full creative flow and P-vine is delighted to be releasing it as a 2xLP for the first time. It is hard to match a genre to the work as it meanders through tracks filled with jazz rhythms and cabaret extroversion into halls of ambience and electronica, but Nikaido is always closeby with a hand to guide listeners through its various sharp weaves and turns. One of its lead tracks "Kyou wa Tou" throws the kitchen sink at listeners with a loving touch as a stream-of-consciousness outpour from Nikaido leads an orchestra of jazz, handclaps and turntable scratching as it builds to a wall-of-sound climax. Those who keep up to date with j-pop will be well aware of some of the guest contributors to the album with various members of Sakerock assisting with arrangement and Hoshino Gen playing guitar on a number of tracks. Japanese jazz pianist Takeshi Shibuya's support heavily features and there is a guest appearance by Tenniscoats' Saya.

Nikaido is also no stranger to activity in the west. Through her extensive career she has traveled far and wide, and in 2011 linked up with Tara Jane O'Neil to release a collaborative self-titled LP on K-Records that saw the two artists bridge across their respective cultural backgrounds, and meet in the middle with a work that dared the other to build anew. Other excursions lead to a collaboration with Bill Wells on Lemondale, his collaborative project with Japanese musicians, after meeting the Scottish composer at Glasgow's Celtic Festival. More recently in 2018 she also supported Mount Eerie at Kobe's Guggenheim House and continues to remain active as both a solo artist as well as performing alongside the Gentle Forest Jazz Band.