REI HARAKAMI Vinyl & CDs

Review: Second time around for the late, great Rai Harakami's second album, Opa*q, gets the reissue treatment. It's long been tricky to source outside of Japan and for whatever reason has not been issued in any form since it first surfaced in 2009. It's an attractive and at times off-kilter blend, with Harakimi mixing and matching ambient textures and enveloping electronic soundscapes with jazzy keyboard solos, quirky grooves, madcap post-techno acid lines, IDM and break-core style beats, and the kind of squelchy and tactile synth motifs more often associated with boogie albums made in the 1980s. It feels pleasingly lo-fi, too, as if a writer of 1980s and early 90s video-game soundtracks had made an electronica album. This edition also includes fine remixes by Ian O'Brien and Max 404, plus two hard-to-find bonus cuts.

Review: The late Rei Harakami was a vital force in Japanese ambient electronica around the turn of the millennium, and his catalogue of works continue to be a source of intrigue and exploration for seasoned listeners as much as new arrivals. Colors Of The Dark was originally released in 2006, and features Harakami exploring strikingly elegant, undulating tones with a gallery-like crispness to the overall sound field. He also worked with Ikuko Harada on the track 'Yami Wa Hikari No Haha'. Rings has been committed to reissuing much of Harakami's music, and after the sought-after 2015 vinyl pressing of Colors Of The Dark became unobtainable again so quickly, it was high time for a new edition to be released so the music might reach more eager ears.