When Yuzuru Agi established Vanity Records in 1978, he was already a well-respected figure within the exclusive circles of Japan’s underground music scene. As the founder and editor of Rock Magazine, Agi focused on new music from around the globe, particularly the fledgling new wave, post-punk, and industrial scenes in New York, London, and Berlin. Credited with inventing the term “techno-pop,” Agi quickly set his ambitions beyond mere taxonomy and dove head first into the curation and production of forward-thinking music. One of Japan’s first independent labels, the Osaka-based Vanity released a wide-ranging and fascinating run of records—including flexi-discs and a cassette box set—before Agi shuttered the label in 1982.
Due to innovations in audio technology, Japan in the late ‘70s became a testing ground for affordable gear aimed at a new kind of consumer: the home-recording enthusiast. Vanity’s stable of artists made use of the full range of sonic devices hitting the marketplace—portable synthesizers, analog drum machines, rack FX units and multitrack cassette recorders. Inspired by pioneering electronic artists like Kraftwerk, Cluster, and Tangerine Dream, along with early industrial groups like Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire, Vanity’s releases sounded like the future—and still do, the sometimes alien textures of the music working like an experimental fabric, the newness and rawness of a material not yet exposed to the outside world.
For decades, the releases on Vanity languished in a kind of interzone, whispered about and longed for, but vanishingly rare and extremely coveted. During the blog era of the early-mid 2000s, Vanity’s profile was raised a bit, prompting a renewed desire for these releases. But Agi remained steadfast and refused to reissue any of the titles. Outside of scratchy vinyl recordings in low-bit rates, it was almost impossible to procure proper Vanity releases.
Yuzuru Agi passed away in 2018. Overseen by his estate, Vanity reissues have been coming out with some consistency ever since. One of the most dedicated such curators is Justin Simon and his label Mesh-Key. Mesh-Key took a bit of a circuitous route to become what it is today: one of the finest labels specializing in Japanese underground music. Back in 1995, when Simon took a Japanese language class while enrolled at Oberlin College, he could never have foreseen that this seemingly random decision would become a defining moment and lead to a hobby-slash-obsession that would provide a trajectory to his life. The following year, he was in Japan, studying in Kyoto, at the same university where Les Rallizes Dénudés formed. He scored a record store job and went to as many shows as possible, especially those by Phew, who had started playing music in the late ‘70s with Aunt Sally.
After graduating college, Simon headed back to Japan and began playing with We Acediasts. The post-punk quartet built up a local following in Tokyo and eventually made it to New York City, where they played a show and recorded with DFA’s James Murphy. Soon thereafter, the group was finished, but Simon’s interest in underheard Japanese music remained a primary concern. He befriended the long-running psychedelic group Yura Yura Teikoku (YTT), who were popular in their native country, but virtually unknown outside of it. After returning to NYC in 2003, Simon started Mesh-Key to release records by his former band and YTT, along with collaborations he participated in while overseas. He brought Yura Yura Teikoku over to tour the U.S., Europe, and Taiwan, while making their records available to Western listeners. After more than 20 years, Yura Yura Teikoku called it a day in 2010. As the label lay dormant, Simon concentrated on his work as a Japanese translator. Then came the day in 2014 when Simon received a batch of new home recordings from Phew showcasing her solo electronic work with synthesizers and drum machines accompanying her deep well of effects-manipulated vocals. Compiling, designing, and promoting Light Sleep kicked the label into gear, and Mesh-Key was back as an ongoing project, also working with Shintaro Sakamoto from YTT. More Phew followed, including Voice Hardcore, with shows in the U.S. and beyond.
Now a creative partner with Phew, Simon proposed a re-release of Aunt Sally’s lone LP, but Agi stubbornly refused to entertain any offers for official reissues of Vanity’s catalog. But just before he passed away, Agi relented and Vanity artists, after nearly four decades, gained possession of their master recordings. With Agi’s confidantes overseeing the process, reissues have finally begun seeing the light of day. Although these reissues have been spread across a few labels, Mesh-Key has been leading the effort with a series of meticulously crafted releases. The initial batch came out in 2022, with Aunt Sally and Morio Agata’s Norimono Zukan.
Aunt Sally
Aunt Sally
Vinyl LP, Compact Disc (CD)
Aunt Sally plucks selectively from the new post-punk canon, resembling a haunted music box discovered after the carnival left town. Following the Pere Ubu-esque title track, Aunt Sally cavorts through different moods and methods, wrapping things up with a demented version of “Frere Jacques” (“Loreley”) that wouldn’t be out of place in a David Lynch film.
Morio Agata
Norimono Zukan
Vinyl LP, Compact Disc (CD)
Unlike the inspired amateurs in Aunt Sally, Morio Agata was a known figure to Japan’s pop overground; his 1972 single “Sekishoku Erejī” made the Top 40 and sold hundreds of thousands of copies. For Norimono Zukan, Yuzuru Agi assembled a group featuring members of the Vanity stable (SAB, Normal Brain) and underground bands such as INU, Ultra Bidé, and Ché-SHIZU. With most of the songs composed in the studio, the ad-hoc collective backs Agata with a broad palette of sounds, ranging across straightforward rock ‘n’ roll, détourned not-yet-post-punk classics (“Submarine”) and early examples of the Agi-declared “techno-pop.” Like Phew, Agata is still out there, putting out new music and playing shows. However, in the halls of Vanity, this is a rarity—most of the label’s artists prefer to dwell in the shadows and let the music speak for itself, in its own time, at its own pace.
Tolerance
Anonym
Vinyl LP, Vinyl
Junko Tange was a dental student at the time she orchestrated her pair of albums as Tolerance for Vanity. On Anonym’s cover, there are six segmented photographs (taken by Toshimi Kamiya) of a series of windows, most gazing out, with one indeterminate and one from a side angle featuring the frame flung open. This is where Junko has escaped from, or perhaps into; a space for her to play piano, whisper secrets and entertain any lingering spirits. There is an undisclosed sense of anxiety, with the titles telling a fragmented tale—”I wanna be a homicide,” “laughiñ in the shadows,” “through the glass.” [sic] Dedicated “to the quiet men from a tiny girl”—appropriated the following year by Nurse With Wound for their second LP—Anonym made a soft, but deep, impression.
Divin
2 x Vinyl LP, Vinyl
Released in 1981, the follow-up, Divin, established a blueprint for several forms of electronic music to come—”Pulse Static (Tranqilia)” could be dub techno’s founding document, while other tracks anticipate the glitchy soundscapes of the Mille Plateaux label. Divin was the final LP that Vanity released and supposedly was Yuzuru Agi’s favorite. After producing these beguiling albums, Junko Tange disappeared from the music scene, as if she exited back out that open window and proceeded to live life on her own terms. Four decades on, her music retains its alluring air of mystery.
R.N.A. Organism
R.N.A.O Meets P.O.P.O
Vinyl LP
Hailing from Kyoto, R.N.A. Organism adopted a different set of methods to maintain their anonymity. The core trio went by aliases such as 0123, Zero, and Chance, and refused to perform live, instead sending pre-recorded cassettes to be played at the venue. They sent demo tapes to various media outlets including Rock Magazine, where they caught the attention of Agi’s sympathetic ear. Producer Kaoru Sato helped wrangle their bounty of recordings into R.N.A.O Meets P.O.P.O, which includes contributions by friends and hangers-on playing such instruments as “kids’ electric guitar ordered from back of comic book,” “violin found in garbage dump” and “melodica obtained by intimidating elementary school student”—in addition, of course, to the Roland drum machines and synthesizers that provided the basis of R.N.A. Organism’s sound. Similar to the Tolerance albums, there is an inscrutable atmosphere to R.N.A.O. “Weimar 22” encapsulates Vanity’s signature warm-cold aesthetic as chimes from a music box stalk a drum machine’s beat while disconsolate hand-claps echo about. “After” takes this characteristic to its logical conclusion, as if you’ve wandered into a cuckoo clock museum and the big hand just hit the top of the hour. “Yes, Every Africa Must Be Free Eternally” makes use of that poor student’s melodica in a dub-tinged mutant disco jam that sounds like a Dalek stopped by to sing a few bars. With its call-and-response vocal, “Say It Loud, I’m Dilettante, I’m Proud” is a manifesto that blends irony with intent. R.N.A. Organism may not have been experts, but they were creating a new kind of music that merged the organic and the synthetic as no one quite had before.
The Rabbits
The Rabbits
Compact Disc (CD), Vinyl LP
Like an older sibling with rarified taste, Mesh-Key is doing the world a favor with these exquisitely-packaged and expertly-remastered Vanity reissues. But the label doesn’t stop there when it comes to unearthing hidden gems from the Japanese underground. Not only did Mesh-Key make the Jacks’ epochal psychedelic garage classic Vacant World available to those without deep pockets, they also rescued the Rabbits from obscurity. Pulling songs from ultra-limited early ‘80s cassettes, The Rabbits’s self-titled collection prefigures the Boredoms and rates extremely high in the continuum of avant-garde punk, as galvanizing a listen as records by legends like Friction and Pablo Picasso. The Rabbits’s supercharged, otherworldly album functions like a lost classic beamed in from another dimension.
And Mesh-Key isn’t finished on this front, re-releasing INU’s fantastic 1981 album Don’t Eat Food! at the end of 2023, continuing to expose the rest of the world to absolutely crucial documents of the international underground. But they’re not the only label making Vanity Records’s catalog and related projects more widely available. WRWTFWW put out a complete Vanity box set on CD, while also issuing Normal Brain’s Lady Maid on vinyl. For their part, Minimal Wave has made the shredded-nerve electronics of Sympathy Nervous accessible to a new generation of netjackers. And yet there is still more gold in the drawers of that Vanity desk, including a six cassette box set, a double-album compilation, a few incredible 7-inch singles, a series of flexi-discs (including Western artists like Brian Eno, Die Krupps, Holger Czukay and members of Wire), not to mention one of this writer’s personal holy grails—BGM’s Back Ground Music.
For many years, it seemed as if a proper reissue campaign for this enigmatic label’s catalog was a fantasy, never to be realized. Thanks to an assemblage of enterprising labels, spearheaded by Mesh-Key, those wishes were not in vain and the sound of the future has found its time at last.