Distant Travel Companion

• A new perspective of the City Pop sound!
• An archival release of original works from the 80s and 90s, remastered and compiled for the first time
• Unreleased 90s CD works alongside our favorite selections from Satoshi Suzuki's privately pressed 1980s LPs - originally limited to just 100 self-distributed copies!
• Includes OBI strip and risograph printed liner notes by the artist
• Design inspired by the original 1980s private press LP releases

Satoshi Suzuki (鈴木慧) perhaps said it best himself on the OBI strip of his 1987 privately pressed LP - Tokyo Contemporary! consisting of 40% Jazz, 30% Soul, 20% Brazil, and 10% Kayokyoku - a mixture not too far off from what is now referred to as City Pop.

However, this archival compilation of Satoshi Suzuki's works presents a perspective of the City Pop sound not from affluent 1980s Japanese bubble economy-era studios and highly paid studio musicians, but from a one-person band making the most of the instruments in their home studio, inspired by musical traditions from around the world.

With notes of city pop, AOR, jazz, soul, bossa, and kayōkyoku - Satoshi Suzuki's intimately recorded pop songs are charming and full of wit, with a seasonal and poetic approach to these musical forms using only a drum machine and an array of digital synthesizers. Sounding a little like Pacific Breeze played on a Casio keyboard and drum machine, Uku Kuut soundtracking a SEGA video game, or the wonderful lo-fi works of Suzuki’s lo-fi homemade pop & jazz contemporaries Ronald Langestraat, Lewis, and Joe Tossini — though most of all, SUZUKI's works show a new and singular perspective of the bubble-era city pop of the Showa period.

This compilation introduces Suzuki's musical works to a wide audience for the first time, featuring remastered songs originally released over three privately pressed LPs from the 1980s, as well as a previously unheard CD from 1993. The original works were released in an impossibly limited edition of 100 copies each - printed and assembled on printing equipment at Suzuki’s company office and scarcely distributed, recording these songs at his home studio in his free time. The compilation's design and accompanying OBI and liner notes are a direct homage to the original releases.