Shizuka – Paradise of Delusion [CD]

"Paradise Of Delusion, the first vinyl release of the music of Japan’s legendary psych-pop group Shizuka, originally appeared in June 2021. Long-awaited, the LP sold out almost immediately, and already changes hands for three-figure amounts. An’archives is pleased to announce a CD edition of Paradise Of Delusion, making this music accessible again to a wider audience. Drawn from a 2001 performance at Binspark, Nishi Ogikubo, Paradise Of Delusion is gorgeous and otherworldly.

Shizuka first came to wider attention at roughly the same time as their peers in the Japanese underground – during the early nineties, when people started to get wise to the surprisingly wide-ranging post-psychedelic sounds from the PSF label. But even by the standards of their closest peers, aesthetically speaking –Fushitsusha (with whom they shared two members, Maki Miura and Jun Kosugi), Kousokuya, Chè-SHIZU – Shizuka were mysterious.

Led by the late Shizuka herself, a guitarist, vocalist, song writer, and doll maker, with her husband Miura, a devastatingly powerful guitar slinger, their songs were potent and seductive. Shizuka’s slow iterations of simple chord changes, with her psalmic vocal melodies over the top, suggest an existential exhaustion, often torn asunder by a soaring surge of guitar from Miura. Think the happy-sad mood of the Velvets’ third album, or a more languid Les Rallizes Denudes. Whatever is happening here is relentlessly private, psychologically introverted in many ways, but opened out to the possibilities of both beauty and despair – two states that the music of Shizuka best captures."

An'Archives, 2022