King Japan 黑胶唱片和CD

Review: You can pretty much guarantee all things even remotely linked to Yellow Magic Orchestra are going to blow your mind in a bat shit crazy genius kind of way. Enter Haruomi Hosono, a member of Ryuichi Sakamoto's cult band but also a producer in his own right and sometime session bassist with psych and folk bands. Here he decided to make what he thought the score to a non-existent film inspired by his very real trip to India might sound like.

Working with Pop artist Tadanori Yokoo, who is responsible for the stunning artwork, together they paint a vivid world that's inhabited by synthesised insects and drum sequences that seem to march to the beat of the planet itself. A richly textured place that could well have inspired chip music of the future back then (this was 1978), while clearly taking so much from folklore of the subcontinent.

Review: It would be fair to say that "The Adventure Of Kohsuke Kindaichi" is a "cult album". While many will have heard snippets of some of its tracks in hip-hop tracks and via dusty disco re-edits (a number have been given the scalpel treatment in the past), few outside of Japan have been able to get the album since it was released way back in 1977. The premise is odd - composer Kentaro Haneda created the disco and jazz-funk set as a soundtrack to a series of detective novels - but the music is superb: a zany but hugely entertaining mixture of nods to various soundtrack styles underpinned by killer disco grooves and swirling orchestral movements. We'd heartily recommend checking out the clips ASAP.

Review: Back in 2004, Japanese r&b artist Tina headed into the studio with self-styled 'king of digging' Muro - a prolific DJ, producer, record collector and re-editor - to record some tracks for her fifth solo album. The most acclaimed of the lot was 'Struttin With Muro', a dope, funk-fuelled jam that made use of some choice Roy Ayers samples. At the time, Muro also prepared alternate takes - utilising different elements of the sampled Ayers track - which then appeared on a now impossible to find promo 12-inch. This 45 offers up those two takes - vocal and instrumental - and both sound like guaranteed party-starting jams, the kind of hybrid r&b/funky hip-hop workouts that never fail to get things going out on the dancefloor.