HIGUCHI, HISATO - She (LP+mp3) (Sealed) (LP)

Expanded reissue and first-time vinyl release of Japanese musician Hisato Higuchi's startling debut. When "She" was self-released in 2003, Higuchi had been writing and performing his style of "Tokyo laborer's blues" for a decade. The delicate song textures of "She" capture the utter feeling of loneliness and a sleep-deprived mind staring off into a blurry urban night sky. The music is "assembled from pedaling shapes of wraithlike guitar, blasted, genderless vocals and thin films of digital electronics and fuzz," David Keenan wrote in The Wire at the time. "On guitar he plays blues as oratorical as Loren Mazzacane Connors, moving from chords that sing like the guts of pianos through slouched single notes, propping up song forms as nod out beautiful as anything conceived by Kendra Smith and David Roback ... One of the finest solitary broadcasts from beneath the Tokyo pavement for a while." This reissue of "She" includes new cover art by Higuchi, two additional songs from the original recording session and remastered audio by Taylor Deupree of 12k