Vinyl Record
Shoko Igarashi - Onsen Music
Shoko Igarashi - Onsen Music on LP vinyl. A 2024 record available from Kilmorna Collection in Listowel, Ireland.
LP ยท 2024
Available from Kilmorna Collection in Listowel.
Buyer notes: 2024 LP, currently available from the Kilmorna Collection vinyl shelf. Pay for pickup in Listowel or ship within Ireland for EUR 5.50.
Onsen Music is Shoko Igarashi turning biography, technique and play into a bright new temperature. Released in 2024, it follows a path that explains why the record feels so unusually fluid: Igarashi is a jazz-trained saxophonist and flautist from Yamagata, shaped by Tokyo, Boston, New York and Brussels, but the album refuses to behave like a formal resume. Instead, it imagines music as a bathhouse of changing sensations. EN opens the door with a floating, melodic invitation; Suzy, Rainy and Yamagata lean into tone, rhythm and memory; Belleville and Pinu suggest city movement refracted through a softer, dreamier lens. The record's charm is that it can sound relaxing without becoming passive. Saxophone, flute, voice, electronics and programmed rhythm move around each other with the curiosity of someone who knows jazz harmony but is not trapped by jazz manners. The influences are easy to sense rather than neatly quote: city pop gloss, anime soundtrack brightness, 1970s fusion, funk and warm electronic detail. Onsen Music works because it treats comfort as active imagination. It is playful, intricate and soothing, but never blank.
The album matters because it gives contemporary Japanese-rooted electronic jazz-pop a personal frame rather than a nostalgic one. Igarashi is not simply reviving city pop or fusion textures; she uses them as living material inside a composer-performer's world. That makes Onsen Music useful for collectors who want new music with craft, personality and a clear emotional concept.
This is a smart modern shelf pick for anyone drawn to the overlap between instrumental skill and electronic warmth. It sits comfortably near Japanese ambient-pop, playful fusion and left-field dance records, yet it keeps its own identity through Igarashi's melodic woodwind voice and bathhouse concept. Collectors looking beyond obvious reissues will find a record that feels current without chasing trend language.
Vivid electronic jazz-pop with saxophone and flute lines, city pop shimmer, anime soundtrack brightness, soft funk movement and a warm spa-like sense of motion.
Recommended for: Listeners exploring modern Japanese-rooted electronic pop and jazz fusion; Collectors who like playful concept albums with real instrumental craft; Fans of city pop, warm synth textures and melodic saxophone-led records.
What year was Onsen Music released? Onsen Music was released in 2024. What does the title suggest about the sound? The album uses the idea of a Japanese hot spring as a musical mood: warm, restorative, varied and full of changing textures. Who is Shoko Igarashi? She is a Japanese saxophonist, flautist, producer and composer whose work blends jazz training, electronics, Japanese atmosphere and playful pop structure.