Yama Jammer

I have been listening to Yama Warashi a fair bit recently and I thought you might like to as well.

Yama Warashi means mountain spirit in Japanese and it is the nom de plume of Yoshino Shigihara, a musician and illustrator who describes her sound as a mixture of free jazz and African music with a slice of electric psychedelia (and who am I to tell her otherwise). 

Although now based back in Japan most of Yoshino's records to date were made while living in the UK, first in Bristol and then London. In 2022 I was lucky enough to see her live in London supporting Bas Jan. Quite a line-up.

She seems to have a thing about the moon. Here is one track apiece from "Moon Zero", "Moon Egg" (both 2016), "Boiled Moon" (2018) and "Crispy Moon" (2022). You can find all of those albums and more on her Bandcamp site.

"Mycelium Roost" - Yama Warashi

"Moon Egg" - Yama Warashi

"Kofun No Uta" - Yama Warashi

"Makkuroi Mizu" - Yama Warashi

Yoshino's hardly the only musician with a thing about the moon. It is after all one of the lyrical staples of popular music as these examples show. The first is sublime, the others marginally less so.