I didn't mean to photograph this in front of two of my most "R@RE W@W L@@K" VHS tapes, but hey. If you know you know.
As detailed all over this site, I'm sort of a fiend for obscure Japanese music; the more obscure, the better. While there's a huge wealth of great material on Soulseek, old blogs, even Youtube today, there's still a ton of really bewitching releases that are only really known through their cover art and track listings uploaded by God-knows who to Discogs and RYM. This album - Nean's Doo Dah Nean, is one such album. It was put out by a legendary label (Asahito Nanjo's La Musica), it's the band's only release, and the description on Discogs (taken from the La Musica catalogue) was extraordinary: "Nean are the female group cult modern witches underground lolita psychedelia." What does that even mean? And why isn't every band like that?
Anyway, I think I learned about this album in 2014, and from the moment I saw it I knew that I had to hear it. The only problem - nobody had ripped it, at least not that I could find. Oh well - Discogs said it had been sold in the last few months, and even though that was the first and only time it'd been sold, I figured that another copy would come up eventually and then I could buy it and rip it myself. Easy! So, I added it to my want list, and I waited, checking my email every day, putting up alerts on Soulseek, checking Youtube, What.CD, /rs/, Tumblr... Everywhere I can think of. And it never came up. As months turned into years, I began to feel rather demoralized, but I kept looking, adding Japanese auction and used good sites to my search. Nothing. It was an especially-obscure release on an already-obscure label. I realized that I would probably never find it.
Ten years later, in July of 2024, I was randomly browsing audio cassettes on Yahoo Japan Auctions. I wasn't looking for anything in particular - I think I was trawling the "independent music" section - when by complete random chance, I saw it. Nean! Doo Dah Nean! Finally, I could hear this fucking tape, and better yet, so could everyone else! I placed a bid (the same seller had a few other La Musica tapes, which I regret not getting too, but I don't think they had anything else that wasn't ripped), and - by what I can only call divine providence - about a week later I got an email asking me to pay. I think I paid 1500 yen, minus the cost of shipping (I was importing a lot of stuff back then, so it ended up as some unidentifiable fraction of a big box).
I didn't mean to photograph this in front of two of my most "R@RE W@W L@@K" VHS tapes, but hey. If you know you know.
Anyway, there was only one problem: almost as soon as the tape arrived, I learned that I would have to move overseas on extremely short notice. I hardly had time to give it a cursory listen to make sure it hadn't been taped over, much less rip it and put it online. I packed it up, put it in storage, and marched off to the other side of the world, never forgetting my sacred duty to rip this tape. I would be a hero, a god among men, the immortal hero who finally put DOO DAH NEAN online.
Little did I know, of course, that I wouldn't have to do that. Nearly as soon as I had access to my tape again, the wonderful Black Editions Group announced, against all reason, a vinyl reissue of Doo Dah Nean. Why, of all the incredible La Musica releases, did this one garner their attention? Who knows. I like to imagine that there is some parallel version of myself on their team who also spent an ungodly amount of time looking for this tape, and as soon as he had Nanjo's ear he beelined to release the real prize. And we're all better off for it.
How is the actual music, you might ask? Well, it's very strange, to say the least. The vocals are the most interesting part - they fall somewhere between wordless chanting, erotic moaning, and ASMR whispers. I thought/hoped the instrumentation would be the aggro noise-psych that many Nanjo projects are known for, but there's something low-key about them... Very Outside the Dream Syndicate. Anyway, now that you can actually find this album, I can tell you to check it out somewhere.
With Nean knocked out, I think my longest-standing music hunt is now Sachiko M's Music for Headphone. Do you have it? Well, I have my doubts, but send me an email anyway and we can commiserate.