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So, I'm sure you're at least vaguely aware of the existence of New Age music CDs. You know the ones. They live on those weird wooden stands in spirituality & gift shops and largely consist of nature or dolphin sounds. Whilst I don't subscribe to anything that the New Age scene sells myself, you might be interested to know that their CD output is a bit more than just nature sounds.

There are three core varieties of New Age music, I've found.

1) The aforementioned nature sounds. Field recordings, that sort of thing.

2) Ambient and downtempo music. Stuff that's supposed to take you on a spiritual journey, as it were. Most of the time this stuff is actually really good!

and finally,

3) Self-help albums. These can come in many forms, from guided meditations, to binaural beats to ones that supposedly contain subliminal effects to alter how your brain works.

Now I wont beat around the bush; that last one is a bit weird, isn't it? Well, from Japan comes the “Mind Control Sound” series of albums. Seems our friends over at Della Inc. don't care to pull any punches and perhaps for the better, as I probably would have never found or cared about these albums if it weren't for the title.

Most of these albums are pretty tame and regular for this variety of album. Stop smoking. Get better sleep. Become more focused. But there's also a handful of outliers hanging around in this crowd too. For example, theres an entire subsection of these albums dedicated to inducing a drug-like high. Fancy feeling like you've taken Acid? Marijuana? LSD (and yes, that is the same as Acid, but no one told Della so shhh)? Mind Control Sound has you covered.

These are mostly just odd sounding sound collage-y things that are pretty neat to experience once or twice, but otherwise aren't really much to write home about. It's not like something such as Ground-Zero's fantastic “Revolutionary Pekinese Opear Ver 1.28” where its constantly changing and keeps you engaged (so long as you get past that long intro.)

But there's one special outlier that I'd like to tell you about. It's simply titled “GOLF”. It supposedly will make you better at playing golf if you listen to it. Discogs states the genre as jazz fusion. The CD has zero information about who made it, or what the songs are called. The entire thing has an air of mystery about it from the get go, so I ordered a copy from a third party seller on Discogs as soon as possible. Some time later and it finally arrived.

It is with great pleasure then, that I announce it is bloody fantastic. Not only were those listed genres very much accurate, but it overall sounds like the soundtrack to either a lost or fake game for the PS1. Here, have a listen for yourself. Half the reason I buy these things is to upload it so other folk can hear them. I particularly recommend Track 6.

The notion that this album would actually affect you and somehow make you a better golf player is obviously laughable at best, as is the notion that a trippy sound collage album would make you feel high, but these albums are still fascinating nonetheless. The presentation on the CDs go out of their way to sell it too. The disc contains disclaimers saying Della are not responsible for any side effects of listening to the disc. Part of the inlay discussing the history of subliminal effects in advertising. And yet the actual contents is just some really quite pleasant funky jazzy music. But that's that stuff I love most and the reason why I try and hunt down these sorts of albums where possible. The question is, just how do I end up finding these things?

Well let's go ahead and take a step back. No, make that 3 steps. Maybe 5. Fuck it, 10. Let's just take a stride back. We're going back to about....2015? Yeah, 2015 sounds good. It's around this time that I'm deep into scouring the internet for cool and obscure Japanese music. Uncovering such gems as the wonderful dub techno album “A small fish in the water” by Keisuke Kondo or maybe even a rad as hell psych/prog rock act with an name that doesn't translate properly into English.

I come across a techno EP called “Suggested Function #3” by an artist called Cherryboy Function. I think I found it on a Japanese music download site called Ototoy – I believe I was there specifically to buy an album Ken Ishii had produced but not released under his own name that was awkwardly obscure. Anway, I'm looking into this EP, and one of the songs has a video: “gauche experience” (which, for the record, is probably one of my favourite song titles for a techno tune.) Out of curiosity, I decide to check out other stuff this label had put out.

This label, ExT Recordings, is a mostly small time little label. They have heritage though: It's the continuation of one Transonic Records, who as far as I can tell were fairly big names in the techno and house scene in Japan back in the 90s. We'll come back to them very shortly. One of the other videos ExT has uploaded to their channel is one by a band called Biidoro; “こわれてしまったわたしのきかい” is a indie rock styled affair, so quite different from what I was just listening to, but still very good. I grabbed some downloads of these two releases and then went my way.

Fast forward a couple years, I somehow come across a music project/label called INDUSTRIAL JP. It was created with the express intention of turning small manufacturing plants into a record label by way of recording samples and high definition macro video clips of various machines doing their jobs. The audio samples get sent off to well known electronic music producers before editing together the video to match it. The result is a really quite mesmerizing close up look at how unattended factory machines work; these videos also contain subtitles that explain what each part is doing as it shows up on screen, although sadly very few of them have English subtitles. In fact Sountrive's GOKO BANE seems to be the only one.

Regardless, Cherryboy Function collaborated with these guys for a belter of a tune called “SAKAMOTO Metal” which got me thinking about ExT again. So, I decided to have a little wander down to their website and see what's been put out recently.

Two releases caught my eye, a self-titled album by Takahashi Tektronix, and “pc-8” by macrocosm. Both of these albums are comprised of old material from the 90s, recovered from a DAT and remastered for release. Turns out these two groups were pretty big names back when the techno and house scene was emerging in Japan and these tracks haven't been heard in years. After searching about high and low online, the only place I could find a way to acquire them easily was via Amazon Music, and so I caved. Whats curious is that these albums were put out through ExT's sublabel “Transonic Data Archives”. Not much has really been put out through it, but it got me curious about Transonic, so it's time for yet another dive into the deep end.

Now, Transonic is an interesting little label. Whilst over here we wont have heard of most of their output, we did get the occasional taster. For example, the song “Miller Ball Breakers” by duo Deavid Soul was featured in Jet Set/Grind Radio worldwide, the debut album of whom was released by Transonic. Mostly though, the label seems to be host to a lot of classic techno originating from its home country, most of which we never got a chance to hear. Of note here, is a particularly late release from the label. Presenting “月へ行くなら” by Mushi Music. It's a really rather pleasant album full of a variety of styles and catchy hooks. It's not actually the album in question that takes us to our destination, however. No, we need to center in a bit more specifically.

When I first found out about that album, only one video was connected to the Discogs page. This video, uploaded by Doctor What, is fairly simple. Many video effects, yes, but is largely just their top three picks from the entire album placed next to each other. Gives one a nice taster for the album, and singlehandedly persuaded me to pick it up! So obviously this guy must know what's up when it comes to the good tunes. Having a little look at the rest of their uploads uncovers plenty more morsels to try out, but we're after one in particular today.

Sure enough, this is where I first find out about Mind Control Sound. One of their videos is one that focuses in specfically on the third track of the re-release of “The Marijuana CD ~ Mind Control Sound”. It's a pretty great track, particularly when it hits the 3 minute mark. I'm not completely sold on it honestly, but it gets me interested enough to take a look at what else we have on offer in the series. As mentioned at the start of this post, the majority of the series is taken up by the usual suspects: “Stop Your Smoking”, “Good Luck”, “Positive Thinking”, and more.

But of note of course, is the three inexplicably drug themed albums: The Marijuana CD, ACID and “The Drug” aka Sound LSD (shhh no one tell them LSD and Acid are the same). Doing some brief searching online for these things and yeah, no, it's damn near impossible. The generic series name just brings up exactly what you'd expect it to. Even searching in Japanese. Well, on the upside, it did uncover one good link: an ebay listing for Acid. And, hey, it's surprisingly cheap too, only $12! I snapped it up, and not long later, I had it in my hands. Which is of course, the point that I started seeing the pattern that these ones are likely just all weird sound collages. Still though, fascinating little oddities.

At this point, I'd just leave it where it is, maybe sticking the other MCS albums on my wantlist just in case they show up for cheap at some point. And then, I noticed it. “Golf ~ Mind Control Sound”. The front cover boldly claims “How To Play Golf Better”, and combined with the other information given to me mentioned at the start of this post, I just had to have it.

And that's how I ended up finding one of the best albums I own. Sure, musically speaking it's a solid 7/10, but the entire concept and inexplicable existence of this album is absolutely wonderful. The whole idea of a jazz album that supposedly contains subliminal effects to make you better at playing Golf is just far too wonderful and absurd for me to not absolutely adore it.

It's exhausting as hell to explain in full detail, not to mention a touch overwhelming. But this is just how I find music a lot of the time. Links from links from links. People say they get trapped in “Wikipedia holes”, going from related article to related article for hours on end. And I unwittingly apply that method to finding new albums. That, and judging based off cover alone can also lead you to some great places. One of my favourite albums that came out this year was a complete random find that I uncovered by simply wandering through the new releases section on Space Shower Music's website; Yoshida Ichiro Untouchable World's “Epithesi”.

It is with that final link that I bid you farewell from this post. I decided to give this post its own series title as well; “Obsessions”. At some point I will likely come back and do another post about my media obsessions. Perhaps it will be my unironic love and adoration for the Philips CD-i and Multimedia Era of gaming. Perhaps a movie or game I really like. Something like that. Long rambling unending articles about my media consumption. Much like the one you've just finished. I'll see you around, cheers for hearing me out.