Yasuaki Shimizu – Kakashi (1982)
By Rafi Mercer
The first sound is a saxophone, but not as you expect it. It does not swagger, does not roar, does not carry the grain of jazz history on its back. Instead it floats, clipped and treated, moving through the mix like a figure half-seen in a dream. This is Yasuaki Shimizu’s Kakashi, released in 1982 — a record that sits between worlds: jazz and minimalism, pop and experiment, playfulness and rigour. It remains one of those albums that, once discovered, feels like it has always been waiting, quietly, just outside the canon.
Shimizu, a Japanese saxophonist, composer, and producer, was already known for his versatility. He could play bebop, arrange pop, compose for commercials. But with Kakashi, he built something stranger and more enduring: a collection of pieces that dissolve genre boundaries while retaining a lightness of touch. The album is sophisticated without pretension, experimental without exclusion. It is music that invites you in — whoever you are, whatever you know — and asks only that you listen closely.
The title, Kakashi, means “scarecrow” in Japanese, and there is something fitting about that image: a solitary figure standing in a field, both playful and eerie, ordinary yet uncanny. The record shares that quality. Its surfaces are familiar — saxophone lines, synthesiser textures, grooves that lean towards funk or minimal pop. Yet their arrangement is off-kilter, their logic slightly skewed. You are never quite on stable ground, and that instability becomes its charm.
Take “Suiren,” the opening track. Over a bed of electronics and percussion, Shimizu’s saxophone drifts like smoke, never settling into a fixed melody. The groove is steady but understated, creating space rather than drive. It feels meditative yet playful, as if a jam session had been slowed to half-speed and refracted through a prism. Then there is “Kakashi,” the title piece, where the saxophone converses with itself in layered lines, strange voices talking across the stereo field. The mood is whimsical, but never throwaway.
Elsewhere, “Umi No Ue No Piano” introduces a simple, repeating piano figure, over which textures shimmer and dissolve. “Kono Yo Ni Yomeri #1” and “#2” play like sketches, fragments of thought that resist conventional song structure. “Semitori No Hi” grows darker, more brooding, the saxophone bending into tones that verge on electronic. Across the album, there is a sense of collage, of pieces assembled from different vocabularies, yet all unified by Shimizu’s curious, restless sensibility.
Part of the record’s appeal lies in its production. Shimizu uses the studio not as a neutral space but as an instrument, layering sounds, treating tones, bending acoustic instruments until they feel synthetic. The saxophone is central, yet often disguised, transformed. At times it feels less like a horn than a voice, or a machine, or simply a breath moving through space. The effect is both intimate and uncanny, welcoming and disorienting.
Listening today, what strikes you is how contemporary it sounds. The blending of acoustic and electronic, the use of repetition and minimal structure, the playful refusal of genre — all these anticipate later movements in ambient, experimental pop, even certain strains of electronic dance music. Yet Kakashi is not of its moment or ours; it sits between, untethered. That timelessness explains its cult status among collectors and its rediscovery by new generations.
What makes the record especially inviting is its mood. Unlike some experimental albums, which can feel austere or forbidding, Kakashi carries warmth. Its strangeness is playful, its abstraction generous. This is music you could put on in a quiet bar and watch as different listeners found their own way into it: some drawn to the groove, others to the textures, others to the sheer peculiarity of sound. It is music that does not gatekeep, that does not demand expertise, but rewards curiosity.
For women entering what can often feel like the guarded, masculine-coded world of record collecting, this album feels like an open door. It shows that strangeness can be welcoming, that experimentation need not be hostile, that listening slowly and attentively is not about proving knowledge but about sharing discovery. Shimizu’s voice — through the saxophone, through the arrangements — is playful, conversational, hospitable.
On vinyl, the record’s atmosphere deepens. The warmth of analogue playback softens the edges, blending the electronics and saxophone into a single fabric. The faint crackle between tracks only adds to the sense of presence, as if these uncanny pieces were unfolding in your room, for you alone. It is not a record to be rushed. It is a record to let drift, to let colour the air.
Kakashi has become one of those albums passed hand to hand, recommended quietly, discovered with delight. Its obscurity for many years only heightened its allure, but now that it is more widely available, its true nature is clear: not hidden gem, but essential companion. It shows how listening can be both adventurous and gentle, both exploratory and welcoming.
Yasuaki Shimizu’s scarecrow stands not as a warning but as an invitation. To pause. To enter a field of sound. To notice strangeness without fear. To listen without hurry. That is the gift of Kakashi: an album that teaches us that adventure in sound need not be aggressive, that it can be playful, generous, and slow.
Rafi Mercer writes about the spaces where music matters. For more stories from Tracks & Tales, subscribe, or click here to read more.
