After Dinner - The Souvenir Cassette And Further Live Adventures

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1. After Dinner

2. Kitchen Life

3. The Room of Hair Mobiles

4. A Walnut

5. An Accelerating Etude

6. Sepia-Ture

7. Cymbals at Dawn

8. A Man of Marble

9. Glass Tube

10. Soknya-Doll

11. A Boy in the Boiled Egg

12. After Dinner

13. A Walnut

14. RE

15. A Man of Marble

16. Glass Tube

"The Overseas Debut Tour and The Souvenir that Changed My Life

I look back on the day an enthusiastic letter from France arrived at our studio in Osaka, out of the blue. It was an offer from the promoter of Festival MIMI, which took place in Provence in July 1987. His name was Ferdinand Richard, and he was interested in inviting After Dinner to the festival and organizing a European tour. He liked our 1984 UK debut album on Recommended Records very much. This was like walking on air for people in their mid-twenties who had never gone abroad and were dreaming of an adventure in a fantasy land.

The group of six players, two sound engineers, and a slide operator toured Nijmegen, Amsterdam, London, Zurich, and St. Rémy. We were surprised and happy at once about how much excellent feedback and warm clapping and cheering our concerts received from the audience and reviewers. For our eyes on the first tour, every scene in Europe was splendid like a picture postcard with a feeling of déjà vu.

For our concert. the 4-channel surround PA speakers were set up at each venue. The sound engineer, Yasushi Utsunomiya, brought an eight-channel reel-to-reel tape player from Japan. Every performer monitored the sound of the ensemble and the backing tracks on the tape with headphones. Our playing included the concept of “ma” (space) influenced by traditional Japanese music, experimental pop rock, and musique concrete. All the concerts were recorded on a cassette Walkman with a pair of stereo microphones.

After the tour. I listened to all of the material from our concerts and

field-recordings of environmental sounds such as church bells, street organs, birds singing, and barking dogs beyond the outdoor stage at Festival MIMI. I copied those from cassette to reel-to-reel tape, spliced it by hand and edited an entire album.

My old memories flooded back for the first time after I listened to Bob Drake’s remaster. And I realized how precious this live cassette was as a historical document of After Dinner’s career. I am eternally grateful to the labels, Fish Prints (US) and ReR Megacorp (UK) for the reissue, all the members of the 1987 tour, and everyone who supported our concerts at that time.

—Haco, July 2019 "