Asa-Chang & Junray

Asa-Chang & Junray create devastatingly beautiful music that takes our world and turns it into the realm of folklore (or is it the other way round?!). Junrei means “pilgrimage” in Japanese and this one soon becomes an unexpected and luminous journey into the surreal. En route, you’ll make contact with Indian percussion, drums, trumpets and vocal collage. Asa-Chang & Junray’s music is rooted in the Chindon’ya (Japanese street musicians), circus music and barrel organ playing and has an undeniable Sixties (the Showa period) insouciance about it.

Percussionist Asa-Chang started Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra but left in 1993, just when it was becoming successful. Several years later he founded the two-piece, Asa-Chang & Junray with Hidehiko Urayama, producer and composer of film music (and guitarist with the group Arepos at the end of the eighties). Their first EP, Tabla Magma Bongo, came out in 1998. However Hidehiko Urayama doesn’t play live, his amazing vocal collages all studio work. So Asa-Chang & Junray took on a third member in 2000, U-zhaan, a peerless tabla player who follows the teachings of the master Ustad Zakir Hussain.

The track ‘Hana’ got Asa-Chang & Junray a reputation outside Japan and an album of the same name was released in England on The Leaf Label, to much critical acclaim. John Peel played ‘Hana’ on his show on BBC Radio 1 and in 2002 the album was voted fourth best album of the year by magazine, The Wire. It was also in the top 40 albums of the year in Mojo that year. In Japan in 2004, the track ‘Senaka’, a collaboration with singer Kyoko Koizumi, gave the band wider exposure. ‘Senaka’ was also remixed by Rei Harakami on the album Minna No Junray, out in 2005.

Disturbingly sensitive, Asa-Chang & Junray have invented a new music that is played at ground level on woven straw mats or in the middle of gardens. It is difficult to qualify, cinematic, almost excessively expressive. The group occasionally works with the dance troupe, Idevian Crew. Asa-Chang also plays with the big band Asa-Chang & Blue Hats, and U-zhaan can be found in the company of various different musicians, L?K?O amongst them, with who he released a debut album, Borsha Kaal Breaks, under the name Oigoru in 2008.