Mariah - うたかたの日々 Utakata no Hibi (1983, Shan-Shan)
A unique album whose reissue on Palto Flats prompted some buzz last fall, including a Pitchfork BNM (embarrassingly, that’s how long this has been sitting around in my Mediafire account waiting to be posted). You probably ought to turn to that or another review for a full accounting of what’s going on here; suffice it to say that half the lyrics being in Armenian is not necessarily the most interesting thing about this album.
Pitchfork rightly praises it as an object of cultural fusion: “Utakata’s most impressive feat of synthesis, however, lies in its coupling of East Asian and Middle Eastern sounds.” Which is kind of like saying “Maybe this is what Fatima Al Qadiri’s Asiatisch would have sounded like if it had been made in 1983, and been actually good instead of terrible.” And isn’t that all we can really ask for?
http://www.mediafire.com/download/y69mywprx8biywf/m+-+unh.rar