First & Last Records is proud to present the first-ever reissue of Daisuke Honda’s Love Songs, a deeply personal, holy-grail private press album originally released in 1977. At just 20 years old, Daisuke Honda was an enigmatic vagabond from Osaka who had left home after high school to wander and write songs. Possessing no grand ambitions of becoming a professional musician, Honda simply felt compelled to record the music he was creating. To bring the project to life, a makeshift studio was constructed inside a 200-square-foot room housed within a local textile factory owned by his friend’s family. The industrial space allowed Honda and a assembled group of local backing musicians to make all the noise they wanted during the day, running a 30-meter extension cable through the factory to reach an upright piano in the family’s drawing room. Manufactured through the legendary private-press label Kojima Recordings, Love Songs was pressed in an extremely limited run of just 200 copies. Only about 10 copies were adorned with a pasted-on black-and-white portrait photo, while the rest were housed in minimalist plain white jackets. Due to lost copies, small hand-distributions, and accidental discardings over the decades, the original pressing vanished into near-mythic obscurity, cementing its status as one of the most elusive and sought-after Japanese private press artifacts of the 1970s. Musically, Love Songs is a soulful, melancholy blend of folk, rock, and blues. Honda’s songwriting echoes a wide array of influences, from American icons like Neil Young, Bob Dylan, and the Allman Brothers, to UK folk groups like Heron and domestic Japanese folk masters like Masato Tomobe and Kenji Endo.
