The year is 1989. The American wing of a major Japanese Music Instrument company runs an ad, inviting users of their products to submit homemade recordings of original Halloween songs for a “Yama-Halloween” album. Hundreds of hopeful musicians, songwriters, and home recording enthusiasts send in tapes. But the album is never released.
It is not known why, exactly, the project is killed but it is widely suspected that the American marketing executive at the time, Reggie Hirayama, simply didn’t think the songs were good enough, and that releasing such low-fi material in an age obsessed with sonic clarity and fidelity will reflect negatively on the brand.
31 years later, a box is discovered in the basement archives of this major corporation. Set to be thrown into a dumpster, it is saved by a temp employee, who takes it home and listens to a few of the songs. Impressed, he shares them with friends and eventually they make their way to us, and thus, the album you are holding in your hands.
It is understandable that an executive in charge of an international music equipment company would not want to release these songs at the time. This was the age of the CD, DAT and “Megabass”. Vinyl sales plummeted and with the exception of tiny “DIY” outfits, there was little appreciation of the “low-fi” aesthetic. Thankfully, times have changed and we believe listeners will now appreciated the charm of these recordings. Some of the songs are cute. Some will creep you to the bones. Some are very, very raw. All are fun and inventive, and some are impressive in their use of the limited home recording technology of the day.
As far as we can tell, there was never a culling process, and so we’ve taken it up on ourselves to assemble what we’d consider a “best of”. This selection reflects the wide array of submitted materials. It seems that despite the ad running only for a few months in 1989, people continued to submit music well into the 90’s, as some of these recordings have a much more “nineties” sound. We managed to track down most of the original artists and get permission to release these recordings. A few individuals had, sadly, passed on. The true identities and stories behind a couple of these songs are still unconfirmed.
We hope you enjoy listening to these tracks as much as we enjoyed assembling them. Please note that other than some basic mastering, little has been done to “modernize” or “clean up” these recordings. They sound like they did when they were recorded way back when.
If you are hosting a Halloween party, or are looking for something to play out your window for trick-or-treaters, this record would do the trick. But make sure to play it loud and cover the ears of any scare-sensitive wee ones!
