Sonic Youth Gossip - A visit to Hideo Ikeezumi's PSF Records

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Last Wednesday brought a visit to PSF Records where Hideo Ikeezumi has been running his PSF shop and label HQ for about 30 years. Set in an inconspicuous apartment in central-west Tokyo, the shop is packed full of releases from the Japanese psychedelic and avant-garde underground; some in limited quantities and unfortunately out of print for good. Amidst the digging and 360-head scans of the room, we were even lucky enough to find an originally packaged, Incapacitants cassette tape from their earlier days among other treasures. So as a somewhat historical vault full of stories, renowned passersby and seeing Ikeezumi as one of the essential historical figures in this story, we were more than happy to land the chance to have an interview.

While at PSF, we had a great conversation which extended from historical themes, personal anecdotes, future plans even to simple thumbs-up-thumbs-down or to-stock-or-not-to-stock ratings as we chatted through the years and perused the shelves of releases (top shelf being reserved for his favorites). I also picked up a back issue of G-Modern, the psychedelic, avant-garde, underground magazine which Ikeezumi edits, which features an over ten page interview with Keiji Haino. To add, I also came away with a live recording of Takayanagi Masayuki, New Direction / Call In Question which Ikeezumi straight pushed on me and told me I needed to hear.

Photos: Cameron Mckean, more on our flickr.

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