I put this together after visiting Café Round in Kohinata. The owner is a genuine music nut, and trying to update and keep the old jazz café (or Kissa) tradition alive. A quality blue note soundtrack accompanied my red curry, but when I mentioned the café del mar, he rushed to show me a load of obscure Innovative Communications releases. The place is tiny and so packed between tower blocks you`d be lucky to see the sky, let alone a sunset. Nonetheless, I`m putting together a series of comps for Café Round titled “Tokyo-To Kissa” (To=city, Kissa=café) – with the much needed assistance of the right honorable Moonboots. This is the first.

Big Hard Excellent Fish`s “Imperfect List” is on here. Not really sure if it should be. But the strings remind me of the Penguin Café Orchestra, so it went on. I do love this record. It should be on a soundtrack somewhere. It perfectly hits that feeling in the early 90s, when if you didn’t manage to pull yourself clear you could sink without a trace. The escape from Thatcher`s Britain provided by Acid House was about to go pear-shaped. There would be casualties. And we hadn’t managed to change anything. It is such a downer of a tune. I really like the fact that there`s no dub. All the mixes just bring the vocal to the fore. The only person who I ever heard play it out was Glenn Gunner at the Soho Theatre.