Translation: A Night on the Third Planet (Morio Agata)

My months of Takashi Matsumoto study led me, as was bound to happen, to the four albums he produced in that mysterious gray area between Happy End's dissolution and Matsumoto's decision to become a full-time lyricist. Takashi has noted wryly that although all four albums are recognized as timeless masterpieces now, they didn't sell anything at the time, and the toll they took on the young producer in terms of time and dedication was too heavy: he had a family that he wanted not only to support financially but also spend time with. 

And so the man who had fashioned Kazemachi Roman and Heroine of the Skyscraper, and who had helped bring Golden Lion, Alas No Mercy, and Who Will Offer This Child a Loving Hand into being, relinquished that side of his artistry... at least for a while, and at least in part.

Now, one of those four albums — Alas, No Mercy — was by Morio Agata, a friend of Happy End's whose 1970 debut album, The Gramophone (funereal lo-fi folk/punk that occasionally recalls Black Sabbath; but I don't think Agata would've had a chance to hear Sabbath yet) has Haruomi Hosono on bass.

I first became aware of Morio more than a year ago, as the singer of ヴヰクトリアルの夜, a Hosono composition that graces Agata's 1976 double album Zipangu Boy, which Hosono co-produced. Agata's vocals on that song being so wonderful, I tried the full album once but it didn't click, and I gave up at the end of Side C (a strange twist of fate; Side D is the best one and might have been enough to hook me into a second listen ... I mean, it seems amazing to me now that I could've been unmoved by all those soulful and ingenious songs on the first three sides too, but aren't things often so?).

Alas No Mercy, though, not only sounded gorgeous on the very first listen — coming to it with an ear for Takashi's production helped, but it was Agata's vocals that clinched the deal — it taught me how to listen to Zipangu Boy.

That was in early October of 2024. Now January '25 is ending. I hardly listened to anything except Morio Agata all autumn (and Electric Voyeur, the new Big Blood album). It turns out that not only is Agata one of my favorite singers and songwriters on earth, he has a discography as full and relentlessly wonderful as his friend Hosono's (except that Agata has gone on recording at least one new album a year, his most recent release is only three months old). Soon after Zipangu Boy clicked, I started wondering how much of that rampant genius Agata has managed to keep alive, and I tried an album from 2015, and then the new one, Orion's Forest, when it came out on October 30th. The answer was: all of it. 

A Night on the Third Planet (Agata/Agata) is the opener and sort-of title track of Agata's 2019 album (the Japanese title of the album is a little different; this song's name translates to the English title emblazoned on the back of the CD booklet). 

The album was recorded in the summer, in New York City. One evening Agata attended the screening of a film to which he'd contributed a song, and on display in the cinema lobby were a print and a sculpture by two artists from Aomori, where Agata had lived as a third grader. Agata's thoughts turned to the Nebuta Matsuri, a summer festival in Aomori that had left a deep impression on the young boy (as it would). The drums in the song are modeled after the festival drums. The verse lyrics (らっせらぁ) are, quoth Wikipedia, the "shortened dialectal version of 'irasshai,' calling visitors and customers to watch or join."

So there are hardly any words at all: or rather, there are lots of them, chanted and double/triple/quadruple-tracked, overlapping each other: but there are hardly any distinct words. But this is an elliptical set of lyrics, ripe for interpretation. 

Who is the speaker of that other line, the one that resists the invitation; the one about wanting to go home? Is it the songwriter in New York City, missing Japan — or, nostalgic for the Aomori summers of his childhood? Is it someone in Aomori on one of the nights of the festival, who has gotten caught up in the festival throng but doesn't want to be there (ala Festival of Mud)? Or some lonely wanderer on the outskirts of the city, who hears the festival in progress but skirts around it? Could it be the festival floats themselves, aching to reach the water? Or possibly the alien visitor to earth that the album title suggests, witness to but unmoved by the strange customs of the Third Planet...?

:::



Come join in. Come join in.
Come join, come join, come join in.
Come join in. Come join in.
Come join, come join, come join in.

I want to go home as soon as I can.
I want to go home as soon as I can.

Come join in. Come join in.
Come join, come join, come join in...

I want to go home as soon as I can...



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