Nanaco Soto's Lust
An astonishing lost album from the '90s by Japanese polymath that defies stylistic categorization
Bandcamp New & Notable Sep 26, 2026
The Background
If modern people are somewhat aware that the idea of one discrete self is a fiction “we” almost literally maintain for others, the truly creative are proof of the lie, showcasing a cauldron of competing impulses that defy coralling. The muse has not time or use of domestification, in true Cartman/Id fashion, it does what it wants, and those capable of holding on to that muse could wind up anywhere.
This brings us to 69-year old Japanese savant Nanaco Sato, who trained as a gymnast in her youth until a headfirst collision with a beam left her unconscious for a week. Omni-skilled, Sato released her first album before she even graduated from university, when she submitted a song into a collegiate women’s contest and made it to the finals.
This led to an offer from Nippon Columbia and her 1977 debut, Funny Walkin’ and six months later, Sweet Swingin’. Her dynamic, whisper-soft vocals became a model for the style that followed a decade later, in the late eighties, known as Shibuya-kei. (Think Cibo Matto.)
Sato would release another album in each of the next three years, helping fuel a musical style later described as “city pop.” (You must remember, unlike fish, music can exist outside its genre aquarium.) This blended style of soft rock, folk, funk and jazz with a slick urban imprimatur would become a particular viral sensation online beginning in the tens and continuing to grow.
Back in the old times, after your moment passed you moved on. Sato’s pop moment passed. After forming a techno pop act, Spy, which debuted in 1980, she let it go. Imagine that – not trying to wring more wealth from it, but finding a different interest. She became a successful fashion photographer and then filmmaker. She also did some voice work, and lived in Paris from 1987 -1993.
But the muse doesn’t settle, and 14 years (two cycles, for those who are curious about such things) after she last made music she returned to the studio for 1995’s electro/folk-artpop, Fear and Loving, followed by 1996’s Love is a Drug, with members of the Cocteau Twins, offering a blend of trip-hop and dreamy ephemeral pop.
It was at this moment when Sato went into London’s iconic Maison Rouge Studios for the sessions that comprise Lust. The songs were nothing more than poetry she’d written, but her backing players were stellar session players including guitarists Danny Cummings (Dire Straits / Bryan Adams), Brinsley Ford (ASWAD), Dan Boutwood (Iannello), bassist James Denham (Addict), drummer Charles Price (Scissor Men) and they had great chemistry, which was necessary since the accompaniment was improv.
Each day Sato chose a poem based on her mood, show it to the band, and they’d would run with it.
“Someone would start playing a phrase, and the rest of us would instinctively follow, as though we were pushing a boat out into an open current and letting it find its own direction,” said Sato. “Even though we’d never played together before, it felt like a real band from the very first moment we met. Those days at Maison Rouge remain some of the most inspiring recording sessions of my life.”
However after the sessions, she struggled to mix the record. Undoubtedly the eclectic, widescreen sound complicated matters. So she put it away in her closet. For 29 years. When she listened to it again, the mix had magically fixed itself. She sent it to UK/Japan analogue specialists Gearbox Records who were happy to release it.
It must've felt like Christmas. This is an extraordinary release for Gearbox.
The Review
Nanaco Sato’s Lust is an unannounced street party at the intersection of Form and Function. Stealthy kids repurposed street signs and hazards to throw a pop-up throw-down that’s weird, unexpected and difficult to ignore.
It both invites and confuses listeners, discombobulating them that the music might flow in better through the newly cracked egg. We jest, a bit, but Sato’s nearly 30-year old album is very much an artifact, but not like Garbage Pail Kids so much as a well-preserved dinosaur foot discovered in Central Park.
Of the 14 tracks, at least half linger past the five-plus minute mark, signaling experimental jams flowing freely between jazz-funk fusion, folk/rock and ambient art-rock that make up most of the second half of the album.
These include the sitar-laden Tibetan folk/rock ragga of “The Never Ending Love Letter,” the drum circle Ayahuasca African-pop thrum of “Angels Whispers Midnight,” the knotty, kinetic and insistent fusion Funkenstein rumble “Hells Bloom,” pretty folk-blues jam, “A Dirge for Coral,” with its pile-driving rock break and hypnotic wah-guitar wail, the moody, driving electronic-tinged, “Rainbow” with supple evocative guitar work reminiscent of Pink Floyd’s commercial prime, and the album-closing “A Rolling Stone from Heaven” an eight-minute baroque classical guitar melody keyed to Sato's diaphanous and ethereal croon, as if beholding an awe-inspiring burnt umber sunset.
Those longer jams comprise much of the last half of the album, and as the prose hopefully helped to convey, there is not a one that sounds like the other, making the last half of the album feel very much like a mesmerizing train ride through impressionistic and absurdist landscapes and still lifes.
The first half of the disc is just as eclectic if not so uniformly extended. The opener, “Home Sweet Home” channels narcotized psych-soul, Sato’s importuning pleas drifting across a slowly building organ driven arrangement, the keyboard peals plumes of smoke spiraling before the footlights and shimmying upwards to heaven until halfway in someone wakes the slumbering guitar, which rages and bellows through the six-minute mark.
After the 2-minute traditional Japanese/Tibetan folk tune, “Sorrow for the Wind,” Sato luxuriates on a two-and-a-half minute, “Love Trip,” into a beat-jazz rave of whispered lines and later solfège over spare piano-jazz with less notes than syllables, and plenty of minor key notes to darken her bird-like cooing.
It’s followed by one of my two favorites on the album, the intoxicating “Mad Memories,” whose sturdy rhythmic churn, slashing guitar chords and call/return melodic figure tend to recall New York’s Television. It has the quality of something seen from the corner of the eye, a friend disappearing around a corner, such that you chase after it, calling out unheard. Very infectious, and the way Sato’s voice moves in and out of rhythm with the melodic line, as if spun around in traffic, works fantastically well.
While not my other favorite, the first single, “Lust – Love Underground,” is very intriguing. One of the few at a “normal” four-minute length, it rides a dry, husky blues riff, grizzled like decades old jerky, with a greasy, steaming funk-rock break that wouldn’t be out of place at a Clutch show.
My other favorite is the only short track on the second side, this utter freaking anomaly of a track called “A Postman’s Love” which opens with peals of atonal guitar before settling into a grimy garage-punk groove that eventually features a screaming male vocalist to counterpoint Sato’s more airy, multi-tracked, fuzzed-out vocals as it grows to a thundering cacophonous climax worthy of Monotonix. Just an unmediated joy.
To be clear, it’s a strange listen, given all the tones and moods, but it’s also not like variations on a theme, which – maybe you aren’t like me, and haven’t sense this but – is a relief after so many people working a lane assiduously and to exclusion.
This album has no idea where it’s going next and you don’t either, even after several listens, but it’s also not so loud or in your face that it won’t sink into the background at times, as your attention flags or is diverted. But you may find yourself continually returning – like people watching in a great spot – with the thought, “what have we got going on here?”
In a world that remains all to predictable in a predictable number of ways, it’s great to be taken on a ride by someone less interested in getting there than having fun while you go.
