Naoki Zushi III Vinyl LP 2025
1. At Last
2. Yearning of Flowers - FOCUS TRACK
3. Premonition On A Rainy Day
4. Drops of Light
5. If I Could See You Again
6. Spirit In My Hair
7. Under The June Moonlight [vinyl only bonus track]
Intimate and expansive, rich with revelatory songwriting and blasted, sky-scouring guitar, this reissue returns the album to print for the first time since the 2000s. It’s the first time 'III' has been officially released on vinyl, with an extra, previously unreleased track, “Under The June Moonlight.”
Perhaps his masterpiece, it’s already been bootlegged on vinyl, but this reissue is the real deal. The album was recorded at Studio Nemu over seven years, and sees Zushi backed by Shibayama (bass) and Masako Takeda (drums), his erstwhile bandmates in Nagisa Ni Te.
By this stage, Zushi had started to really stretch out, and many of the songs on III swoon languorously, taking their sweet time to say what they need to say. It’s rich with lovely, melancholy songs, in a similar realm to bandmates Nagisa Ni Te, of course, but you can also hear traces of everything from Syd Barrett’s 'The Madcap Laughs', through seventies private press loner folk, to the slow-burn meanderings of the likes of early Low or Damon & Naomi.