Hajiki Uta

Best known as an actress outside of Japan, Meiko Kaji also enjoyed a successful career as a singer. Much of her music was written to soundtrack her roles in 1970s revenge movies such as Lady Snowblood and Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion, both of which went on to have a profound influence on Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill films.

Kicking off a five-album reissue series, this 1973 effort offers a compelling window into Kaji's musical universe. An untrained singer, she hit upon the idea early on in her career of embodying the characters she played, investing her performances on tracks like ‘Onna Somuki Uta’ or ‘Urami Bushi’ with a breathily dramatic intensity. The music which backs her draws on a range of styles, fuzz guitars melding with a plucked shamisen on ‘Meikono Futebushi’. ‘Hizumi Moe’ adds smoky jazz saxophones, twanging rock guitars and funky bass lines to Kaji's emotive singing while ‘Hitori Kaze’ fuses wah-wah guitars and chamber pop strings with kayōkyoku (Shōwa-era Japanese pop) melodies.