, also known as ''Kalk Samen Chestnut Flower'' and ''Chlorine, Semen, Chestnut Flower'' is the third studio album by Japanese singer-songwriter

Ringo Sheena , known by her stage name , is a Japanese singer, songwriter and musician. She is also the founder and lead vocalist of the band Tokyo Jihen. She describes herself as "". She was ranked number 36 in a list of Japan's top 100 musicians compiled ...

, released on February 23, 2003, on

Toshiba EMI , formerly , was one of Japan's leading music companies. It became a wholly owned subsidiary of British music company EMI Group Ltd. on June 30, 2007, after Toshiba sold off its previous 45% stake. Its CEO and president was Kazuhiko Koike. When ...

Virgin Music Virgin Music, known as Virgin Music Label & Artist Services until 2022 and originally as Caroline Distribution, was a music distributor of independent artists and record labels, most prominently Death Grips, Weezer, and Radiohead. Virgin Music ...

. The album's lead single was a massive success, topping the

Oricon , established in 1999, is the holding company at the head of a Japanese corporate group that supplies statistics Statistics (from German language, German: ', "description of a State (polity), state, a country") is the discipline that ...

charts for the first time in her career. EMI released the album using CCCD at first. Then, the CCCD version was stopped producing, and the CD-DA version was newly released on July 2, 2008. The 2LP

vinyl record A phonograph record (also known as a gramophone record, especially in British English) or a vinyl record (for later varieties only) is an analog signal, analog sound Recording medium, storage medium in the form of a flat disc with an inscribed, ...

version was released on May 27, 2003 and contains the bonus track . The

short film A short film is a film with a low running time. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of not more than 40 minutes including all credits". Other film o ...

acts as a visual accompaniment to the album and was released prior to the album on January 22, 2003.

Background and recording

''Kalk Samen Kuri no Hana'' was released hot off of the success of Ringo's sophomore album '' Shōso Strip'' (2000) as well as her self-cover album '' Utaite Myōri: Sono Ichi'' (2002). The album was originally titled . However, she decided to change the title at the last minute after being intrigued by an argument she overheard between two male staff members on her team, who bickered over whether the smell of semen more resembled the smell of

chlorine Chlorine is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Cl and atomic number 17. The second-lightest of the halogens, it appears between fluorine and bromine in the periodic table and its properties are mostly intermediate between ...

or the smell of the

chestnut flowers The chestnuts are the deciduous trees and shrubs in the genus ''Castanea'', in the beech family Fagaceae. The name also refers to the edible nuts they produce. They are native to temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere. Description C ...

. She thought that the nuance of the word "semen" was beautiful, and adapted it to the original title, explaining that "Kalk" (

calcium hypochlorite Calcium hypochlorite is an inorganic compound with chemical formula , also written as . It is a white solid, although commercial samples appear yellow. It strongly smells of chlorine, owing to its slow decomposition in moist air. This compound is ...

) fit into the original first word of "Wonder", while "Semen" fit "Vulgar", and "Chestnut Flower" fit with "Eccentric". The 2001 single was to have been included on the album along with one of the single's b-sides, , however these tracks were dropped on the basis of not thematically fitting in with the rest of the album. ''Kalk Samen Kuri no Hana'' saw Sheena producing a major release all by herself for the first time in her career, as opposed to working with her usual collaborators and producer

Seiji Kameda is a Japanese music producer, arranger and bass guitarist. He has worked extensively with Ringo Shiina, serving as her producer and touring bassist for many years, including his tenure with their band Tokyo Jihen. Biography He was born in ...

. The album allegedly took her an extra year to produce than her previous two studio albums did. Sheena chose to not record a band all at once as she had done on previous albums, choosing to instead record one instrument at a time by

overdubbing Overdubbing (also known as layering) is a technique used in audio recording in which audio Music track, tracks that have been pre-recorded are then played back and monitored, while simultaneously recording new, doubled, or augmented tracks onto o ...

and multitracking and layering the instruments. Musically, the album combines both the standard instrumentation of a

rock band ''Rock Band'' is a series of rhythm games first released in 2007 and developed by Harmonix. Based on their previous development work from the Guitar Hero, ''Guitar Hero'' series, the main ''Rock Band'' games have players use game controllers mod ...

as well as various other

musical instruments A musical instrument is a device created or adapted to make musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can be considered a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument. A person who pl ...

, including

folk instruments A folk instrument is a traditional musical instrument that has remained largely restricted to traditional folk music, and is not usually used in the classical music or other elite and formal musical genres of the culture concerned, though relate ...

from Japan and other regions,

string instruments In musical instrument classification, string instruments, or chordophones, are musical instruments that produce sound from vibrating strings when a performer strums, plucks, strikes or sounds the strings in varying manners. Musicians play some ...

wind instruments A wind instrument is a musical instrument that contains some type of resonator (usually a tube) in which a column of air is set into vibration by the player blowing into (or over) a mouthpiece set at or near the end of the resonator. The pitch ...

percussion instruments A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Ex ...

, as well as

music sequencer A music sequencer (or audio sequencer or simply sequencer) is a device or application software that can record, edit, or play back music, by handling Musical note, note and performance information in several forms, typically CV/Gate, MIDI, or Open ...

and a full

orchestra An orchestra (; ) is a large instrumental ensemble typical of classical music, which combines instruments from different families. There are typically four main sections of instruments: * String instruments, such as the violin, viola, cello, ...

. In order to reduce budgets, she used her own

Macintosh Mac is a brand of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 1984. The name is short for Macintosh (its official name until 1999), a reference to the McIntosh (apple), McIntosh apple. The current product lineup inclu ...

computer A computer is a machine that can be Computer programming, programmed to automatically Execution (computing), carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (''computation''). Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic set ...

and cheap recording equipment to compose and edit the songs by herself using

computer software Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...

, while sometimes exchanging the arranged songs with Uni Inoue. She recorded one musical instrument in one room of her house while recording the ensemble parts (

string section The string section of an orchestra is composed of bowed instruments belonging to the violin family. It normally consists of first and second violins, violas, cellos, and double basses. It is the most numerous group in the standard orchestra. In ...

, etc.) in another room. Seiji Kameda, who had been involved in the production and arrangement of her previous two studio albums did not participate in the album whatsoever. Instead, Sheena arranged the album with

audio engineer An audio engineer (also known as a sound engineer or recording engineer) helps to produce a recording or a live performance, balancing and adjusting sound sources using equalization, dynamics processing and audio effects, mixing, reproduc ...

Uni Inoue. Toshiyuki Mori orchestrated each of the recorded songs and arranged the entirety of "Yattsuke Shigoto". The song titles and their places in the tracklist continue a pattern seen on Ringo's first two albums where each song title symmetrically parallels the opposite side of the tracklist. For instance, tracks 1 and 11 are written with exactly two

kanji are logographic Chinese characters, adapted from Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script, used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are ...

, tracks 2 and 10 are written with eight katakana characters, and so on.

Reception

''Kalk Samen Kuri no Hana'' was ranked second in CNN International Asia's list of "the 2000s' most under-appreciated Japanese music of the last decade" on December 22, 2009. Sheena also received a mention in

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

as one of Japan's artists who "deserve to be seen and heard in the west" in 2010.

Track listing

All tracks written by Ringo Sheena; all tracks arranged by Sheena and Uni Inoue (credited as "Bakeneko Killer"), except "Rush Job" by Toshiyuki Mori, and "Fig Flower" by Ukigumo.

Credits and personnel

*All English translation and pronunciation guidance: Robbie Clark Track 1 and 11 * :

orchestral music An orchestra (; ) is a large instrumental ensemble typical of classical music, which combines instruments from different families. There are typically four main sections of instruments: * String instruments, such as the violin, viola, cello, a ...

* Yuichiro Goto: conductor * Kazuhiro Momo (from Mo'some Tonebender):

electric guitars Electric Guitars were an English band formed early in 1980 by Neil Davenport (vocals, lyrics) and Richard Hall (bass, vocals) who were both studying English at Bristol University. The band soon increased to a five-man line-up, with Andy Sander ...

* Junji Ikehata:

drums The drum is a member of the percussion instrument, percussion group of musical instruments. In the Hornbostel–Sachs classification system, it is a membranophones, membranophone. Drums consist of at least one Acoustic membrane, membrane, c ...

* Toshiyuki Mori:

pipe organ The pipe organ is a musical instrument that produces sound by driving pressurised air (called ''wind'') through the organ pipes selected from a Musical keyboard, keyboard. Because each pipe produces a single tone and pitch, the pipes are provide ...

* Uni Inoue:

electric bass guitars Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter possessing an electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as described by Maxwel ...

hurdy-gurdy The hurdy-gurdy is a string instrument that produces sound by a hand-turned crank, rosined wheel rubbing against the strings. The wheel functions much like a violin (or nyckelharpa) bow, and single notes played on the instrument sound similar ...

mandolin A mandolin (, ; literally "small mandola") is a Chordophone, stringed musical instrument in the lute family and is generally Plucked string instrument, plucked with a plectrum, pick. It most commonly has four Course (music), courses of doubled St ...

lute A lute ( or ) is any plucked string instrument with a neck (music), neck and a deep round back enclosing a hollow cavity, usually with a sound hole or opening in the body. It may be either fretted or unfretted. More specifically, the term "lu ...

sitar The sitar ( or ; ) is a plucked stringed instrument, originating from the Indian subcontinent, used in Hindustani classical music. The instrument was invented in the 18th century, and arrived at its present form in 19th-century India. Khusrau K ...

, Fender B.Bender (3-stringed),

drum machine A drum machine is an electronic musical instrument that creates percussion sounds, drum beats, and patterns. Drum machines may imitate drum kits or other percussion instruments, or produce unique sounds, such as synthesized electronic tones. A d ...

* Ringo Sheena:

vocal The human voice consists of sound made by a human being using the vocal tract, including talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming, shouting, humming or yelling. The human voice frequency is specifically a part of human sound producti ...

, koto (Ikuta style), distortion koto (her own way), pipe organ Track 2 and 10 * Chestnut Flower Fragrance Orchestra: orchestral music * Yuichiro Goto: conductor * Ringo Sheena: vocal * Uni Inoue:

Mellotron The Mellotron is an electro-mechanical musical instrument developed in Birmingham, England, in 1963. It is played by pressing its keys, each of which causes a length of magnetic tape to contact a Capstan (tape recorder), capstan, which pulls i ...

, electric bass guitars Track 3 and 9 * Himitsu Butai: the band * Ringo Sheena: vocal, bandmaster,

percussion A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a percussion mallet, beater including attached or enclosed beaters or Rattle (percussion beater), rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or ...

* Ukigumo: electric guitars (

Fender Telecaster The Fender Telecaster, colloquially known as the Tele (), is an electric guitar produced by Fender (company), Fender. Together with its sister model the Fender Esquire, Esquire, it was the world's first mass-produced, commercially successfulLes ...

) * Ahito Inazawa: drums * Hitoshi Watanabe: electric bass guitars,

contrabass Contrabass (from ) refers to several musical instruments of very low pitch—generally one octave below bass register instruments. While the term most commonly refers to the double bass (which is the bass instrument in the orchestral string family ...

* Hideyo Takakuwa: * Neko Saito:

violin The violin, sometimes referred to as a fiddle, is a wooden chordophone, and is the smallest, and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in regular use in the violin family. Smaller violin-type instruments exist, including the violino picc ...

* Tabu (from

Soil & "Pimp" Sessions Soil & "Pimp" Sessions (stylised as SOIL&"PIMP"SESSIONS) is a Japanese club jazz sextet who formed in Tokyo, Japan, in 2001. They are known for their energetic live performances, having coined the term "death jazz" to describe their music. Histo ...

Didgeridoo The didgeridoo (;()), also spelt didjeridu, among other variants, is a wind instrument, played with vibrating lips to produce a continuous Drone (music), drone while using a special breathing technique called circular breathing. The didgerido ...

Track 4 and 8 * Kotaro Saito:

cello The violoncello ( , ), commonly abbreviated as cello ( ), is a middle pitched bowed (sometimes pizzicato, plucked and occasionally col legno, hit) string instrument of the violin family. Its four strings are usually intonation (music), tuned i ...

* Junko Minobe:

viola The viola ( , () ) is a string instrument of the violin family, and is usually bowed when played. Violas are slightly larger than violins, and have a lower and deeper sound. Since the 18th century, it has been the middle or alto voice of the ...

* Youkan Mizue:

conch Conch ( , , ) is a common name of a number of different medium-to-large-sized sea snails. Conch shells typically have a high Spire (mollusc), spire and a noticeable siphonal canal (in other words, the shell comes to a noticeable point on both ...

and other

wind instrument A wind instrument is a musical instrument that contains some type of resonator (usually a tube) in which a column of air is set into vibration by the player blowing into (or over) a mouthpiece set at or near the end of the resonator. The pitch ...

s * Yumi Ōta: the voice of the announcement * Uni Inoue: electric bass guitars, electric guitars,

electronic drum Electronic drums are a modern electronic musical instrument, primarily designed to serve as an alternative to an acoustic drum kit. Electronic drums consist of an electronic sound module which produces the Drum synthesiser, synthesized or Sampler ...

* Ringo Sheena: vocal,

prepared piano A prepared piano is a piano that has had its sounds temporarily altered by placing bolts, screws, mutes, rubber erasers, and/or other objects on or between the strings. Its invention is usually traced to John Cage's dance music for ''Works for pr ...

acoustic piano A piano is a keyboard instrument that produces sound when its keys are depressed, activating an action mechanism where hammers strike strings. Modern pianos have a row of 88 black and white keys, tuned to a chromatic scale in equal tempe ...

Erhu The (; ) is a Chinese two-stringed bowed musical instrument, more specifically a spike fiddle, that is sometimes known in the Western world as the ''Chinese violin'' or a ''Chinese two-stringed fiddle''. It is used as a solo instrument as ...

(二胡, Chinese instrument with two strings) Track 5 * Ōoku Kinen Orchestra: orchestral music * Yuichiro Goto: conductor * Toshiyuki Mori: piano, all works * Ringo Sheena: vocal, koto (Ikuta style), distortion koto (her own way), pipe organ * Ukigumo:

vacuum cleaner A vacuum cleaner, also known simply as a vacuum, is a device that uses suction, and often agitation, in order to remove dirt and other debris from carpets, hard floors, and other surfaces. The dirt is collected into a dust bag or a plastic bin. ...

(her elder brother Shiina Junpei's wife's possessions) Track 6 * Josei-jōi Kinen Orchestra:

* Chieko Kinpara party:

string quintet A string quintet is a musical composition for five string players. As an extension to the string quartet (two violins, a viola, and a cello), a string quintet includes a fifth string instrument, usually a second viola (a so-called "viola quintet ...

* Kanako Tsuruta: drums * Uni Inoue: electric bass guitar * Ringo Sheena: vocal, koto (Ikuta style), piano Track 7 * Ukigumo:

vocal percussion Vocal percussion is the art of creating sounds with one's mouth that approximate, imitate, or otherwise serve the same purpose as a percussion instrument, whether in a group of singers, an instrumental ensemble, or solo. In Western music Recent ...

* Toshiyuki Mori:

Cornet The cornet (, ) is a brass instrument similar to the trumpet but distinguished from it by its conical bore, more compact shape, and mellower tone quality. The most common cornet is a transposing instrument in B. There is also a soprano cor ...

* Uni Inoue: electric bass guitar * Ringo Sheena: vocal, koto (Ikuta style),

shamisen The , also known as or (all meaning "three strings"), is a three-stringed traditional Japanese musical instrument derived from the Chinese instrument . It is played with a plectrum called a bachi. The Japanese pronunciation is usually b ...

melodica The melodica is a handheld free-reed instrument similar to a pump organ or harmonica. It features a musical keyboard on top, and is played by blowing air through a mouthpiece that fits into a hole in the side of the instrument. The keyboard usu ...

, alto

recorder Recorder or The Recorder may refer to: Newspapers * ''Indianapolis Recorder'', a weekly newspaper * ''The Recorder'' (Massachusetts newspaper), a daily newspaper published in Greenfield, Massachusetts, US * ''The Recorder'' (Port Pirie), a newsp ...

kalimba Mbira ( ; ) are a family of musical instruments, traditional to the Shona people of Zimbabwe. They consist of a wooden board (often fitted with a resonator) with attached staggered metal tines, played by holding the instrument in the hands and ...

harmonium The pump organ or reed organ is a type of organ that uses free reeds to generate sound, with air passing over vibrating thin metal strips mounted in a frame. Types include the pressure-based harmonium, the suction reed organ (which employs a va ...

jaw harp The Jew's harp, also known as jaw harp, juice harp, or mouth harp, is a lamellophone instrument, consisting of a flexible metal or bamboo tongue or Reed (mouthpiece), reed attached to a frame. Despite the colloquial name, the Jew's harp most like ...

, whistle, piano, drums, electric guitars Track 12 * Ringo Sheena: vocal * Ukigumo: acoustic guitars * Uni Inoue: bass

Notes

References

External links

* {{Authority control Ringo Sheena albums 2003 albums 2000s concept albums