’90s era trip-hop blues and Japanese exotica from guitarist Shunji Mori.

The seemingly endless well of ’90s CD-era Japanese downtempo bands continues to reveal new secrets… Our latest discovery is Natural Calamity, a trio comprised of guitarist Shunji Mori, bassist/keyboardist Kuni Sugimoto, and British singer Stephanie Heasley. Mori and Sugimoto met in the early ’90s and released their first album as Natural Calamity, Dawn in the Valley, in 1992 for the great File Records. Run by Toshio Nakanishi of Love T.K.O. and Water Melon Group, the label was home to a number of innovative Japanese artists exploring sounds inspired by hip-hop, house, punk, and more including Hiroshi Fujiwara, who would later become the “Godfather of Harajuku.” Natural Calamity’s Dawn in the Valley along with Let It Come Down and Sun Dance presented a supremely chilled-out downtempo blues centering around sentimental melodies, guitar, breakbeats, and hip-hop style sampling.

Mori and Sugimoto would also participate in Down 2 Earth Recordings’ cheekily-titled supergroup Group of Gods, recorded with Nakanishi and Masayaki Kudo (who form half of the trip-hop quartet Skylab). Produced by Toshio Nakanishi, the group’s lone album explored a sort of ’60s exotica revival featuring percussion, flutes, and various traditional instruments (both digital and organic) and melodies. In many ways, the album can be seen as a continuation of Nakanishi’s previous project Water Melon Group, especially the album Cool Music, which was released around a decade prior. Of course, there are also links to the pre-YMO Japanese exotica sound explored by Haruomi Hosono during his “Crown Years” in the ’70s. Hosono: “The thing was to take these western ideas of the exotic, but to subvert them. With Martin Denny, the exotica is kind of fake. But I am real!”

Sometime in the mid-90s, Sugimoto traveled to London and met singer Stephanie Heasley, who was working at the Tower Records store in Piccadilly Circus. After recording in London and Spain as a trio, Natural Calamity signed to Toy’s Factory / Idyllic Records, which had close ties to pioneering UK trip-hop label Mo Wax and released records from DJ Krush, Silent Poets, and Nobukazu Takemura. Surprisingly, 1995’s Andulucian Moon sees the band reaching for more of a bluesy indie pop sound with live drums, percussion, and rhythm boxes instead of sampled breakbeats. The album received quite a bit of hype in Japanese press (possibly due to the group having a British singer) which led to a distribution deal through the Dust Brothers, who were known for producing the Beastie Boys, Beck, and Rolling Stones.

1998’s Peach Moon was released in the U.S. on the Dust Brothers’ Ideal Records with a remix album following soon after with contributions from Stock, Hausen & Walkman, the Dust Brothers, Buffalo Daughter and Kool Keith. Longtime Hiroshi Fujiwara and Nigo (Bathing Ape) collaborator Masayuki Kudo contributes electronics on the album bringing a more futuristic sound to the group’s earthy blues and melody-drive indie pop. The band would play (at least) a few shows in the United States with Keigo Oyamada’s Shibuya-kei act Cornelius.

“As you know, it’s the middle of the ’90s. Forget about the mainstream, man! We all know that anything can happen cause it’s all okay.”

Writer Peter Margasask previewed the Chicago show, dismissing the band and writing that their debut U.S. album Peach Head “is mostly simple, languid bass lines and reverberant guitar arpeggios–which they seem content to repeat endlessly–accompanied by live and looped drums from a variety of accomplices. In between the woozy vocals of guest crooner Stephanie Heasley, the music sounds like a catatonic version of Santo & Johnny’s ‘Sleep Walk.'” But that’s precisely what makes Natural Calamity’s music appealing; there’s a certain charm to their slacker psychedelia that comes from the simple, repeated blues licks and cheeky electronics.

Margasask’s glaring review points to one of the key reasons that Natural Calamity might not have been a bigger success — it wasn’t easy to fit them within any sort of box. They weren’t a trip-hop or electronic act, nor were they truly an indie rock band either. Their instrument-heavy sound was also quite far away from the sampledelic ‘90s Shibuya-kei bands that they would often be grouped with. Interestingly, one of the band’s biggest moments would come from completely outside of all of these scenes: the Balearic islands. In the 00’s, Groove Armada’s downtempo house remix of “And That’s Saying A Lot” would be featured on a number of legendary chill-out compilations and mixes including Café del Mar Music’s iconic Chillhouse Mix series.

Below, listen to that track along with a few more of our favorites from Natural Calamity.