Through the Looking Glass

Japanese Wikipedia gives the original as RVC (BMG Japan), catalogue RCL-8369, while English Wikipedia and most press say RCA. The Vinyl Factory and Dazed say it was recorded in two days at Victor Aoyama Studio in Tokyo with only an engineer, on a tight budget, when she was 32, while English Wikipedia says three days and the Quietus says 1982. She plays percussion, marimba, gong, reed organ, bells, ocarina, vibraphone, piano and glass Coca-Cola bottles. She told Dazed that, similar to painting, she layered each sound one by one, and told the Vinyl Factory she measured the distance from microphone to each instrument for a three-dimensional sound; she used no electronics, and told the Quietus she became like a machine.

It was not commercially popular at release. The master tape went missing after RCA merged with Sony and was found in Hamamatsu, which she called a miracle. The reissue of March 17, 2017 on Palto Flats and WRWTFWW earned a Pitchfork Best New Reissue and, per Wikipedia, was the second best-selling release of 2017 on Discogs. Resident Advisor's Aaron Coultate called it pioneering and abstract with a masterful 15-minute closer, and Spectrum Culture's Eric Bernasek wrote that "Catastrophe Sigma" is constantly on the edge of coming gloriously apart. Yoko Ochida drew the cover, echoing Rousseau.