Biosphere

Lyricist Chris Mosdell has written for Eric Clapton, Sarah Brightman, Boy George, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Yellow Magic Orchestra. He has co-written with Michael Jackson, worked with the West African kora master Toumani Diabate, the famed taiko drummer Miyuki Ikeda, collaborated on film scores, operatic works, anime soundtracks (Ghost in the Shell, Gundam, Cowboy Bebop, Texhnolyze, Wolf’s Rain) and was commissioned to write the election theme song for the Social Democratic Party of Japan. In addition to winning the Gold Prize at the Tokyo Music Festival for his lyrics, Mosdell has been awarded the Yuki Hayashi-Newkirk Poetry Prize and, most recently, the Grand Prize for Poetry at the Boulder, Colorado, Festival of Literature.

The innovator of “visic”, a development of visual music, his groundbreaking work culminated in the interactive audio-visual album Equasian. In collaboration with the poet Shuntaro Tanikawa, he also wrote The Oracles of Distraction, a set of ideographic cards adjoined to musical functions; composed the musical soundtrack for the gallery installations of Graham Hancock’s best-selling book, Fingerprints of the Gods, and was commissioned to write the scenario/script for the verse dance-drama Amaterasu: The Resurrection of Radiance, that was performed at London’s Theatre Royal Drury Lane.

In 2023 he was the recipient of Japan’s Classics Day Cultural Foundation Prize, an award “honouring individuals who have contributed to the dissemination and enlightenment of Japanese classical culture” — an award presided over by Her Imperial Princess Akiko of Mikasa.

Magnificent . . . a banquet of sensory delights.
Vivien Allender, Vogue

As a lyricist Chris Mosdell has stretched every boundary one can in his approach to structure and form. More poetic than a Kerouac or a Bukowski, yet just as blunt and edgy as his predecessors, Mosdell is a must read.
Razor Reviews

The most imaginative work being done in Japan today.
Sherry Reniker, Poetry Editor, Edge

Lyricist extraordinaire.
Angela Jeffs, The Japan Times

The Radicals by Chris Mosdell

The Radicals

ザ・ラディカルズ〜部首
A Nation’s Ideogrammic Anthems

$42.00
化粧箱入り特装版 / 370ページ

詩的な姿になった日本史!漢字の根源を用いて日本の史的風景を活写します。その文学的様相、勇士たち、天皇たち、芸術家たち、神々と武将たち。これぞ巨大な装飾品、幾千の破片を一同に合わせ、描き出す一つの国家の遠大な年代記。

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彼には希なる嗅覚がある。敏感に匂いを嗅ぎ取り、貪欲に事象を吸収し、全てを詩に反映することができる。
坂本龍一

実に壮大…感性の悦楽に満ちた宴だ。
ヴィヴィアン・アレンダー/ヴォーグ誌

現在の日本において成された最も想像力にあふれる作品集である。
シェリー・レニカー/詩句編集者/エッヂ

"When I read his lyrics, I see him in a high school chemistry
laboratory, making Molotov cocktails
— his eyes lucid, blue and very clear."
— Ryuichi Sakamoto
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