As a reaction to the tsunami catastrophe and the subsequent nuclear disaster of Fukushima to happen in April 2011 numerous independent labels, mastering studios and music distributors created a digital compilation, initiated, designed and produced by Wordandsound. Inbetween a few days 140 partially unreleased tracks were collected and put out as a three part digital sampler on various digital download stores. After a sales period of 8 month the result was a respectable sum of more than 10.000 Euro donated to the Deutsch-Japanische Gesellschaft of Hamburg which will conduct the amount to the people of the area Sendai / Miyagi.

Hamburg, March, 2012 | Download Press Release (EN/DE)

JAPANEASE - The Story | View Tracklisting

JAPANEASE is a charity electronic dance music compilation available worldwide on various music download services. This is Wordandsounds (music distributor) contribution and effort to ease the terrible suffering resulting from the devastating disaster happened on March 11th, 2011 in Japan. The entire income of sales will be donated to the area of Sendai/Miyagi through the German Japanese Association in Hamburg, Germany. Initiated by Wordandsound and various independent music labels the compilation contains more than 120 tracks (view tracklisting - total track count: 138, previously unreleased tracks: 47) from highly respected artists of the worldwide electronic dance music scene. All people involved in the project, made their contribution completely free of charge.

About the idea: Like people around the globe we at Wordandsound and our labels have been watching the latest developments in Japan with great concern and sorrow. The immediate reflex was the question of how we could help our Japanese friends and express that we’re standing at their side. Together with our close friends Norihiko Kawai, Asami Uchida, Kumi Nagano (editors of POSIVISION MAGAZINE JAPAN - www.posivision.com and contributors at www.clubberia.com), Maki Miura and with help from related distributors like Rush Hour the idea came up to make the most obvious thing we could do: Release music and donate the income! We asked our label partners to contribute the best they could give and received overwhelming feedback. Much to our delight the result is more than 100 partly unreleased tracks from the best artists of the worldwide electronic dance music scene.

About the artwork - created by izaiza: The cherry blossom coloured paper cranes are referring to ancient Japanese mythology and the book “Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes”. Sadako, a Hiroshima nuclear bomb attack survivor, believed that if she made a 1000 origami paper cranes she would get a wish fulfilled by the gods. She sadly died after completing 644 of them. But all her friends completed the 1000 and even if Sadako could not survive, the city of Hiroshima and Japan, both became more alive again. This is a story of hope and therefore a part of the story of JAPANEASE, our project.
wikipedia.org/wiki/Sadako_and_the_Thousand_Paper_Cranes
wikipedia.org/wiki/Sadako_Sasaki

About the donation: All donations will go to the German Japanese Association (Deutsch-Japanische Gesellschaft) in Hamburg/Germany who has partners in Sendai. They’ll make sure that 100 percent of the donations will go to the once beautiful and hopefully soon beautiful again area of Sendai/Miyagi that was hit hardest. More details about the German Japanese Association (Deutsch-Japanische Gesellschaft):
www.djg-hamburg.de

Additional contributed services: Wordandsound would like to say THANK YOU to the following contributors who all worked countless hours free of charge to make this happen: Artwork and Design by Iza (izaiza.de) | Top notch Audio Mastering by Sanhaji Mastering, Tim Xavier at Manmade Mastering (manmademastering.com), Andreas Kauffelt & Thomas P. Heckmann of Schnittstelle (schnittstelle.ws), Calyx Mastering (www.calyx-mastering.com), Joachim Hinsch Audio Mastering (hinsch-audio.de), Henry Stamerjohann (headmin.com) | Marketing and Promotion by Philipp Hoffman (pullproxy.com) plus an extra special thanks to Christian at RUSH HOUR for his immediate swift and friendly support on this!

And last but not least to our many dear japanese friends including Kumi and Nori from Posivision/Clubberia, Keisuke at Technique Records, all in Tokyo, Maki Miura in Berlin and absolutely everyone we might have not mentionend due to short time we had to complete this. You are not forgotten!

Japanese would like to thank the following labels and companies for contributing music. Without You this project would not have been possible: Arms&Legs, Art Of Vengeance, Aufdembaum, Bar25, Batti Batti, Be As One Imprint, Bosconi, Cadenza, Cargo Edition, CLR, Cocoon, Colourful Recordings, Couldn't Care More, Deep Vibes, Desolat, Dial, Dirt Crew, Diynamic, Doppler, Electric Deluxe, Electric Minds, Faze Action, Feel Music, Floppy Funk, Form Resonance, Freund der familie, Full Pupp, Get Physical, Greenfiction, Highgrade Records, Imperanza, Internasjonal, It's, Kinda Soul Recordings, Klangfarbe, Knee Deep Recordings, Laid, Layo and Bushwacka, Liebe Detail, Louie Austen, Macro, Minibar, Music Minus, Mirau, Mobilee, Moodmusic, Moon Harbour, Mo's ferry, Mule, Maki Miura (20 tracks) & Kumi Nagano (7 tracks), NSYDE, Palette, Pampa, Rotary Cocktail, Running Back, Rush Hour Distribution (5 Tracks), Sierra Sam, Simple records, Smallville, Something, Souvenir, Stil Vor talent, Stir15, Superstition, Poker Flat, Tartelet, Technorient, Theomatic, Upon You, Victoriaville, Watergate, Winding, Wir, Wolf + Lamb. Furthermore we would like to thank all the many musicians, producers and artists who participated by sending unreleased material.

Special thanks to our friends from Juno Download, zero", boomkat and InnDigital who agreed to waive their margin to support the project. Whatpeopleplay will follow this aswell. That goes without saying.

2011 Original Press kit (EN/DE):Download ZIP-file including info, high res cover images, banners etc. (right click -> save as)