Catalogue
Masayo Asahara
The truth is out!

It's a badly kept secret that Masayo Asahara is no more than a fevered outpouring of Martin Archer's already overheated imagination. In a pathetic attempt to sell just a few more CDs of creative music, he occasionally adopts this alter ego in the vain hope that more people will want to buy a CD by a mysterious Japanese woman than by an ornery Englishman. But surely, that could never be, could it?

However - this music IS different from Martin's core music, and we have created Masayo in the hope of bringing a different audience into our music journey. If you enjoy Masayo's music, you might enjoy Martin's too........

Saint Catherine Torment was composed and by Martin Archer in February 2004.

Saint Agnes Fountain was composed by Martin Archer and UTT/Foster, and was recorded at Yellowarch Studio, Sheffield during 2002.

Martin Archer
Masayo Asahara
Organ, filters, synthesizer, alto sax, shortwaves, composer

UTT/Foster
Michio Foschida
Bass guitar, composer

Rob Dainton
Robun Dantomi
Drums

Derek Saw
Denzo Sawamatsu
Trumpet

Mick Beck
Meiji Benko
Tenor saxophone

Charlie Collins
Chuji Choshi
Producer

"The 'Masayo Asahara' group is a Martin Archer re-imagining of the cultural landscapes of early 70's progressive music; he explores this elsewhere such as on his English Commonflowers CD & the results are sublime. This is Martin as nostalgic visionary entering mid-life cultural crisis; the context is therefore literary rather than bogus per se; the genuine yearnings of a man at odds with his time, but then again this is what his time (our time) is all about - somehow dealing with the accumulations of cultural history that threatens to collapse under its own mass; so think of the Masayo Asahara group as Martin's own virtual 'Tribute Band' or else an early music ensemble; historical re-enactment - authentic in every detail right down to the self-indulgent creativity (this last term from a review of a jazz album in a folk magazine in which the critic warned his readers to look out for 'lots of self-indulgent improv' - not sure what the record was; maybe John Coltrane live in Japan on which Coltrane & Pharoah play MFT on altos...)" - Siamang Gibbons