, also known as ''Kalk Samen Chestnut Flower'' and ''Chlorine Semen Chestnut Flower'', is the third studio album by Japanese singer-songwriter

Ringo Sheena , known by her stage name , is a Japanese singer, songwriter and musician. She is also the founder and lead vocalist of the band Tokyo Jihen. She describes herself as "". She was ranked number 36 in a list of Japan's top 100 musicians compiled ...

, released on February 23, 2003, on

Toshiba EMI , formerly , was one of Japan's leading music companies. It became a wholly owned subsidiary of British music company EMI Group Ltd. on June 30, 2007, after Toshiba sold off its previous 45% stake. Its CEO and president was Kazuhiko Koike. Whe ...

Virgin Music Virgin Records is a record label owned by Universal Music Group. It originally founded as a British independent record label in 1972 by entrepreneurs Richard Branson, Simon Draper, Nik Powell, and musician Tom Newman. It grew to be a worldw ...

. The album's lead single was a massive success, topping the

Oricon , established in 1999, is the holding company at the head of a Japanese corporate group that supplies statistics and information on music and the music industry in Japan and Western music. It started as, which was founded by Sōkō Koike in Nov ...

charts for the first time in her career. EMI released the album using CCCD at first. Then, the CCCD version was stopped producing, and the CD-DA version was newly released on July 2, 2008. The 2LP

vinyl record A phonograph record (also known as a gramophone record, especially in British English), or simply a record, is an analog sound storage medium in the form of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove. The groove usually starts nea ...

version was released on May 27, 2003 and contains the bonus track . The

short film A short film is any motion picture that is short enough in running time not to be considered a feature film. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes ...

acts as a visual accompaniment to the album and was released prior to the album on January 22, 2003.

Background and recording

''Kalk Samen Kuri no Hana'' was released hot off of the success of Ringo's sophomore album ''

Shōso Strip , also known as ''Winning Strip'', is the second studio album by Japanese singer and songwriter Ringo Sheena, released on March 31, 2000, by Toshiba EMI. The limited edition version includes a special booklet and case. The album debuted at #1 and ...

'' (2000) as well as her self-cover album '' Utaite Myōri: Sono Ichi'' (2002). The album was originally titled . However, she decided to change the title at the last minute after being intrigued by an argument she overheard between two male staff members on her team, who bickered over whether the smell of semen more resembled the smell of

chlorine Chlorine is a chemical element with the Symbol (chemistry), symbol Cl and atomic number 17. The second-lightest of the halogens, it appears between fluorine and bromine in the periodic table and its properties are mostly intermediate betwee ...

or the smell of the chestnut flowers. She thought that the nuance of the word "semen" was beautiful, and adapted it to the original title, explaining that "Kalk" fit into the original first word of "Wonder", while "Semen" fit "Vulgar", and "Chestnut Flower" fit with "Eccentric". The 2001 single was to have been included on the album along with one of the single's b-sides, , however these tracks were dropped on the basis of not thematically fitting in with the rest of the album. ''Kalk Samen Kuri no Hana'' saw Sheena producing a major release all by herself for the first time in her career, as opposed to working with her usual collaborators and producer

Seiji Kameda is a Japanese music producer, arranger and bass guitarist. He has worked extensively with Ringo Shiina, serving as her producer and touring bassist for many years, including his tenure with their band Tokyo Jihen from 2005 to 2012. Biography ...

. The album allegedly took her an extra year to produce than her previous two studio albums did. Sheena chose to not record a band all at once as she had done on previous albums, choosing to instead record one instrument at a time by

overdubbing Overdubbing (also known as layering) is a technique used in audio recording in which audio tracks that have been pre-recorded are then played back and monitored, while simultaneously recording new, doubled, or augmented tracks onto one or more av ...

and multitracking and layering the instruments. Musically, the album combines both the standard instrumentation of a

rock band A rock band or pop band is a small musical ensemble that performs rock music, pop music, or a related genre. A four-piece band is the most common configuration in rock and pop music. In the early years, the configuration was typically two guita ...

as well as various other

musical instruments A musical instrument is a device created or adapted to make musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can be considered a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument. A person who pl ...

, including

folk instruments A folk instrument is a musical instrument that developed among common people and usually does not have a known inventor. It can be made from wood, metal or other material. Such an instrument is played in performances of Traditional folk music, fo ...

from Japan and other regions,

string instruments String instruments, stringed instruments, or chordophones are musical instruments that produce sound from vibrating strings when a performer plays or sounds the strings in some manner. Musicians play some string instruments by plucking the Str ...

wind instruments A wind instrument is a musical instrument that contains some type of resonator (usually a tube) in which a column of air is set into vibration by the player blowing into (or over) a mouthpiece set at or near the end of the resonator. The pitc ...

percussion instruments A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Excl ...

, as well as

music sequencer A music sequencer (or audio sequencer or simply sequencer) is a device or application software that can record, edit, or play back music, by handling note and performance information in several forms, typically CV/Gate, MIDI, or Open Sound Cont ...

and a full

orchestra An orchestra (; ) is a large instrumental ensemble typical of classical music, which combines instruments from different families. There are typically four main sections of instruments: * bowed string instruments, such as the violin, viola, c ...

. In order to reduce budgets, she used her own

Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and ...

computer A computer is a machine that can be programmed to Execution (computing), carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as C ...

and cheap recording equipment to compose and edit the songs by herself using

computer software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...

, while sometimes exchanging the arranged songs with Uni Inoue. She recorded one musical instrument in one room of her house while recording the ensemble parts ( string section, etc.) in another room. Seiji Kameda, who had been involved in the production and arrangement of her previous two studio albums did not participate in the album whatsoever. Instead, Sheena arranged the album with

audio engineer An audio engineer (also known as a sound engineer or recording engineer) helps to produce a recording or a live performance, balancing and adjusting sound sources using equalization, dynamics processing and audio effects, mixing, reproduction, ...

Uni Inoue. Toshiyuki Mori orchestrated each of the recorded songs and arranged the entirety of "Yattsuke Shigoto". The song titles and their places in the tracklist continue a pattern seen on Ringo's first two albums where each song title symmetrically parallels the opposite side of the tracklist. For instance, tracks 1 and 11 are written with exactly two

kanji are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese ...

, tracks 2 and 10 are written with eight katakana characters, and so on.

Reception

''Kalk Samen Kuri no Hana'' was ranked second in CNN International Asia's list of "the 2000s' most under-appreciated Japanese music of the last decade" on December 22, 2009. Sheena also received a mention in

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

as one of Japan's artists who "deserve to be seen and heard in the west" in 2010. By August 2022, the album was ranked 5th overall by a Japanese artist and ranked 322th overall in the all-time album list on

Rate Your Music Rate Your Music (often abbreviated to RYM) is an online collaborative database of music releases and films. Users can catalog items from their personal collection, review them, and assign ratings in a five-star rating system. The site also fea ...

Track listing

All tracks written by Ringo Sheena; all tracks arranged by Sheena and Uni Inoue (credited as "Bakeneko Killer"), except "Rush Job" by Toshiyuki Mori, and "Fig Flower" by Ukigumo.

Credits and personnel

*All English translation and pronunciation guidance: Robbie Clark Track 1 and 11 * Kuri no Hana Kaoru

Orchestra An orchestra (; ) is a large instrumental ensemble typical of classical music, which combines instruments from different families. There are typically four main sections of instruments: * bowed string instruments, such as the violin, viola, c ...

orchestral music An orchestra (; ) is a large instrumental ensemble typical of classical music, which combines instruments from different families. There are typically four main sections of instruments: * bowed string instruments, such as the violin, viola, ce ...

* Yuichiro Goto: conductor * Kazuhiro Momo (from Mo'some Tonebender):

electric guitars An electric guitar is a guitar that requires external amplification in order to be heard at typical performance volumes, unlike a standard acoustic guitar (however combinations of the two - a semi-acoustic guitar and an electric acoustic gui ...

* Junji Ikehata:

drums A drum kit (also called a drum set, trap set, or simply drums) is a collection of drums, cymbals, and other Percussion instrument, auxiliary percussion instruments set up to be played by one person. The player (drummer) typically holds a pair o ...

* Toshiyuki Mori:

pipe organ The pipe organ is a musical instrument that produces sound by driving pressurized air (called ''wind'') through the organ pipes selected from a keyboard. Because each pipe produces a single pitch, the pipes are provided in sets called ''ranks ...

* Uni Inoue:

electric bass guitars Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter that has a property of electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as described by ...

hurdy-gurdy The hurdy-gurdy is a string instrument that produces sound by a hand-crank-turned, rosined wheel rubbing against the strings. The wheel functions much like a violin bow, and single notes played on the instrument sound similar to those of a vio ...

mandolin A mandolin ( it, mandolino ; literally "small mandola") is a stringed musical instrument in the lute family and is generally plucked with a pick. It most commonly has four courses of doubled strings tuned in unison, thus giving a total of 8 ...

lute A lute ( or ) is any plucked string instrument with a neck and a deep round back enclosing a hollow cavity, usually with a sound hole or opening in the body. It may be either fretted or unfretted. More specifically, the term "lute" can ref ...

sitar The sitar ( or ; ) is a plucked stringed instrument, originating from the Indian subcontinent, used in Hindustani classical music. The instrument was invented in medieval India, flourished in the 18th century, and arrived at its present form in ...

, Fender B.Bender (3-stringed), drum machine * Ringo Sheena:

vocal The human voice consists of sound made by a human being using the vocal tract, including talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming, shouting, humming or yelling. The human voice frequency is specifically a part of human sound production i ...

koto Koto may refer to: * Koto (band), an Italian synth pop group * Koto (instrument), a Japanese musical instrument * Koto (kana), a ligature of two Japanese katakana * Koto (traditional clothing), a traditional dress made by Afro-Surinamese women * K ...

(Ikuta style), distortion koto (her own way), pipe organ Track 2 and 10 * Kuri no Hana Kaoru

: orchestral music * Yuichiro Goto: conductor * Ringo Sheena: vocal * Uni Inoue:

Mellotron The Mellotron is an electro-mechanical musical instrument developed in Birmingham, England, in 1963. It is played by pressing its keys, each of which pushes a length of magnetic tape against a capstan, which pulls it across a playback head. A ...

, electric bass guitars Track 3 and 9 * Himitsu Butai: the band * Ringo Sheena: vocal, bandmaster,

percussion A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Exc ...

* Ukigumo: electric guitars (

Fender Telecaster The Fender Telecaster, colloquially known as the Tele , is an electric guitar produced by Fender. Together with its sister model the Esquire, it is the world's first mass-produced, commercially successful Les Paul had built a prototype solid bo ...

) * Ahito Inazawa: drums * Hitoshi Watanabe: electric bass guitars,

contrabass Contrabass (from it, contrabbasso) refers to several musical instruments of very low pitch—generally one octave below bass register instruments. While the term most commonly refers to the double bass (which is the bass instrument in the orchest ...

* Hideyo Takakuwa: * Neko Saito:

violin The violin, sometimes known as a ''fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone (string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in the family in regular ...

* Tabu (from

Soil & "Pimp" Sessions Soil & "Pimp" Sessions (stylised as SOIL&"PIMP"SESSIONS) is a Japanese club jazz sextet who formed in Tokyo, Japan, in 2001. They are known for their energetic live performances, having coined the term "death jazz" to describe their music. Histor ...

Didgeridoo The didgeridoo (; also spelt didjeridu, among other variants) is a wind instrument, played with vibrating lips to produce a continuous drone while using a special breathing technique called circular breathing. The didgeridoo was developed by ...

Track 4 and 8 * Kotaro Saito:

cello The cello ( ; plural ''celli'' or ''cellos'') or violoncello ( ; ) is a Bow (music), bowed (sometimes pizzicato, plucked and occasionally col legno, hit) string instrument of the violin family. Its four strings are usually intonation (music), t ...

* Junko Minobe:

viola The viola ( , also , ) is a string instrument that is bow (music), bowed, plucked, or played with varying techniques. Slightly larger than a violin, it has a lower and deeper sound. Since the 18th century, it has been the middle or alto voice of ...

* Youkan Mizue:

conch Conch () is a common name of a number of different medium-to-large-sized sea snails. Conch shells typically have a high spire and a noticeable siphonal canal (in other words, the shell comes to a noticeable point at both ends). In North Am ...

and other

wind instrument A wind instrument is a musical instrument that contains some type of resonator (usually a tube) in which a column of air is set into vibration by the player blowing into (or over) a mouthpiece set at or near the end of the resonator. The pitc ...

s * Yumi Ōta: the voice of the announcement * Uni Inoue: electric bass guitars, electric guitars,

electronic drum Electronic drums is a modern electronic musical instrument, primarily designed to serve as an alternative to an acoustic drum kit. Electronic drums consist of an electronic sound module which produces the synthesized or sampled percussion sounds ...

* Ringo Sheena: vocal,

prepared piano A prepared piano is a piano that has had its sounds temporarily altered by placing bolts, screws, mutes, rubber erasers, and/or other objects on or between the strings. Its invention is usually traced to John Cage's dance music for ''Bacchanale' ...

acoustic piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...

Erhu The ''erhu'' (; ) is a Chinese two-stringed bowed musical instrument, more specifically a spike fiddle, which may also be called a ''Southern Fiddle'', and is sometimes known in the Western world as the ''Chinese violin'' or a ''Chinese two-s ...

(二胡, Chinese instrument with two strings) Track 5 * Ōoku Kinen Orchestra: orchestral music * Yuichiro Goto: conductor * Toshiyuki Mori: piano, all works * Ringo Sheena: vocal, koto (Ikuta style), distortion koto (her own way), pipe organ * Ukigumo:

vacuum cleaner A vacuum cleaner, also known simply as a vacuum or a hoover, is a device that causes suction in order to remove dirt from floors, upholstery, draperies, and other surfaces. It is generally electrically driven. The dirt is collected by either a ...

(her elder brother Shiina Junpei's wife's possessions) Track 6 * Josei-jōi Kinen Orchestra: string section * Chieko Kinpara party:

string quintet A string quintet is a musical composition for five string players. As an extension to the string quartet (two violins, a viola, and a cello), a string quintet includes a fifth string instrument, usually a second viola (a so-called "viola quintet" ...

* Kanako Tsuruta: drums * Uni Inoue: electric bass guitar * Ringo Sheena: vocal, koto (Ikuta style), piano Track 7 * Ukigumo:

vocal percussion Vocal percussion is the art of creating sounds with one's mouth that approximate, imitate, or otherwise serve the same purpose as a percussion instrument, whether in a group of singers, an instrumental ensemble, or solo. In Western music Recent ...

* Toshiyuki Mori:

Cornet The cornet (, ) is a brass instrument similar to the trumpet but distinguished from it by its conical bore, more compact shape, and mellower tone quality. The most common cornet is a transposing instrument in B, though there is also a sopr ...

* Uni Inoue: electric bass guitar * Ringo Sheena: vocal, koto (Ikuta style),

shamisen The , also known as the or (all meaning "three strings"), is a three-stringed traditional Japanese musical instrument derived from the Chinese instrument . It is played with a plectrum called a bachi. The Japanese pronunciation is usual ...

melodica The melodica is a handheld free-reed instrument similar to a pump organ or harmonica. It features a musical keyboard on top, and is played by blowing air through a mouthpiece that fits into a hole in the side of the instrument. The keyboard usual ...

, alto

recorder Recorder or The Recorder may refer to: Newspapers * ''Indianapolis Recorder'', a weekly newspaper * ''The Recorder'' (Massachusetts newspaper), a daily newspaper published in Greenfield, Massachusetts, US * ''The Recorder'' (Port Pirie), a news ...

kalimba Mbira ( ) are a family of musical instruments, traditional to the Shona people of Zimbabwe. They consist of a wooden board (often fitted with a resonator) with attached staggered metal tines, played by holding the instrument in the hands and pl ...

harmonium The pump organ is a type of free-reed organ that generates sound as air flows past a vibrating piece of thin metal in a frame. The piece of metal is called a reed. Specific types of pump organ include the reed organ, harmonium, and melodeon. T ...

, jaw harp, whistle, piano, drums, electric guitars Track 12 * Ringo Sheena: vocal * Ukigumo: acoustic guitars * Uni Inoue: bass

Notes and references

External links

* {{Authority control Ringo Sheena albums 2003 albums Concept albums