Shizuka first came to wider attention at roughly the same time as their peers in the Japanese underground – in the nineties, really, when people started to get wise to the surprisingly wide-ranging post-psychedelic sounds emanating from the PSF label, predominantly, and a few other, similar creative cells. During that window of opportunity, Shizuka only released two CDs on PSF, Persona Non Grata and Last Visible Dog. It’s not that much to go by, which is why An’archives’ ‘Paradise Of Delusion’ (recorded live in 2001) is a most welcome, not to mention much-needed, posthumous collection. For the first time ever, Shizuka is now released on vinyl. Even by the standards of their closest peers, aesthetically speaking -Fushitsusha (with whom they shared two members, Maki Miura and Jun Kosugi), Kousokuya, Ché-SHIZU- Shizuka were a mysterious, occluded bunch. Led by the late Shizuka herself, a guitarist, vocalist, song writer, and doll maker, with her husband Miura, a devastatingly powerful guitar slinger, their songs were potent, seductive things: often playing out at a snail’s pace, with the same kind of flickering, sensual ‘black-and-white psychedelia’ as the third Velvet Underground album, or a more languid Les Rallizes Denudes. Edition of 275 copies on black vinyl, with duotone insert, offset insert and postcard set.