Sound Storing Machines/ Various - Sound Storing Machines (Various Artists)

Includes the first commercial recordings from Asia made in Japan in 1903 - Japanese gagaku, shakuhachi, shamisen, storytelling, folksong and more - Collected and compiled by sound artist Robert Millis - The beginning of Japan's homegrown record industry, including a few sides taken from Japan's notorious bootleg 78rpm industry The first commercial recordings from Asia were made in Japan in 1903 by Fred Gaisberg, the legendary producer and recording engineer who traveled the world making recordings for the Gramophone Company (later His Masters Voice). The recording industry barely existed at this time. Man's ability to record and reproduce sound had only existed since 1877 (with the invention of Edison's cylinder phonograph) and flat disc records, what we all collect and obsess over today, had only come into being in the late 1890s.