You know, I was having a decent enough February, current events notwithstanding of course. I was enjoying work, having a lot of fun with my boyfriend, buying a lot of stupid, weird music no one cares about but me, and even staying relatively healthy after a few months of non-serious but still very annoying health problems. Things were good.

That must be how the flu found me, it feasts on happiness.

The flu KICKED MY FUCKING ASS last week. Hitting me like a sack of bricks dipped in shit on Saturday, and leaving me pretty much entirely incapacitated throughout the weekend and into most of Tuesday with a fever breaking 104 at times. I’m about 70% recovered now, but I still feel like the alien from The Hidden tried to suck its life force out of me. Ugh.

Whilst in my feverish state, I did two things; watching Friends on Netflix, and listened to this.

TPO
Dawning
The Jet Set
Camacho Preguicosa
Dori Twisted Her Smile
I was in Shop Mecano last week (before I was struck down with the plague) and was itching to buy something. Having completely exhausted literally every single YMO-related act of note, I just asked the owner to recommend something weird. He pulled out this record, calling it “Japanese Art Of Noise.” Good sales pitch, so I bought it.

I think he might’ve undersold it. At least, it terms of weirdness.

This is a crazy record. According to the guy at Mecano, it was almost entirely composed on the Fairlight synthesizer, and it certainly sounds like it. It definitely doesn’t bear any resemblance to YMO. It’s much more complex and just features a manic intensity and bombastic flare that even the most over-the-top and outlandish YMO tracks lack. YMO primarily used Moogs, sequencers and samplers. That gave their music a more stripped down sound. IT sounds fuller and bigger than it is primarily because the hooks and melodies are so strong.

This stuff doesn’t have the pure melodic power of the best YMO tracks, but its full of energy and has a goofy, fun vibe that’s impossible to dislike. The guy at Mecano was right, it does sound like Art Of Noise, but I would also throw in a bit of Pet Shop Boys (at least in terms of instrumentation) and maybe electro-era Herbie Hancock as well; two other acts known for their use of the Fairlight.

I don’t want to share the entire album, it’s 37 songs spread out over two CDs, so I thought I would share just a snippet, my favorite tracks that I feel encompass the oddball, zany variety you can find on the record proper. “Dawning” is an over-the-top opener that damn well should’ve been the theme music to a mid-80s television news show, while “The Jet Set” is a sample-driven dance tune that definitely features that Art of Noise influence. Driving up the mania is “Comacho Preguicosa,” which features entirely computer-generated vocals, and then “Dori Twisted Her Smile” takes things down a notch with its more standard synthpop sound, complete with human vocals and a traditional pop song structure. Like I said, this thing runs the gamut.

In case you’re wondering who the hell TPO is, me too! There’s not a lot to be found online about these guys aside from their Discogs page. I think that the group’s brainchild was Fumitaka Anzai, who worked on a lot of anime and game soundtracks. He was also in the Japanese prog act Crosswind, which doesn’t surprise me, there’s a lot of prog/synthpop crossover in Japan.

TPO didn’t release a lot. After this record they just put out on more album proper, a collaborative album with someone named Linda Masters. Anyways, that album is hella rare and is currently for sale for over $160 on Discogs, so I won’t be listening to it anytime soon. They also did the soundtrack to a world’s fair that was held in Japan in 1985. My boyfriend totally went to that! That’s adorable and amazing.

This stuff serves as a great soundtrack to to fever dreams, by the way, so maybe make a special playlist for that.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 22nd, 2018 at 9:40 am and is filed under TPO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.