I’d like to take a moment to say thanks to some of the more thoughtful and interesting comments left on my past few posts. It was interesting for me to read some viewpoints on music ownership, MP3, blogs and so on.

One comment about my blog in particular brought up a point that I’d like to talk about: the idea that my blog has changed in some way since I moved to Japan, and that’s why my readership has dwindled in the past few years. It was a good, well-written opinion and thanks to who wrote it. I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned this in the past, but I want to elaborate on it once more.

To a certain extent, yes, I agree with this. When I started this blog eons ago I focused primarily on dance remixes of popular pop songs (usually from the 80s and early 90s) with the occasional dip into the obscure worlds of soundtracks, offbeat old records, and imports. More recently, that’s flipped. Now, most of what I write about and share is from records very few people have heard of, leftfield releases from Japan or other countries, prog oddities and so on.

Again, I’d like to point out that a lot of that to do with the fact that, in 2019, it is very, very hard to find out-of-print tracks by popular artists. I would like to remind everyone, that is a good thing! When I was sharing Dead or Alive, Erasure and Depeche Mode remixes, it was almost out of spite over the fact that the record companies were blowing it by not making these releases available for the die-hards who would buy them. But, hey, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, that’s not the case anymore. Depeche Mode is currently going through the process of re-releasing the majority of their 12″ singles, complete with download codes. Dead Or Alive put out that massive box set that literally has nearly their entire musical output on CD. The same goes for many other acts.

For me personally, I am very much against sharing music that people can listen to legally. I feel that people should support artists anytime it’s possible. That’s one of my many problems with Burning The Ground, another Mp3 blog that deals predominately in 80s music that I know a lot of my readers visit. Checking out that dude’s site, I see that he’s recently shared remixes of Bonnie Tyler’s “Holding Out For a Hero,” Sheena Easton’s “Strut,” and Cory Hart’s “Sunglasses at Night.” Yo, check it, all of those songs are available for purchase on iTunes! Or on re-released deluxe edition CDs if you favor a physical format. If you like Cory Hart that much, buy his music for real. I’m sure he’d appreciate the extra dough.

(Also, Burning The Ground often plagiarizes its copy wholesale from Wikipedia or AllMusic without proper attribution, so as a writer – fuck that dude.)

Basically, it is literally impossible for me to predominately focus on remixes of 80s pop acts. You can get almost all of them legally and the few you can’t, I rarely care writing about. Of course, that’s not to say I’ll never write about or share that stuff again. If I somehow stumble across an out-of-print Pet Shop Boys single again, bet you’re ass I’ll share it here. Just don’t hold your breathe.

One thing that perplexes me though; to the people say stuff like “I used to like your blog but now you post weird shit,” have you tried listening to the weird shit? I mean, our musical tastes obviously overlap to some degree. I reckon most people that come here like synth-pop and other forms of electronic music. You’ll probably like Steve Hillage, I bet you’d dig on some electronic-focused prog rock, and you’ll most definitely love Shojo-Tai. There’s nothing I love more than discovering new music. I wish I had more friends or read more blogs that shared my musical tastes so it would be easier for me to track down shit I never heard before. The music I share here is free, we all like Erasure, why not trust me and give it a shot?

Anyway, here’s some weird shit that you’ve never heard of. If you like it, share it with a friend. If you don’t come back in a week or so, I might share some other weird shit that you have a chance of liking! It’s exciting.

Harue Momoyama w/Ryuichi Sakamoto
虚空の舟唄
Stoked for the five people who will like this one.

Momoyama was a well-known shamisen player in Japan who recorded music for over 30 years, before her death in 2008. She was the very definition of NOT a crossover artist, focusing solely on classical compositions, folk songs, and other traditional music. This piece, which was originally released in 1979, seems to be the closest thing she ever came to “modern” music, thanks to the guest appearance by Sakamoto, who serves an electronic accompaniment to her playing and vocals. Even with him, this is some sparse-ass music. If I didn’t run my recordings through noise-reduction software, large parts of this piece would’ve been lost to the background noise of the record.

This is interesting music, but it also feels kind of like a blown opportunity. It doesn’t really combine modern electronics and traditional music all that much. Momoyama seems to keep Sakamoto’s electronic contributions at arm’s length. They play off each other for a bit at the beginning, but as the piece progresses it quickly changes into an either/or situation. You get Momoyama’s singing and shamisen, then you get Sakamoto’s electronic soundscapes, then you go back to Momoyama, then back to Sakamoto for a brief coda. It makes me wonder if they were on the same page with this. I’m sure Sakamoto would’ve loved to have had a more collaborative effort, at the time, he was all about combining eastern and western as well as modern and classical. Regardless, it sure is an interesting experiment, and I’ve certainly never heard anything like it before.

Holly Johnson
Americanos (Liberty Mix)
Americanos (Radio 7″ Mix)
Americanos (Mambo Dub Mix)
Oh shit look what I found, a 12″ remix of an 80s pop song. This one’s okay. I guess. To be honest I’ve been sitting on this for about a year because I didn’t have much to say about it. Still don’t really. It’s very much late-80s synthpop, when the genre had played itself out and there was nothing left for it to give. Still, it’s fun. Good remixes too. If shamisens and electro-acoustic soundscapes aren’t for you, then here you go.