Osamu Shoji – Kaleidoscreen (Complete Album Download)

I’ve been posting a lot of complete albums lately. I hope my hosting service doesn’t kill me.

This is the (checks my expansive archive) fourth Osamu Shoji album I’ve posted in full. As I probably said in each of those previous posts (and other posts where I shared single tracks from his other albums), Shoji was a synth God with a capital G who produced some totally wacked out and insane pieces of music in his day. If you want to know more, I wrote a piece about him when he passed away a few years back.

Kaleidoscreen was first released in in 1982 and was probably Shoji’s 18th album. I say “probably” because English information on Shoji’s discography is still a little hard to come by. Since I first got into his music a few years back, several albums of his have been added to Discogs (mostly by me), so it wouldn’t at all surprise me if there are more holes out there that also need to be filled.

The early 80s were an incredibly prolific time for Shoji, between 1980 and 1985 the dude pumped out close to 30 albums. A few were original works, but the overwhelming majority were synthesizer covers albums. His bread and butter during this period was to release synthesizer covers albums of popular anime themes. There were all released under the “Digital Trip” series brand, which featured work by other synthesizer and keyboard greats, such as Jun Fukumachi.

But Kaleidoscreen is a bit different. Instead of sticking to one movie, anime, or series, he cast a wider net and covered themes from multiple movies, most of which were from America. These types of albums, of course, were not uncommon in the 1970s. I have countless collections of movie themes “switched on” for synthesizer. This one is a bit different though in terms of scope. Because while most synthesizer covers albums were content to have 10 or 12 movie themes reworked for the synthesizer. Shoji decided to shoot for the fences and compose 10 medleys that, when combined, featured snippets of SEVENTY-TWO pieces of music from a variety of different films.

A case of quantity over quality? Perhaps. The entire album does come off a bit cheesy, and the swings from theme to theme are sometimes so fast that you barely have time to register one before it moves onto the next. Additionally, the entire thing kind of has an elevator music/early-MIDI vibe to it, probably thanks to the prevalence of a rather generic beat that is played over most of the tunes. THAT BEING SAID I still love this album for all its ridiculousness, and the insane gusto that Shoji obviously put behind it. The dude just went for it. And I love how many deep cuts and oddball choices he included. Yeah, anyone could’ve (and did) make synth renditions of music from Star Wars, the James Bond films, and Rocky, but nobody else, for example, heard the themes to Laura, Days Of Wine And Roses, and The Way We Were and thought “Yo, what these themes need is more synthesizers and drum machines.” There’s a real sense of bravado there that I can really get behind.

This is not high art or a radical piece of work that re-invented electronic music. This is a piece of incredibly complicated, yet incredibly silly, music. It puts a smile to my face, even now, and I hope that it can do the same for you.

Below is the complete track listing, featuring all the songs that are included in each medley, in case you were curious.

Medley 1
Also Sprach Zarasthustra
Close Encounters Of The Third Kind
Theme From Star Trek
The Throne Room
Main Title From Star Wars

Medley 2
The Big Country
I Left My Love
Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head
The River Of No Return
Johnny Guitar
The Call Of The Far-Away Hills
My Rifle, My Pony And Me
Buttons And Bows
Gunfight At O.K. Corral

Medley 3
The Theme From The Shaft
Charade
Whatever Will Be, Will Be
Laura
The Pink Panther Theme
The Entertainer
Love Theme From Godfather

Medley 4
Carioca
Cheek To Cheek
The Way You Look Tonight
Continental
A Foggy Day
Orchids In The Moonlight
Night And Day

Medley 5
The Geat Escape
Waltz From “Is Paris Burning?”
55 Days At Peking
The Guns Of Navarone
Exodus
Main Title Of Lawrence Of Arabia
The Longest Day

Medley 6 (James Bond Medley)
The James Bond Theme
Moonraker
No Boody Does It Better
For Your Eyes Only
Goldfinger
Thunderball
From Russia With Love

Medley 7
Three Coins In The Fountain
Love Letters
Never On Sunday
Sentimental Journey
Tara’s Theme
My Foolish Heart
Day Of Wine And Roses
Love Is My Splendored Thing
September Song

Medley 8
Gonna Fly Mow
Sound Of Silence
What Is Youth
Grease
How Deep Is Your Love
East Of Eden
A Summer Place

Medley 9
The Magnificent seven
The Green Leaves Of Summer
The Proud One
Ballad Of Davy Crockett
My Darling Clementine
Bury Me Not In Lone Prairie
High Noon
She Wore A Yellow Ribbon

Medley 10
The Shadow Of Your Smile
Windmills Of Your Mind
Moon River
What’ll I Do
The Way We Were
The Rosy’s Theme

A few year back I first heard the term “synthwave” and kind of scoffed at it. Seemed to me like another made-up genre like “Nu-Rave” and “grindie.” But it stuck around long enough and I begrudgingly accept it now. Shit, even a few of my favorite artists, such as Survive and Power Glove, fall under the synthwave banner. But as much as I love synthwave, its omnipresent feeling of never-ending foreboding can be just a bit much at times. Like, I get it guys, you all like John Carpenter and Blade Runner. Would it kill you to give your songs more of an upbeat vibe just once in a while?

As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve recently been scouring the record bins for obscure prog and prog-adjacent acts that heavily feature keyboards, sequencers and other early electronic instruments. Through my purchases, I’ve discovered some real gems. I shared Lutz Rahn last time, but I also want to give a shout out to Zeus. His album Europium seriously blows my mind. It’s a perfect amalgamation of late-70s prog and early-80s synthpop. Totally amazing stuff that, much like Rahn, takes concepts and themes you’d find in 70s electronic music and places them firmly in a pop environment.

I’m also currently in love with Roland Romanelli’s 1982 album Connecting Flight. It’s like it was created in a vacuum. It seems to completely ignore the synthpop trends of the era and instead goes for a super energetic and over-the-top sound that sounds a bit like the purely instrumental disco of the early 70s, just played entirely on electronic instruments. Makes sense that this dude was in Space, a group with a similar upbeat and fun style (who I also recommend).

All of these bands are on iTunes. They’re easy to find and at affordable prices, so I won’t share them here. Instead I’m going to share an album that also gives me similar vibes, times a million.

Osamu Shoji
The Pumpkin Wine (complete album download)
The Pumpkin Wine was a manga from the early 80s that got turned into an anime series in 1982, followed by an animated movie in 1984 and a live-action movie in 2007. This is the soundtrack to the manga I believe. That was actually a fairly common thing in Japan in the 80s. They gave manga their own soundtracks. I guess you were supposed to read the manga while listening to the LP.

Of course, I could be entirely wrong as it should be said that I know squat about The Pumpkin Wine in either anime or manga form. I bought this solely for the composer, the legendary Osamu Shoji. He sadly passed away this year, and I long for the day when his robust, eclectic and downright bizarre discography is rightfully rediscovered. He’s mostly known for his score to Wicked City, but I feel that this soundtrack is more indicative of his greater body of work; what I mean is, it’s goofy as hell.

One of the best things about Osamu Shoji was that he wasn’t afraid to go all out with his synthesizers and really try all the sounds they could produce. You don’t just hear the basic synth strings and drum beats on an Osamu Shoji piece, you get weird electronic bongos, non-stop slap bass effects, faux guitar, artificial bells, the works. This album has a track with not one, but two short synth-bongo drum solos. That’s the kind of idiosyncratic delights that Osamu Shoji specialized in.

The result is music that is cheery and upbeat. Sparkly and breezy. It’s not City Pop, it’s not jazzy enough for that, but it’s definitely a close cousin. This is music for a Sunday drive by the beach, or a stroll through an exceptionally charming neighborhood. It’s what you hear when you roll up to a town in an RPG. I get that the tones and textures used by Shoji may not be for everyone, especially those whose only exposure to synthesizer music is grimdark synthwave, but for me it’s a refreshing breath of fresh digital air. Music can be an escape sometimes. I don’t always need to be reminded that the world is a dark and scary place. Sometimes I want to be reminded that it can still, just sometimes, be a fun and happy place. Music like this does that for me. Maybe it’ll do it for you too.

I think I’ve made it abundantly clear over the years that I enjoy buying really stupid records for no apparent reason other than the fact that I find them really funny.

Those are just some samples, dig deep into the “Complete Albums” category if you’re in the mood for some completely random nonsense (many of those posts’ MP3s are still active because I don’t think anyone is going to sue me over any of that idiocy).

Living in Japan has afforded me a whole new opportunity to find weird and wonderful (and wonderfully stupid) obscurities. Just a few weeks ago I shared a track from the Street Fighter: The Movie soundtrack, and now here I am about to write about an all-synthesizer compilation of Lupin the 3rd theme music.

Lost Turntable: Because If I don’t who will.

 

Lupin the 3rd Synthesizer Fantasy

I totally bought this for laughs and thought it would be a fun goof. While I love me Moog and/or synthesizer covers records, I’ve soured on them slightly over the years because so many of them are boring and usually nothing more than obvious cash grabs.

So for me to buy one now it really has to stand out. Or, in the case of this record, cost me less than five bucks.

Not a big investment, so I took the risk. And guess what? This record is fucking rad! Seriously, even if you don’t have any interest in Lupin at all (and if you don’t what the fuck is wrong with you, Lupin is dope), you need to check this one out.

This album came out in 1984, and as such it’s actually a pretty impressive considering that was still fairly early in the history of the all-digital synthesizer. The linear notes don’t mention specifically what type of synthesizer was used in the creation of this album, but if I had to guess I would say it was composed using a Synclavier, and probably one similar to the one used by Frank Zappa for Jazz From Hell. It certainly has that vibe, and even shares some of the sound effects found on that record (which I really recommend for synthesizer enthusiasts.

If I had to describe the sound of this record I would say it’s probably half Super Famicom video game music (those steel drums!), one-third background music for 80s commercials, and one-sixth (I think that math checks out) cheesy 80s pop music. Parts of it makes me think of Level 42’s “Something About You” although that comparison might be a little off-base.

(Unrelated: I just discovered I have an eight-minute remix of that song on my computer for some reason. So guess what I’m listening to right this minute.)

So yeah, it’s a bit on the cheesy side of the synth-spectrum. But it’s authentic, perfectly aged cheese like a nice gouda. I appreciate the real cheese. Fuck fake cheese.

This reminds me, and I’m sorry to go off on a tangent here, today I was in a cool little indie record store and they were playing this song by Aussie artist Kirin J. Callinan, and my god that’s the kind of shit that pisses me off the most. Look at those assholes. They think they’re better than the music they’re playing. An insult to a genre and time of music that had more influence and lasting appeal than anything they’ll ever try to force upon the public.

Fuck that and fuck them. Don’t discount an entire style of music just because it’s old and hasn’t aged entirely well. We’re 10 years removed from Arcade Fire’s first LP, and who’s to say? Maybe in ten more years people will be making ironic baroque-pop videos spoofing their style. And they’ll be inauthentic boring assholes too.

I wrote a whole thing about this. It’s an issue for me.

Anyways, where was I? Oh yeah, synthesized covers of Lupin themes.

You can tell this record was made with sincerity. You can also tell, with it’s incredibly narrow focus and probably small target market, that it was definitely a product of Japan’s bubble economy.

The album was performed by Osamu Shoji. Apparently he started out in the 70s creating original electronic albums that appear to be very much like Tomita and other synthesizer performers of the era. But then he branched out into the covers arena, first releasing an all-synth Bee Gees album (HOLY SHIT) and then a synth/disco take on Star Wars.

I need to find that album.

Anyways, he really went into high gear with the synth cover albums in the mid-80s with the”Synthesizer Fantasy” series. In addition to Lupin, he also released all-synth versions of themes to animes such as Vifam, Gundam and Orguss. Additionally, he composed the original score to the acclaimed (and hyper-fucked up) anime Wicked City. The soundtrack of that was actually just re-released on vinyl by Tiger Lab.

Nearest I can tell, he’s still kicking it. Although he hasn’t released a new record in over 20 years. I definitely need to track down more of his work though, if this album is any indication it must be pretty damn great.