Radical TV – AV Kids (complete album download)

Just when I thought that I had hunted down every Yellow Magic Orchestra associated act that ever existed, no matter how incidental their connection to the uber-influential Japanese synthpop legends was, I stumble upon something that proves that I probably have even more to find, an incredible piece of lost techno-pop that renews my entire interest in the genre: AV Kids by Radical TV.

It’s very hard to dig up information on Radical TV in English. Strike that, it’s literally impossible to dig up any information on Radical TV in English. I suspect that when this blog post is complete, it will be the most anyone has ever written about the group in English.

A quick glimpse at Radical TV’s Discogs page shows that they only have two releases to their name, this mini-album that I’m sharing tonight, and a video release that was done in collaboration with Ryuichi Sakamoto of YMO. That video album came out in 1988, while this EP preceded it by two years. They could have more releases though, Discogs is not all-knowing and all-seeing. In fact, their Discogs page had several mistakes that I am just now fixing as I’m writing this. Originally, the album’s page only had one credited artist on it, a man by the name of Yoshifumi Ito. Now, while Ito did seem to be a predominate creative force behind the group, in the album’s liner notes he’s not even credited as a member, the only people credited as actually being part of the group were Daizaburo Harada and Haruhiko Shono. Harada performed vocals on the album, but Shono’s role is a bit of mystery. While every other performer on the record is credited, in detail, with their contributions, he is not. He’s just listed as a member of the group, and nothing else.

Neither Harada nor Shono were very prolific in music, according to Discogs anyway. Outside of Radical TV, they only have a couple of credits to their names, all of which are visual or technical. While they’re credited as composers on a few tracks, I suspect that they were primarily responsible for the visual element of the band’s performances, which was something else (and I’ll be getting to in a bit).

The group was probably Ito’s baby, it certainly sounds like other albums and artists he was working with at the time. He produced records for synthpop acts like Shi-Shonen and Hajime Tachibana, who shared Radical TV’s sampler/fairlight-heavy sound. He also played keyboards on albums by Togawa Jun and Yukihiro Takahashi, who also had a sampler heavy sound at the time. He was very prolific throughout the 80s, according to Discogs I own 43 releases in which he receives some sort of credit.

While Ito was a keyboardist, he’s not the credited keyboardist on this album. The keys here are played by Hiroaki Sugawara. He also worked with several of the artists already mentioned here, as well as Ryuichi Sakamoto. In fact, he handled the Fairlight programming for Sakamoto and David Byrne’s Academy Award winning score to The Last Emperor. So hey, he’s got that going for him.

This may be a synthpop record with keys a plenty, but it’s also an 80s pop record, which can mean only one thing – extraneous saxophone! Saxophone duties on the album were handled by Hiroyashu Yaguchi. While he had a short-lived solo career in the later half of the decade, with two albums to his name, he was much more prolific behind the scenes. He also worked with Shi-Shonen and Hajime Tachibana, and was a member another synth act from the time, Real Fish. Additionally, he played on some albums by my favorite 80s pop idol, Epo, and everyone’s favorite city pop star, Taeko Ohnuki.

Finally, the album was “executive produced” by Yukihiro Takahashi, but I think that just means he thew some money and/or keyboards at it. The album was released on the T.E.N.T. sub-label of Pony Canyon, which handled a lot of Takahashi’s (very bad) solo albums from this period. I don’t know if T.E.N.T. was a vanity label that Takahashi set up, but they were obviously strongly connected.

So, that’s a lot about the people behind this music, but how is the music itself?

It’s fan-fucking-tastic.

Given the amazing quality of this record, and the people associated with it, I’m surprised that it took me this long to discover it. This is really a quality piece of late-80s synthpop, with Fairlight-a-plenty. The instrumental opener “Shot,” has a fantastic drum machine sound and an absolutely stellar keyboard melody. This sounds like a lost YMO track, it’s so good. The quality keeps up throughout the EP. “Frontier” sounds like a perfect amalgamation of Takahashi’s (good) solo work from the first half of the 80s, thanks to Harada’s wonky vocals, and Sakamoto’s sampler-heavy sound that he experimented with on Futurista. It has a fantastic groove to it as well.

With “愛のソビエト” (Soviet Love), things slow down a bit, but that Fairlight sound shines through, and Harada drops his Takahashi impression to deliver his best vocals of the album. It’s a nice quiet bit that is immediately brought to a close with the incredible, and incredibly jarring, “XYZ,” which features Speak and Spell samples and absolutely bonkers vocals that seem to combine actual singing and cut-and-paste samples. It’s a crazy track that reminds me of Thomas Dolby’s more adventurous material and some of the stuff that Takahashi would be doing nearly a decade later, when he would get out of his late-80s nadir.

A mechanical beat serves as a backbone for the ballad “TVアイドル” (TV Idol), which is probably the most standard pop song on the record. If this one was translated into English I could imagine Howard Jones or Nik Kershaw covering it, for good or bad. The synths on this one are actually a little bland until about halfway through, when a bizarre collage of nearly-random noise breaks things up. What really keeps the song going is that 80s sax. A slow jam, but a jam nonetheless.

And then we end with a cover of Abba’s “Dancing Queen” with all vocals delivered through a vocoder, with a steel drum sound that sounds like it was taken out of Super Mario Bros. 3, because why the hell not. It’s awesome.

As radical (he he) as the sound of this album is, the main members of Radical TV were visual artists first and foremost. The visual element of their persona seemed to be just as, if not more, important than the music. Despite only a single EP and a collaborative video album to their name, there’s quite a bit of Radical TV video up on YouTube, and it’s all really amazing with a lot of computer video effects that were definitely cutting edge. Some of it even has a digital/”cyber” aesthetic to it that feels a decade ahead of its time.

Much of their collaboration with Sakamoto can be found on YouTube, and I really suggest checking it out. From what I can gather, their collaboration, TV War, was used as a showcase for the then brand-new Sony Jumbotron, as you can see in this video and this one. The music/soundscapes are fantastic, and it’s all a really great look at how visual artists of the 80s were using the then-nascent technology of computer graphics to create some really fabulous stuff in a style that is largely forgotten today.

The group also released a video for the track “XYZ” and while it’s not as cutting-edge as their work with Sakamoto, it’s still pretty damn awesome.

He-Man! By the power of Grayskull! And a digital sampler!

I say “this shit is dope” a lot, but yo, “this shit is dooope.” I hope everyone likes it.

My boyfriend and I have taken the whole “not leaving the house” thing as far as we can, as things are really starting to ramp up here in Tokyo. Did you know that you can buy junk food in bulk on Amazon? Guess who has a cupboard full of potato chips, fried squid, beef jerky, and Oreos?

Yo.

We also bought a shitton of puzzles on Amazon. They’re a great way to kill the time, and we can listen to music at the same time. Right now, we’ve been burning through the massive 33 CD Encore Donna Summer box set. That thing is a monster. So many remixes and single edits. It came at just the right time for me to ingest a massive amount of music too, so at least I got that going for me, which is nice.

All that disco has certainly put me in a dance mood lately, and in the rare hours where we’re not shaking our jigsaw-solving butts to extended remixes of “Hot Stuff,” we’ve been rocking out to this album.

That’s Eurobeat Non-Stop Megamix
Michael Fortunati Mega Mix
Stock, Aitken & Waterman Mega Mix
Eurobeat is so fucking stupid I love it so much. Ironic music is for assholes, give me something that is base-level designed for mindless brain dead stupid motherfucker gay ass bullshit any day of the week, especially right now. World in shambles, society collapsing, pump these beats directly into my cerebral cortex so hard and so loud that they jackhammer all the bullshit out of my head and replace it with four on the floor beats until my brain is mush and I can’t think of anything at all. Give me shit that makes Abba seem deep. Give me shit that makes Erasure seem low-key. I want the musical equivalent of Richard Gere in American Gigolo, dumb as rocks, hot as hell, and with gay subext.

This LP of two non-stop Hi-NRGH mega-mixes certainly fits that bill. One mix for each side, on side A we got a mix of tracks by Italo Disco superstar Michael Fortunati, and on the B-side a selection of lesser-known tracks by uber-hitmaker dance music factory Stock, Aitken & Waterman, the people who brought you “You Spin Me Round,” “I Should Be So Lucky,” “Never Gonna Give You Up,” and “I Don’t Wanna Get Hurt.” Sure, most of those songs sound the same, but who cares. SAW are the Motorhead of dance music. They basically write two or three songs over and over and over again, but they’re such bangers no one complains.

I’m not that familiar with Michael Fortunati, but if this mix is any indication as to the quality or style of his work, sign me the fuck up. Great shit. “Into the Night (Slip and Slide)” is a fantastic amazing opener to this mix, and the (high) energy keeps going throughout the entirety of it. His side is actually more upbeat than the SAW side which start out with a medley of slightly more downbeat tracks by Princess. I know that she was rather popular in the UK for a bit, but I had never heard of her, and didn’t recognize any of the songs that make an appearance in the mix.

Their mix really picks up after the Princess tracks though, as it segues in Hazell Dean’s absolutely lovely “Whatever I Do (Wherever I Go).” I only recently discovered Dean’s music (this type of stuff never broke through in the states) and damn it’s good. No wonder she’s called the queen of Hi-NRG, she’s like a white Donna Summer on ecstasy.

From Dean the mix shifts hard into “I’m So Beautiful” by Divine. Yes, that Divine. Divine was a fantastic drag queen and a wonderful actor. She could not sing. Like, not even a little bit. But she owned it. And her horrible raspy, driveway gravel of a voice ends up somehow working in the end. Maybe just by sheer willpower or a complete lack of anything even remotely resembling shame. Gotta respect that level of not giving a fuck.

Fellow drag artist Lana Pellay closes things out with her single “Pistol In My Pocket.” I’m not 100% sure I’m using the right pronouns with Lana, who also goes by the name of Al from what I’ve read? Please forgive me if I’m fucking up here, it’s not out of disrespect. This song slaps. She can certainly sing better than Divine, but I think I like the message of Divine’s “I’m So Beautiful” more than this track. There’s something about a morbidly obese drag queen screaming violently at me to tell me that she, and I, are beautiful that I just get with on a deep, philosophical level.

Although I do love “Pistol In My Pocket.” It’s basically a prolonged dick joke and I can get behind that.

When this whole thing ends let’s gay dance party outside, okay?

It’s April 2nd. The number of cases of coronavirus in Tokyo has just about doubled in a week, but the government still has not declared a state of emergency so people are still going to work everyday. Literally everything I see is bad news and there is no good news on the horizon. It is soul-crushing.

Let’s talk about some new music.

I’ve gotten way into synthwave lately. I’m buying almost everything that New Retro Wave has to offer at the moment. Of that, I highly recommend the latest albums by Wolfcub, Turboslash, Akuma & Tokyo Rose, and Tonebox. Yes, none of this is exceptionally original or groundbreaking but I don’t really care. It sounds good, it’s fantastic background music for writing, and it keeps me in a good headspace.

I’m also getting way into a group called Magic Sword. Their album Endless is also synthwave, but it has a bit more of an organic sound. I don’t know if they use acoustic drums, or if they just go for acoustic drum sounds. Regardless, it has a good 70s electronic vibe to it, kind of Tangerine Dream at times, and I’m into it. You can pick up their album on Joyful Noise’s website.

Video game music! A dude going by the name of Space Quest Historian has been remixing and reworking the soundtracks to the Space Quest video games by Sierra. He already did a limited release of the Space Quest IV soundtrack, and now he’s prepping his Space Quest III reworking. It’ll get a vinyl release eventually, but as of right now you can pick up a digital copy at your own price. For fans of the series, I highly recommend it.

Since I can’t go to record stores at the moment, I’ve been ordering some new releases on Amazon right now. I got the soundtrack to Link’s Awakening, which includes both the music to the original Game Boy release and the Switch remake, but I haven’t gotten around to listening to it yet. I have been listening to the new Early Years box set by Def Leppard and do enjoy that. Some good live and rare stuff on there from back when the band was more of a heavy metal group and Joe Elliot was not a good (but very energetic) vocalist.

I’m also still on my stupid old synthesizer album kick, hopefully my boyfriend (who is cooped up with me and has to hear all this shit), doesn’t mind.

Barry Leng
This is Synthesizer Sound! (Complete Album Download)
There aren’t enough Barrys in music, am I right? John Barry doesn’t count. I’m talking about first name Barrys. We only got Barry Manilow. That’s it. You don’t hear a lot of “give it up for Barry on guitars!” at concerts. Women aren’t lusting after hot lead singers named Barry. No up-and-coming Soundcloud rappers go by Barry. .

The only other Barry I can name-check in music is Barry DeVorzon. He did the fantastic score to the 1979 all-time banger classic movie The Warriors. So I guess he’d have to be my all-time number one Barry in music.

Coming in behind at number two (of two) is Barry Leng, thanks to his 1978 collection of synthesizer pop song covers, This is Synthesizer Sound! The exclamation point is in the title. I do enjoy this album, but I’m not that excited about it.

Far as I can gather, this album was released in Japan only. But many of the songs on it were on a 1974 album called
Golden Hour Of Golden Instrumental Hits Featuring The Many Moogs Of Killer Watts. As great as the name Barry Leng is, I’m going to have to say that “Killer Watts” is even better, wonder why he didn’t stick with that.

The fact that it was first released in 1974 didn’t surprise me. By 1978, the synthesizer album market was drying up, save for Japan, where they kept pumping them out until they just morphed into synthpop records. As synth albums of the mid-70s go, this one feels much more acoustic than others. A lot of the drums are acoustic, and it also features guitar and other instruments. I don’t know who’s playing those instruments, as no liner notes, English or otherwise, are included with the album. maybe Barry was a virtuoso.

He certainly was an accomplished producer. In the 1970, Barry pumped out a steady supply of mid-level disco and soft rock before striking it big in 1978, producing Amii Stewart’s hit cover of “Knock On Wood.” He would then go on to chart on the European charts some more as a producer for dance acts E’voke and Rage. It looks like he hasn’t done anything since the mid-90s though, if his Discogs credits are any indication. Hey Barry, you still out there? What are you up to?

As I said, this isn’t really entirely a synthesizer album, it’s more of a hybrid that mixes synths and more traditional instruments. It’s not the best record of its type, but I think what it lacks in originality it makes up for with production (ti sounds great) and a stellar tracklist. We get a great cover of the theme to For A Few Dollars More, a nice take on the Godfather love theme, and dope covers of “Apache,” “Help” and “Live and Let Die,” just to name a few. It also has a fantastic rendition of “Telstar,” which I’ve already mentioned is one of my favorite instrumentals of all time. Barry does it justice with his version here. I also have to call out the version of “Help.” The synthesizer work isn’t all that remarkable, but the drumming is fantastic. Ditto for “Hey Jude.” I hate “Hey Jude” but I love dope drums and this version has them in spades. The best track in terms of pure synth work is “Soul Coaxing” (google it, you know it). Very ethereal with lots of groovy pitch-bending sounds.

The album also has a cover of “Red River Rock,” another song that you definitely know even if you don’t know the name. You probably heard it on the soundtrack to Planes, Trains and Automobiles. The version on that was recorded by early synthpop act Silicon Teens. I wonder if they somehow came across Barry’s version and were inspired to create their own rendition because of it. Seems like a hell of a coincidence that two different synthesizer-based acts would decide to cover the same song so close together without one inspiring the other.

Fun music for not-so-fun times. Pipe it up loud and drown out the existential dread the best you can.