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

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 26th, 2020 at 9:00 am and is filed under Complete Albums, Osamu Shoji. 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.