Merry Christmas everyone! I hope you all enjoy your holiday.

Christmas is nearly over here in Japan, and I had a decent one, considering that my boyfriend was sick and I couldn’t see him. That was a downer, but on the upside Christmas isn’t a big holiday here – meaning all the record stores were still open. And strangely enough, a lot of them were having anime/game music sales. So it looks like my Christmas gift to Japan this year was poor spending habits. I bought a lot of really weird stuff, including this!

Bonus 21
Mario Syndrome
Mario Syndrome (Remix Version)
Princess Peach
I’ve actually been looking for this one for ages. It’s an early example of “arranged” (remixed) game music that takes audio from the game and adds upon it with original instrumentation and even some vocals. There are better arrangements of the Mario theme music out there, no doubt, but very few are as “80s” as this one. It’s pumped full of random samples from the game, and pulses with drum beats that were most likely taken from an 808 or equivalent software. A Japanese breakdancer cut loose to this one, I’m sure of it.

The title track and the remix are reworkings of the main overworld theme to the first game, while “Princess Peach” is a version of the underwater music, complete with lyrics. Said lyrics are entirely in Japanese, and I can only pick up every sixth word so I’m afraid I won’t be offering a translation tonight.

The credited artist here is Bonus 21, and this is their only release. The linear notes list the main members as Shunji Inoue and Hiroyuki Tanaka, who were in the pop group Neverland, they didn’t do any other game music release from what I can tell.

I have about 10 days off starting on the 27th, and I plan on hopefully getting some long in-the-works pieces done, both here and on Mostly-Retro. My health hasn’t been great as of late, but I’m finally starting to recover, so expect a lot more content next month! Once again, Merry Christmas and, if I don’t get another post out before, happy new year! Here’s hoping we all survive 2018.

One of my favorite YouTube channels is Lazy Game Reviews. I’m a sucker for old DOS games, and I really appreciate his dry humor and attention to detail. Last week, he shared a thrifting find, a cassette tape of “computer” holiday music. It’s not bad, but it also wasn’t what I was hoping for when I first clicked on the video. It’s too modern-sounding, and at times sounds like something you might hear pumped into a department store. It’s just not idiosyncratic or offbeat enough. And its certainly not “computer” enough.

But then I remembered that I had something that perfectly fit that description.

GMO Christmas Songs
This is GMO’s Christmas album. GMO was a record label founded in the mid-80s by members of Yellow Magic Orchestra. It was created solely to publish game music soundtracks. If you’ve ever been lucky enough to come across 80s game music vinyl, it was probably released by GMO.

GMO Christmas Song is the only release by the label that is not a collection of game music in some way. Instead, it is an original compilation featuring “game music” renditions of holiday classics. Today this would be called chiptune, but that word didn’t exist back in 1987, when this first came out.

The artists responsible for these 8-bit interpretations of holiday standards aren’t notable names of game music. I’ve never heard of any of them to be honest. I had to look them to see that two of them, Yashuhiko Fukuda and Nobuyuki Nakamura, are rather accomplished anime composers. But don’t let that discourage you from checking this out, it’s a lot of fun.

I have no idea as to what equipment this music was performed on. While it’s obviously going for an 8-bit style, it sounds just a bit too advanced for that. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was made on a PC-88 or something like that though.

Hope you enjoy the silliness. Have a chiptunetastic holiday!

Blue Box – Captured Dance Floor
I’ve been sitting on this one for a while now, simply because it’s so weird that I didn’t know what exactly to do with it. As some have mentioned (with varying degrees of tact and politeness) my musical tastes have branched out a bit lately. But this one is out there even for me. It’s mental.

Okay, so what the hell am I talking about? Captured Dance Floor by Blue Box, originally released in 1989 in the group’s native country of Germany. In what little I can find on it online, it’s often categorized as jazz fusion, but I feel that categorization is wildly inaccurate. You say jazz fusion, and I think Steely Dan, Gong or Brand X. I think jazzy rock with an abundance of horns. I don’t think sparse mechanical beats overlaid with maniacal saxophone melodies, because that’s what this album is.

I get a bit of a Was (Not Was) vibe from this, but even far less commercial than that group’s most avant-garde mindfucks. But if there was an instrumental b-side to “Hello Operator…” it would’ve been a track from this record.

It’s hard to find much information on these guys in English, but I was able to dig up a bit. The group is a trio, featuring Alois Kott, Peter Esold, and Rainer Winterschladen. The first two were previously in a group called Contact Trio, who discogs describes as “on the more avant-garde end of jazz-rock.”

In the snippets of their first two records that I’ve found, Blue Box started out not all that different from Contact Trio, a bit more upbeat with some electronic drums thrown in, but definitely more jazz than anything else. This album is much different. I suspect that between their 1985 release and this one, someone in Blue Box discovered Art of Noise. The minimal jazz textures, trumpet and bass, are mixed in with seemingly random sound effects and vocal distortions.

It is just out there, man. And I’ll be 100% honest; I really have to be in the right headspace to hear this stuff. When I’m stressed out or a little under the weather, this actually makes me a little sick to my stomach. The ways it defies convention and traditional song structure are actually unnerving to me.  But when I’m willing to roll with it and let it overtake me, I find a lot to enjoy. I appreciate the combination of electronic loops with acoustic rhythms. I like how it sounds so alien that I, at times, can’t tell what’s a sample and what’s live. I really dig how it even sounds almost industrial at times, quiet a feat considering how sparse most of it is. A dissonant sax and a few random crashing samples go a long way I suppose.

Is this for everyone? Definitely not. Is it for most people? No. But is it worth at least one listen? Without question. Give it a try, and let me know what you think of it in the comments.

Oh and that cover holy shit.

Sorry for the break in posts for the past two weeks. I got sidetracked with a horrendous disease! Actually, it was just tonsillitis, but it sure a fuck stuck for a while and really put a damper on my plans. Additional strife was caused by the antibiotics I was prescribed, which side effects included anxiety attacks and insomnia, making for a fun Monday night, I tell you that.

I did use the day off work to do at least one productive thing, however; I finished the sixth part of my YMO guide! This part covers the various acts in the YMO family, like Jun Togawa, Kenji Omura, and a lot of other awesome artists I’ve mentioned here in the past. Check it.

Then check out this crazy spacey music from the fuuuuuture*

*actually 1982

Music From The 21st Century

Remember when “the year 2000” had such a mystical ring to it and we all imagined that we’d be in flying cars, eat food out of capsules and wear skintight clothing is superfluous circles on them? Ah, nostalgia for a future that never came to be. Even though I was only a wee lad in the first half of the 80s, I remember that the idea of “futuristic music” back then meant “a shitload of keyboards.” That, and probably silver jumpsuits.

Music From the 21st Century is a compilation of space-aged electronic music, stuff that sounded very futuristic at the time, although I wonder if anyone aside from four-year-old me really thought that the music of the coming millennium was really going to sound all that different.

While I do think that the actual music of the 21st century has turned out alright, I’m sad that a future where this stuff was the mainstream never became a reality. Imagine a world where 20 minute ambient soundscapes were top 20 hit singles instead of Katy Perry?

Note: I’m not sharing side one of this, which is basically just one Tangerine Dream track that’s in-print and easy to get.

Alex Cima
Primera
Lithium
“Primera” is from Cosmic Connection, Alex Cima’s 1979 debut record. I’ve never seen this one in the wild, but from what I’ve heard on YouTube, it seems like my thing; part experimental electronica, part disco, part synthpop. My jam all the way. “Primera” is an okay tune, a bit too jazzy for my tastes, but “Lithium” is really top notch stuff. Rolling sequences, random space noises, a fast-paced beat, it sounds like Tangerine Dream on speed. Throw in some alien voices made via a vocoder, and it really sounds like music from the “the future.” Totally rad all the way.

Cima’s released three other albums, ranging from easy listening jazz to more experimental fair, but I think this stuff may be his best. Too bad it’s so hard to find.

Steve Roach
Karavan
Steve Roach likes Tangerine Dream, and it shows with his contribution to the record. If you told me this was a Tangerine Dream track, I’d believe you. Thankfully for Steve, it sounds like a good Tangerine Dream track. It could’ve been a B-side to the Thief soundtrack or something.

Steve Roach is actually a very talented and well-respected name in the ambient music scene, with a career that continues to this day with over 100 proper albums, so I don’t mean to sound flippant. He obviously carved a very successful niche for himself that went far beyond “dude who likes Tangerine Dream.”

Don Preston
On The Throne Of Saturn
Don Preston was a founding member of Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention. So it should come as no surprise that the motherfucker is weird. But this is a weird track, and entirely unlike everything else on this record. It’s very atonal and experimental, definitely straddling the line of what many people would call music. I also can’t figure out exactly how the hell he composed it. There aren’t any keyboards here, I think most of it is analog manipulation of analog sounds (i.e. tape music). I can see why he worked with Yoko Ono. Not exactly easy listening, but kudos for originality.

Neil Norman
Dance Of The Hyenas
Neil Norman organized this collection, and the only other artist whose name I recognized. Norman released those “Greatest Science Fiction Hits” albums in the 80s. This dude loves sci-fi. I bet he had a booth in at least one mid-80s Star Trek convention.

This is good, deliberately “sci-fi” sounding space music that deserves to be played as the background music in an episode of that new Star Trek series that probably isn’t very good.

Michael Garrison
Escape
Another Tangerine Dream-inspired keyboardist, Garrison released a lot of music in his life, and from what I can gather some of it is held in very high regard by ambient music fans. This is certainly a pretty good rejiggering of the Tangerine Dream sound (sensing a theme?), with a good mix of sequencer rhythms and a super-catchy melody. Feels like just part of a larger piece though.

Bruce Courtois
Inside The Black Hole
I can’t find much about out about Bruce. This is his only credited release on Discogs, and the only song of his I can find anything about on the internet (apparently its streaming on Spotify, who knew?)

I think, however, that he was in an early-70s glam band called Zolar X. They were a weird LA band with a sci-fi bent. Each of them when by pseudonyms, but the real name given for “Zany Zatovian” is “Bruce Allen Courtois,” so I assume that’s him.

It’s too bad he never pursued an electronic career proper, as “Inside The Black Hole” serves as a great album closer. Good upbeat spacey sound, good melody as well. I imagine this playing during a segment on 3-2-1 Contact about computers or something. It’s really evocative of the era it came from.

After emailing, messaging and DMing Twitter Support repeatedly and getting no response, justification or explanation for my ban, I’m finally giving up the fight for my old screenname. I will never know what exactly I did to earn this ban. Whatever. I least I work for a company that has a business plan and makes money, unlike whatever bastard decided to delete my account whilst keeping the racists, homophobes and other bastards’ accounts around.

My new screenname is @unLostTurntable. I was going for FoundTurntable, but that was somehow taken. Damn.

Now, whose ready for some motherfucking Hubert Bognermayr and Harald Zuschrader up in here!? That’s right get hype!

Hubert Bognermayr and Harald Zuschrader - Erdenklang – Computerakustische Klangsinfonie
Okay, I didn’t know who these guys were either until I bought this one on a whim. What triggered the whim? Well, this blurb on the back cover.

Good work knowing your audience guys.

Hubert Bognermayr and Harald Zuschrader are both from Austria, and were in the obscure 70s prog rock act Eela Craig. I’ve never listened to that group, but I am aware of them, mainly because their LPs fetch huge prices at the local prog store I go to. The two were also heavily involved in Ars Electronica, a cultural institute that promotes new media art. That’s all I could gather about the duo in my short research. I’m sure there’s a lot more out there, but I don’t feel like regurgitating other sites’ information. If you end up listening to this album and want to know more about them, I’m sure you can go about doing that all on your own. I’d rather talk about this album.

Despite the Carlos endorsement on the back cover, this album doesn’t sound much like the minimal, purely analog synth work she’s most well-known for. Although, that’s not surprising considering that not a single analog machine was used in the recording of this album. The entire record was recorded using the Fairlight CMI, the digital synthesizer that helped create the sound of the 80s with its very robust sampling capabilities.

The Fairlight was also used a lot on Peter Gabriel’s early solo works, and some of this album really reminds me of the instrumentals on that one. Very ambient, but not always minimal, very textured, both the opening and closing numbers really make me think of Gabriel’s best work from that era.

The best track on this album though is the second one, the nearly 12-minute “Erdentief” and its sound is light years away from quiet and ambient. Instead, it really harkens to the anime soundtracks and other over-the-top instrumental electronic music from this era that I find myself listening to a lot right now. Very sample-driven, and even when its sparse, the sounds used are so artificial and bizarre that it still sounds jarring and even a little discordant. It also still sounds remarkably 80s, a little slap bass and drum samples really go a long way in that regard.

It’s a fun record, often upbeat while occasionally delving into more relaxing and meditative moods. I’m digging it right now, hope you can too.