The Psychedelic Electronics of the Japanese Electric Foundation

August 24th, 2018

Japanese Electric Foundation
Open Your Eyes
Don’t You Care
Green Tambourine
The Japanese Electric Foundation was a one-off project comprised of several Japanese musicians, the most notable of them being Hiroshi Matsuda and Hideyuki Nozawa, who are both in the Japanese megagroup Southern All-Stars.

Southern All-Stars are a ridiculously big deal here in Japan, probably the biggest rock band of all-time. Bigger than YMO, bigger than Mr. Children, bigger than X Japan. They’ve been around for 40 years and have more hit singles than any band ever.

I don’t like them. I think they’re kind of boring. But hey what do I know?

Anyways, I didn’t know that this was a SAS side-project when I bought it, I just gave it a quick listen at the record store because of the name (I misread it as “electronic” and assumed technopop or new wave). It’s actually reminiscent of the Madchester scene of the late-80s, which is really incredible considering this came out in 1986, well before most notable Madchester releases by acts like The Happy Mondays and The Stone Roses dropped.

I think the sonic similarities are just a coincidence. Madchester is psychedelic electronic rock music. This is electronic-influenced covers of psychedelic pop music from the 60s and 70s, so the commonalities make sense.

There are non-covers on this album, but to be honest they’re the weaker tracks, sounding much more like generic Japanese rock music of the era. I prefer these covers by far. As far the original versions go, you probably know “Green Tambourine,” the psych-classic by The Lemon Pipers. You also most likely know “Don’t You Care,” which was originally performed by The Buckinghams (trust me, you know it). Finally, there’s “Open My Eyes” which was originally a Nazz song, Nazz being the psychedelic group fronted by Todd Rundgren. I vaguely recognize the original, but for me it’s the most obscure of the three, it’s also the best of the bunch, really good arrangement.

The psychedelic pop music of America and the UK was hugely influential for Japanese musicians, even leading the way for an entire genre of music in Japan that was known as “group sounds,” which was Western style rock music meshed with Japanese pop music from the 60s. Go to YouTube and check out The Spiders if you want to hear some of that. The Southern All-Stars were never a “group sounds” band, but they were no doubt influenced by them, and I have to imagine that played a big part in this side-project of theirs choosing the cover songs that directly led to that genre. Also Todd Rundgren is fucking huge in Japan so there’s that.

I wish they would’ve kept this group up for a bit. The original tunes aren’t great, but who cares? The covers are so original and fun that they more than make up for it. And who knows? With a bit more influence from the burgeoning Madchester scene, this group really could’ve been something.

Or they could’ve just given us an entire LP of Rundgren covers, who’s to say.

Posted in Japanese Electric Foundation | No Comments »

A Gay Disco Deep Cut by Beckie Bell

August 19th, 2018

Sorry for the lack of posts for the past two weeks. I place blame on a variety of factors, including a heavy work load, heat-induced malaise, and various other minor health annoyances. Although I guess most of those would be bullshit reasons next to my recent obsessive playing of Dead Cells. I could’ve written a novel with the time I sunk into that game last week. I guess I’m saying that recommend it if you want a really good excuse to procrastinate and accomplish literally nothing with your life.

But I thought I would take a back from the procedurally-generated nonsense and give you some gay disco.

Beckie Bell
Super Queen
Johnnie’s Home
Saw this 12″ single in a record store a few weeks back and was about to pass it up when I noticed that “PATRICK COWLEY” was written on the label in all caps, followed by a bunch of kanji I couldn’t even begin to read.

From what I found online, “Super Queen” features synthesizer work by the Hi-NRG master, although with the caveat of it being uncredited. I’m liable to believe it, why would someone make that up after all, but how do we know it was him? Anyone out there care to present corroboration to back up this claim?

The b-side is “Johnnie’s Home,” which is a radically different tune to “Super Queen.” While the A-side is a marvel of Hi-ENRG sequences and beats, “Johnie’s Home” is just weird. It’s part doo-wop and part reggae almost, with a strong synthesizer bent. It’s like if The Shrielles, The Ronettes, and UB40 did a mash-up. Does that make it sound bad? Because it’s not, it’s just a little out there.

I bought this track because of Cowley, but the songs are by Beckie Bell, who released her first album back in 1980, and put out a follow-up some 14 years later. That original album must have a following, as vinyl copies can seemingly go for over $100. CDs are much cheaper, if you’re interested. I’ve never heard of Bell before I bought this single, but it turns out that I have heard her voice since she worked as a session player throughout a good chunk of the 80s and 90s. She’s one Duran Duran’s Big Thing, The One by Elton John, and even shows up on a few records by Celine Dion. The career paths of incredibly talented sessions players will never cease to amaze me.

Posted in Patrick Cowley, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Pan-European Krautrock

August 3rd, 2018

I put up a new blog post over on Mostly-Retro where I talk about walking around Tokyo at 6:00 am and listening to Yes (two of my favorite things). It’s a bit different, but if you read it and like it let me know, I plan on writing more things like it in the future.

Also a quick request. Anyone out there have any experience with app development for the Android? I recently upgraded to the new Samsung Galaxy. I love it, but Samsung removed a few key features from their photo editor that I really like, mostly just some simple filters/effects. If anyone out there would know how to put new filters into the Samsung Photo Editor, I would make it worth their while (i.e. I would pay actual money). Let me know.

Now three very long songs.

 

Adelbert Von Deyen
Iceland
There are a lot of holes in my musical knowledge. For example, I still have never listened to a My Bloody Valentine album (I know I know, leave me alone). Another big gap, especially for someone with musical tastes like mine, is that I’ve never taken a deep dive in the more well-known krautrock acts. I love Harmonia and have most of their albums, and I’ve spoken in length about Tangerine Dream in the past, but I still don’t own much Amon Duul (I or II), Neu!, Cluster, Moebius, and so on.

That’s probably why I had never heard of Sky Records until recently. Sky was one of the major labels of the Krautrock/Berlin School movement, most notably putting out the Cluster/Eno collaborations of the late-70s. I’m becoming a fan of the label now, having realized that a lot of the old Germn prog/electronic music I’ve been buying lately (mainly reissues by Harald Grosskopf and Tyndall) was originally put out by them back in the 70s and 80s.

Even among Sky Records artists, I think that Adelbert Von Deyen is relatively obscure, if prolific. He pumped out nine albums between 1978 and 1987, but most of those remain unreleased digitally or on CD.

I’ve only managed to stumble upon Nordborg, his 1978 sophomore effort. Very much in the Klaus Schulze style, it is just two longform pieces, one on each side. The first track, “Moonrise,” is super avant-garde and ambient, with nary a melody, rhythm or motif to be found. It’s purely soundscapes and sonic experimentation. It’s not for everyone. This track, however, is a tad more digestible, complete with a steady beat and beautiful piano sections. I love this stuff.

 

Mick Clarke
Spectro
Mick Clarke strikes me as a guy who rolls with the punches. A Brit, Games, his first album was recorded in Germany in the krautrock style on the minor German label Blubber Lips. Since then, he’s seemingly dipped his hands in nearly every electronic music style I can think of, from new wave and synthpop to hardcore techno and house music, releasing music with various groups and under a number of aliases. I’m not familiar with his work at all, but it does appear that his new wave group Naked Lunch, has some degree of notoriety among the more die-hard synth enthusiasts out there.

This is the first track from Games, clocking in at over 17 minutes and taking up the entirety of the album’s first side. It’s split into two distinct parts. The first half is very ambient, with an emphasis on textures and effects instead of strong melodies. The second part shifts focus to sequencer patterns, with a slightly dark edge to them. It’s like Tangerine Dream but a little menacing.

Of these three songs I’m sharing today, this is the most noisy. The LP had some dust and other damage I couldn’t remove physically or digitally. It gets better after the first minute or so though. Sorry about that.

 

Sangiuliano
Take Off
I don’t know if it’s accurate to call Sangiuliano the “weirdest” of this bunch. All three of these guys are quite out there, but I feel it’s safe to say that, of these three artists, his music is the least typical. Instead of following in the Berlin School/krautrock styles of Amon Duul, Tangerine Dream or Cluster, Sangiuliano seemed far more content to combine his electronic musical leanings with classical influences. His pieces sounds like concertos from space. Everything about his music seems to be intent on copying classical orchestrations entirely with synthetic instrumentation. A symphony with a choir could perform this piece and it wouldn’t sound that out of the ordinary from other classical pieces, until it goes full synth at the end with an explosion of sequencers.

Sangiuliano never released another album, although he allegedly recorded one that ended up shelved by his record company. According to his Discogs page, he’s now a radio personality in his native Italy. Wonder if he kept the hair.

 

Posted in Adelbert Von Deyen, Mick Clarke, Sangiuliano | No Comments »

Fuck Up Nazis and Listen to David Bowie

July 22nd, 2018

I haven’t been all that political on my blog as of late. To be honest, it’s just been too damn draining, but I felt the need to speak up against this, only because I don’t feel like enough people are.

In case you haven’t been paying attention, James Gunn was fired from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 because a man who bragged about sexually assaulting women and a Nazi started a smear campaign against him.

In a world where everything seems to be falling to shit all around us, I know it might sound trite to have this be a hill I’m willing to die on, but fuck this. This is emblematic of everything wrong with American discourse. Bad faith actors, “fake news,” public shaming, hypocrisy, and the ever-growing shamelessness of the right-wing, who slam a man for jokes he apologized for all while praising a President who admitted on video to sexually assaulting women.

I can’t do much to fight against this, all I can do is share this petition asking for Disney to give the man his job back, and not to kowtow to literal Nazis and literal rapists. Please sign and share it. Let them know.

Also, if you see horribly-written, poorly researched articles about the topic (like this one or this one), maybe comment or email the writers. Let them know how you feel about them being taken on as useful idiots for a right-wing smear job designed only to silence anyone who speaks out too loudly against Trump. Remind them that any article about Mike Cernovich that doesn’t feature the line “a man who has admitted to sexual assault and condones rape” is fucking up. Remind them that Jack Posobiec is a LITERAL NAZI who spreads Nazi propaganda and codes his messages with Nazi symbolism.

And don’t forget that it’s always okay to fuck up a Nazi.

Okay, now David Bowie.

Tin Machine
You Belong In Rock ‘N’ Roll (Extended Mix)
Amlapura (Indonesian Version)
Shakin’ All Over (Live)
I’m really interested in hearing the upcoming Loving The Alien David Bowie box set, which covers the artist’s much-maligned mid-80s output. I’ve always though that a little bit of that kickback was unwarranted. Let’s Dance has a few bad songs on it, but it’s a good album. Ditto for Tonight. I will fight anyone who tells me that “Blue Jean” is not a wonderful 80s pop song.

Of course, there was a lot of less-than-stellar stuff there too, the most obvious being Never Let Me Down, the only album in Bowie’s discography that he seemingly disowned completely. That’s why I’m so interested in buying the box set, as it will include an entirely remixed and redone version of the album that will hopefully strip out some of that horrible 80s production and polish some of those songs into the gems that I know they can be.

It really can’t be understated just how bad that album is though. If it was an album by a band, it would’ve caused them to break up. It led David Bowie to do the opposite and form a band, Tin Machine, just so he could escape from being David Bowie for a while. Yeah, Tin Machine wasn’t perfect either, they also had seemingly had a miss for every hit, but they were at least different, and they really gave Bowie a good place for him to experiment and re-invent himself for the 90s, where he reached another creative high-point, in my opinion.

I occasionally read that the Tin Machine albums served as a precursor to grunge, and while I love them both dearly, I certainly can’t see that. Tin Machine’s sound may be stripped down, but it’s certainly not raw. These albums still sound like slick 80s rock albums, just slick 80s rock albums that are a little less bombastic than what else was going on at the time.

“You Belong In Rock ‘N’ Roll” was the lead single off of the group’s second album, and it failed to light up the charts anywhere. It’s a great tune, if a bit odd. It feels like a cross between “Low” era and “Let’s Dance” Bowie; brooding and off-kilter, but still pop. Not an easy balance to make, but Bowie (of course) pulled it off just fine. Can’t believe it bombed.

The original version of “Amlapura” is an album cut, this version, recorded in Indonesian, was exclusively a B-side and has never been re-released. Same for this live cover of “Shakin’ All Over,” which features a short-but-dope-as-fuck solo by Reeves Gabrels. Wonder if these will get remastered and repackaged for the next Bowie box set? Those things have been really random with the rarities, so it’s hard to tell.

Enjoy the Bowie. And pleas don’t forget to sign that petition.

And if you feel the need to comment in praise of Cernovich, don’t fucking bother, I screen comments for a reason.

Posted in B-sides, David Bowie, remixes | 2 Comments »

Japanese Electro-Jazz for Dangerous Days

July 17th, 2018

I’ve been buying a lot of extremely out-there records lately, so many that I put together a whole blog post about them over at Mostly-Retro. It didn’t feel right writing about them here as they were all in-print in some way or another, and I don’t like to spend too much time writing about music here if I can’t share it, that’s kind of the point of an MP3 blog after all.

Tonight’s music is definitely out-of-print, in fact, I don’t think it was ever commercially released in the first place. Shit, I can’t even find it streaming on YouTube.

Toshinori Kondo
China Boogie
Black Port
Antonio Fire
When I comb through old Japanese records there are a few names I’m always on the lookout for. A lot of my favorite Japanese artists from the 70s and 80s just as often appeared on other artists’ records as they did their own, so I never know where they’ll turn up. One such artist is Yasuaki Shimizu. I’ve been into his stuff for the past few years now and I can’t believe that this is the first time his name has come up on this site.

Shimizu is primarily a jazz saxophonist, but he’s popped up all over place through the years, playing a variety of instruments across all kinds of genres. He’s developed a bit of a cult following in the West for a pair of albums; his 1983 album with the group Mariah, their amazing Utakata No Hibi, and his 1982 solo album Kakashi. Both albums are monumental works that defy all attempts of categorization. Dope as fuck shit that melds jazz, synthpop, rock, ambient, you name it. Not a day goes by where I don’t see copies of either hanging in a record store. They’ve become mainstays of the Japanese music scene and are some of the most influential records of their generation.

But like I said, the dude has been around. He’s shown up on some Ryuichi Sakamoto albums, a couple of records by Kazumi Watanabe (former YMO guitarist) and has even contributed to a few works by Towa Tei. I never know where he’s going to show up, so I always keep an eye out.

My diligence paid off recently. With this album’s rather lazy cover, I nearly skipped right past it in the bins, but I checked out the back cover just to be sure, and lo and behold, I found Shimizu’s name, alongside some other notable performers as well. Playing with Shimizu on this promo-only 12″ single are legendary experimental guitarist Fred Frith and bassist/producer extraordinaire Bill Laswell (who keeps popping up on records I buy because he’s literally on almost everything). That’s a hell of a line-up.

You might recognize Laswell’s name from Herbie Hancock’s electro-jazz masterpiece Futureshock, and that can give you a pretty good idea as to what this sounds like. It’s hyper-sample heavy electro-jazz/funk. The only thing that makes it sound more jazzy than Hancock’s similar work is that the primary instrument, the trumpet, remains entirely acoustic.

That trumpet is played by the person whom this track is credited to, Toshinori Kondo. Again, like a lot of the music I’ve been sharing lately, I don’t know a ton about him. I know he’s been releasing music since the late 70s, and most of it is jazz, especially of the free improvisation and abstract variety. But he also occasionally dips his feet into more electronic things like this. He’s worked with DJ Krush a few times, and released a dub record in 2002 called Nerve Tripper. I hope can I dig more into his discography in the future, save for the free improvisation stuff. Not my thing.

I love this kind of stuff though, it’s dated in a way that most 80s music isn’t. You see retro synthpop and hair metal act all the time. No one is making stuff like this anymore.

 

Posted in Yasuaki Shimizu | No Comments »

Mega Game Mega Mixes

July 13th, 2018

Shinji Hosoe
Running UP! (Arrange Version)
Running UP! (Megamix Version)
These are remixes of the theme to Dirtfox. I have never played Dirtfox. I don’t know what Dirtfox is. (It’s apparently an arcade overhead racer.) I only know that the soundtrack I found at Book-Off was just 300 yen so I thought “hey why not?”

I’m glad I picked it up, it’s a fun, bouncy soundtrack with a good, upbeat theme. Although the theme is pretty much all the soundtrack is. It opens with the “Arrange Version” of the main theme, continues with the two versions of the theme actually hear while playing the game, and then concludes with the “Megamix Version.” Aside from that, there are just three other tracks, none of which top a minute in length.

Shinji Hosoe went on to do the music for Ridge Racer by the way, so I guess racing game music is in his blood.

 

Darrell Harvey, Rex Baca & Kip Martin
Dungeon Master (Mega Mix)
Chaos Strikes Back (Mega Mix)
I stumbled upon this one in Osaka and it immediately unleashed a flood of memories. I actually never played the original Dungeon Master, my family didn’t have a computer when it came out. However, my friend had it for his Apple IIGS, and I would sit and watch him play it for hours on end. I don’t think either of us were ever able to really wrap our heads around the game, we were both probably eight or nine at the time, but we just loved the look of it, and it would always inspire me to draw my own dungeon monsters, demons and heroes. Now that I’m a grown-ass adult with a (slightly) better understanding of dungeon-crawling RPGs, I really should try it again sometime.

I was surprised to see that the game had a soundtrack release (especially in Japan) as I didn’t recall the version we played having any music at all. Turns out that the game was released for the FM Towns computer in Japan, which came with a CD_ROM drive. And the version of Dungeon Master that was released for the FM Towns took full advantage of said drive, packing a Redbook audio soundtrack on the game disc.

Since you can play Redbook audio on any standard CD player, it’s kind of funny that they decided to released the soundtrack for the game and it’s Chaos Strikes Back expansion pack on a regular CD. I guess that might be why they included the above “Mega Mixes,” which were not featured in the games themselves?

Finding out that a few Western games made it over to Japan on CD for the FM Towns makes me want to scour the used racks for those games to see which others might have obscure soundtracks tucked away on Redbook audio. Wonder if there are any hidden gems there!

Posted in Game Music, remixes | No Comments »

PARTY LIKE IT’S 1992

July 9th, 2018

Well, forest fires, flash floods, and deadly heatwaves can only mean one thing: decades of inaction on climate change have doomed us to millennia of disastrous weather.

Also, time for some summer jams woooo!

Summer Hit Mix ’92
Mix 1
Mix 2
Mix 3
Mix 4
I fucking love the cover to this album, it’s like they had a $20 budget, 45 minutes, a moderately interested model and they were like “fuck it, buy a float, put her in it, and take a few pics. No, don’t worry about the lighting it’s not important let’s get this done.” There’s a Laura Branigan’s video for “Gloria” level of laziness here that I really respect.

The album itself is great though, four fantastic mixes featuring pop hits, euro-dance, house, and some hip-hop. You got some big numbers here that you probably know, two 2 Unlimited numbers, for example, but there are also some lesser-known jams that I never heard of. A club mix of the “Escape From New York” theme? Sign me up! A U 96 song that isn’t “Dos Boot?” Word! You can find the whole tracklist here if you’re curious.

These mixes were put together by DJ Torsetn Fenslau, who was a big name in the German techno scene in the early 90s before he sadly passed away in a tragic car accident in 1993. He also worked as a producer, and found huge mainstream success right before his untimely passing with the super-uber-huge house hit “Mr. Vain” by Culture Beat. And if you’re thinking, like I did before I went to YouTube to see the video, that you never heard that song, trust me, you have. In terms of insanely catchy 90s euro-house mainstream hits, it’s probably only second to “What Is Love.”

I was going to finish this post off by making a crack that the worst song on this mix is better than the best song that’s currently on the Billboard Dance Chart, but I did a quick look at the charts and found that both Donna Summer and Diana Ross remixes are currently in the top 10 so that’s just not true.

Everything on here is better than that Hasley song though because ugh fuck that thing.

Posted in Complete Albums | 3 Comments »

Synthi Bach

July 1st, 2018

Yuji Takahashi
The [Electronic] Art of Fugue (Complete Album Download)

I’ve heard a lot of synthesizer renditions of Bach, so trust me when I say that this one is different.

There were a lot of electronic interpretations of Bach in the 1970s, obviously trying to capitalize off of Wendy Carlos’ Switched-On Bach. Nearly all of them (even the good ones) are pale imitations of that album that lack the sophistication and multi-layered approach that Carlos took when crafting her masterpiece. A reminder, synthesizers back then could only produce one note at a time. To create a proper Bach arrangement meant countless playbacks and tape dubs. Not everyone was up to it. Additionally, nearly everyone at the time was sticking to the similar Moogs that Carlos used. So you ended up with a lot of derivative works.

Yuji Takahashi’s take on Bach is a bit different, probably because Takahashi himself is a bit different. Takahashi is a classically-trained pianist, but he also holds an interest in the avant-garde and experimental. He started putting out albums in the late-60s, his earliest stuff being interpretations of John Cage works, while also releasing avant-garde and experimental works of his own. Even early on in his career he was working in left-field. In 1974 he put out an album with Masahiko Satoh, another acclaimed Japanese pianist, that consisted of performances on synthesizers and prepared pianos. I have no idea what that sounds like but I sure as hell bet it sounds different.

A year later, he released this. As far as I can tell, it’s the first electronic interpretation of Bach’s The Art Of Fugue, which is just one of many reasons why it stands out among the other classical Moog albums of the day. Not only is the material odd, but his arrangements are slightly more off-kilter than what you might hear on other electronic Bach albums.

A lot of that has to do with the instrumentation that Takahashi chose to use. Takahashi doesn’t just limit himself to the “traditional” Moog synthesizers of the day. Added into the mix is an EMS Synthi 2. The Synthi is a strange beast that can produce very unique sound effects, such as stark popping sounds and tones that have a unnatural drop off or arpeggio effect. Used poorly, the Synthi just creates seemingly random noises. Used correctly, it can be Pink Floyd. It has some range. Here, Takahashi uses it to pushes the limits of “music” from time to time, especially on “Contrapunctus XI,” but he shows enough restraint with the device that it never becomes grating, just supremely odd. And the more “normal” sounds of the traditional Moog help reign him in when things get dangerously close to pure noise.

I first bought this on LP a few months back, but that copy was pretty banged up. And it’s hard to digitally restore a record that uses harsh sound effects like the ones used here: they often get removed alongside the record’s scratches and crackles. Thankfully, the record was re-issued on CD a few years back and I managed to find one at not-too-crazy prices. These files are taken from that CD.

If this ain’t your thing, don’t fret. Next post will feature nothing but hot summer jams.

 

Posted in Complete Albums, Yuji Takahashi | 4 Comments »

The Devo Live Album Time Forgot

June 26th, 2018

It’s been a while, but tonight here is some music by an artist you might actually know the name of!

Seriously though, I got a few really nice comments on my past few more out there posts, and those do mean a lot to me! So thanks for that.

Anyways….

WE ARE DEVO.

Devo
Jocko Homo (Live)
It Doesn’t Matter To Me (Live)
Going Under (Live)
Somewhere With Devo: Shout/Disco Dancer (Live)
These cuts are from the live album Now It Can Be Told: DEVO At The Palace 12/9/88. I’m going to go out on a limb and say this record has become completely forgotten in the years since its release; I had never seen it in any used store ever until I stumbled upon it a few weeks back, in the middle of nowhere at a used hardware store outside of Tokyo. And the Wikipedia page for the album was rife with typos, listing the album’s recording and release dates in the late-90s and not the late-80s…big difference. I cleaned it up a bit last night.

I suppose the lack of oversight makes sense, this album came out when Devo was a bit past their prime. It was recorded during the tour for Total Devo, an album that in itself is mostly forgotten now, and was poorly-received at the time. Critics then attacked it for being derivative of the group’s earlier (and better) work, but if Devo’s attitude on this album is any indication, they blamed their waning popularity more on changing trends (looking in hindsight, both are probably true). The first three tracks on this album (which I’m sharing here tonight) are acoustic numbers. My suspicion is that Devo was playing with the fact that acts like Tracey Chapman, R.E.M., and The Pixies were replacing acts like them on the indie/alternative charts: the synthpop-backlash was already in effect. At one point in this album Mark even says that “it takes courage to be a Devo fan these days.” This is the attitude of a band that was obviously over it.

But it doesn’t show in their performance, this is a fantastic record. While I would’ve been bummed to the laid-back acoustic version of “Jocko Homo” in concert, having this strange alternative version on my computer is a treat. And when the band cuts the acoustic charade and plugs in the synthesizers, they still sound like prime Devo. And they also still focus on material from their older albums, a rather telling sign. However, the band closes a medley of “Shout” and “Disco Dancer,” two of their more recent (and failed) singles. But both those tracks were standouts on their respective albums (“Disco Dancer” should be a fucking classic) and these epic 11 minute combination of them both is just awesome and should’ve remained a Devo set closer for their reunion tour in the 2010s, I would’ve been happy.

The public has forgotten this record and I think that Devo has too. It’s listed on their website alongside their other albums, but its never been re-issued and is not available on any digital storefront. Devo’s re-released and remastered damn near everything in their catalog over the years, and have even released other live albums since then, so I doubt them skipping this record was an unintentional oversight. Perhaps it’s a time in their career they’d wish to forget. It’s a shame, as the record is quality. If you like the tracks I’m sharing tonight, maybe consider picking it up used. It’s pretty cheap online.

Next post: strange synthy music no one has ever heard of.

Sorry.

Posted in Devo, live | 2 Comments »

Happy Dopey Synths

June 23rd, 2018

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.

Posted in Complete Albums, Osamu Shoji | 5 Comments »

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