Archive for July, 2017

Madonna Remixes and a request for you to listen to weird shit

Sunday, July 30th, 2017

I wrote a thing about how George A. Romero nearly destroyed my life and how much I like his movies.

Also, Madonna.

Madonna
Music (HQ2 club mix)
Music (Calderone Anthem mix)
Music (Deep Dish Dot Com remix)
Music (Groove Armada club mix)
Music (The Young Collective club mix)
Music (HQ2 radio mix)
Music (Calderone radio edit)
Music (Deep Dish Dot Com radio edit)
Music (Groove Armada 12″ mix)
Die Another Day (Calderone & Quayle Afterlife Mix)
Die Another Day (Calderone & Quayle Afterlife Dub)
I really have to work on purging my Madonna backlog from my queue. These tracks included, there are 45 Madonna remixes in my LostTurntable iTunes playlist, and many of them have been there for a while. I’m really sorry! It’s not like I don’t love Madonna (OMG I love Madonna) I just keep getting distracted by obscure Japanese electronic jazz-funk records. I’m sure you can all identify.

Or not, I don’t know.

I don’t have terribly much to say about these remixes. Most are good, a few aren’t. I posted a couple of the “Music” remixes a few years back, but those were taken from a 12″ single, these are from a proper CD single, so they sound much better.

As I don’t have a lot to say about these tracks, I thought I’d use this space to pontificate about the State Of Lost Turntable, as I do every so often.

If you’re and long-term/regular visitor to this blog you’ve probably noticed my recent change in focus regarding what I’m posting lately. Of my past 10 posts, only two have consisted of Western pop music. The rest were either focused on Japanese dance tracks, or incredibly obscure and strange Japanese electronic music from the 70s and 80s.

This actually has less to do with my taste in music and more to do the fact that it’s kind of hard to find decent 12″ singles from 80s acts here in Japan. I’ve been looking! Really, I have! But whenever I do find some seemingly-obscure 12″ remix by an 80s or 90s act y’all might’ve heard of, it turns out the tracks are either in print or I already posted them years ago. Hence the propensity for me to post and share tracks from out-there Japanese artists, they’re easier for me to find, and still routinely out-of-print (especially in the States and Europe, where most of you are).

I can tell my move to increase focus on Japanese artists isn’t exactly popular. Not because of negative comments (I’m not getting those – thanks for that) but from the complete lack of comments (and hits) that those posts generate.

I get that obscure Japanese jazz-funk might not be your thing. Same for a collection of 70s synthesizer covers of Beatles tracks, but if you only come here to download songs by artists you know or have heard of, and don’t give the Japanese stuff a fair shake, I beg you to reconsider. A lot of the Japanese stuff I’m posting is some of my favorite music as of late, it’s just so original and different when compared to, well, everything else I’ve ever listened to.

So, the next time you come here and you see some weird, obscure Japanese album or an all-synthesizer covers album and are about to close the tab or go somewhere else, why don’t you try giving the music a chance first? You got nothing to lose, shit’s free after all.

Finally, and I know this sounds kind of lame, but if you do like some of the more obtuse and bizarre shit I share, let me know by leaving a comment. It’s nice to know that I’m sharing this for at least a few appreciative people. And if I share something you really like, you could also share it yourself via Facebook, Twitter, or whatever. Again, I know that sounds a little bit like a desperate cry for more readers, but I just want the music I share to find an appreciative audience.

More people need to hear these crazy Beatles covers. Same goes for these synthesized remakes of sci-fi movie themes. And have you heard the soundtrack to the Golgo 13 movie? It’s great! What about this weird Japanese ambient record I found on cassette tape? Or this amazing album of avant-garde electronic funk/jazz? 

Look, I like Madonna as much as the next gay man, but expand your horizons people!

Okay, sorry for the rambling, enjoy the Madonna-rama.

Posted in Madonna, remixes | 11 Comments »

Yutaka Mogi’s Digital Mystery Tour

Friday, July 28th, 2017

I’m fairly certain I’ve stated this before, but I’m really happy when I say “boy I wish I could find a copy of [insanely obscure record]” and then immediately find said record, randomly, in a record shop for a steal of a price. I feel as if that happens far more often than it should, statistically speaking. Maybe I should start saying that for other things. Let’s give it a try.

Boy, I wish I could find a formula that makes affordable cold fusion possible! And maybe that Trump pee tape too! That would be great.

Okay everyone, expect the energy crisis, and the American political nightmare, to be solved with a few weeks. You’re welcome. In the meantime, here’s a fucking amazing synthesizer covers album you need to download right this second.

Yutaka Mogi – Digital Mystery Tour
I mean, I literally found this album less than two weeks after publicly proclaiming my desire to buy it. Fucking rad.

This is Digital Mystery Tour by Yutaka Mogi, like its title suggests, a large portion of it is dedicated to reworking Magical Mystery Tour with digital instruments. As such, that means we get all-synth takes on the Beatles classics “Magical Mystery Tour,” “Flying,” “Your Mother Should Know,” “Blue Jay Way,” and “Fool On The Hill.”

All of the Beatles covers are utterly brilliant, and are absolutely not afraid to radically tear apart the originals if needed. “Your Mother Should Know” is transformed into some wacked out funk track, and “Blue Jay Way” is re-assembled to be almost a new age number (and stretched out to be nearly twice as long as the Beatles original). Mogi also goes the quiet route with “Fool On The Hill,” with ethereal faux-strings and a quiet piano giving the song a strange, almost choral quality. The opening “Magical Mystery Tour” is a relatively straightforward cover, but Mogi’s insistence of using heavily modulated and just downright bizarre synthesizer settings will work to give it an otherworldly feeling.

For whatever reason, only half of the album is dedicated to The Beatles. Side two is dedicated to re-imaginings of much older numbers and features “When You Wish Upon A Star,” “The Skaters Waltzes – The Blue Danube,” “Tea For Two,” “Star Dust – Moonlight Serenade” and “Dances Of The Swans.” The rather pedestrian selection might make you think that the second half is filler, but Mogi really tears through these numbers as well. Just like The Beatles’ tracks, Mogi does what he can to give these songs new life. And the arrangements are just so lush. Early synthesizer covers records were sparse and simple because they had to be, due to the limitations of the hardware. This album came out in 1978. By then, synthesizers had become largely polyphonic, and a hell of a lot easier to manipulate and use. Mogi takes advantage of this, pumping as much life into these numbers as possible via a seemingly unending array of audio trickery and bombastic sound effects.

I need to start cataloging and ranking the myriad of moog/synthesizer covers albums in my collection. Every time I discover a new one I think it stands head and shoulders above the rest. I think I bias myself towards the new finds simply because I get so excited when I stumble upon them. Still and yet, I really do think this one is special, a fantastic showcase of what the synthesizers of the era could do, all performed by a wonderful musician who more people need to know about. If you listen and like it, be sure to check out this post, which also features some amazing music by Mogi.

Posted in Complete Albums, Yutaka Mogi | 3 Comments »

Beat The Heat With Cornelius

Sunday, July 23rd, 2017

It is too fucking hot in Tokyo. Actually, let me clarify that a bit: it is too fucking humid in Tokyo. Today it was 84 degrees Fahrenheit. I mean, that’s hot, but not too bad. However, humidity was at 80% and I had to wear a shirt with a collar for work. Thank god we don’t have to wear ties in the summer or I would be a puddle of English instructor.

On days like this, you gotta take coolness as a state of mind, something that I carry even into the music I listen to on my commute. If I’m stuck in a crowded train on a hot and humid morning, the last thing I want to listen to is some fast-paced techno or heavy metal. I want to chill out and calm down, find ways to distract myself from my sweaty brow and heat-induced itches in the bad places.

So thanks to Cornelius’ latest release Mellow Waves, an album that certainly lives up to its title as some mellow mellowness. It’s helping me survive this brutal Tokyo sauna. Its not an ambient album, there are beats and lyrics, complete with choruses. These are proper pop tunes, just subdued and relaxed ones. It makes for the perfect soundtrack for when you’re trying your best not to scream at the top of your lungs and tear off your suit on a rush hour train to Shibuya.

You’ll have to trust me on that one.

Anyways, I won’t share Mellow Waves as its a new release that’s in-print even in America. But I want to hype Cornelius anyway I can, so here are some of his older remixes that are my favs.

Coldcut
Atomic Moog 2000 (Cornelius Remix)
This version has been on a few different albums and compilations over the years, in fact I have it twice over. I first discovered it on the 1999 Coldcut remix album Let Us RePlay, and then re-discovered it recently via a cheesy “big beat” compilation I picked up called Big Beat Royale Revisited. It’s a dope track with dope beats and a dope drop. It’s dope.

Towa Tei
Butterfly (Cornelius Remix)
I meant to share this when I posted the other versions of this track a few weeks back, but I didn’t because…I forgot. Sorry about that. This is a rad remix that re-imagines the original drum and bass tune as a chill-as-fuck lounge tune with glitch elements.

Sketch Show
Ekot (Cornelius Remix)
Chronograph (Cornelius Remix)
As I mentioned in my guide to YMO-adjacent acts, Sketch Show is kind of a version of Yellow Magic Orchestra, featuring Hosono and Takahashi with the occasional support of Ryuichi Sakamoto.

They’re nothing like YMO though and skew much more towards the experimental, and especially glitch, end of the musical spectrum. Their music can be exceptionally beautiful at times, but glitch has always been a difficult genre for me to get into. Like its name suggests, it often just sounds broken to me, and the pops, cracks and other deliberate effects that are used to create a slightly off-center soundscape can sometimes just scratch the wrong nerve in my brain. I really got to be chill and relaxed to get into it. As you can probably guess, its not summer music for me.

The original versions of these tracks were already abstract, but Cornelius’ takes on them move them even further away from the mainstream, often stripping out the beats to create more ambient versions. I like what he does to them even if it’s not really always what I want out of music. If you ever listened to Aphex Twin and thought, “this could work as a pop song,” then you should probably dig on this stuff though.

Posted in Cornelius, remixes, Sketch Show, Towa Tei | 3 Comments »

Japanese Jazz-Funk-Fusion for Hangovers

Sunday, July 16th, 2017

I’m wicked hungover and have to be at work in three hours. Let’s chill out.

Yukata Mogi
Die Deustche Ideologie
Flight Information
Near Miss
Telstar (Single Edit)
Yukata Mogi was a keyboardist for the Japanese progressive rock band Yonin Bayashi, who released several albums in the 70s and into the 80s. They’re really good. I highly recommend their 1974 album Ishoku-Sokuhatsu, as well as Neo-N, which came out in 1979. That one is actually my favorite of theirs that I’ve heard so far, due to its combination of prog-rock and new wave. And I don’t mean Yes “Owner Of A Lonely Heart” new wave, this album is much more aggressive. I suspect it was influenced by Ryuichi Sakamoto’s 1,000 Knives and other experimental stuff from the time.  It even has a bit of a Philip Glass vibe. These dudes should’ve collaborated with Polyrock.

Mogi is the keyboardist on that album. I believe it was his only collaboration with the group. I dug the record so much, especially his work on it, that I tracked down his 1980 solo record Flight Information, hoping for more of the same.

The album, it turns out, is nothing like Neo-N, and is a much more laid-back and jazzy affair. Not all of it is my cup of tea, but I do dig a few of the songs, which are the ones I’m sharing today.

Also up there is his cover of The Tornados’ “Telstar.” This song is on Flight Information, but that version segues into another track. However, the song was also released as the b-side to to the single “Sky-Love.” For that release, a different mix was created with a modified ending, allowing for it to be played on its own. That’s the version I’m including here.

I think that Mogi passed away a few years back, and sadly his discography is rather sparse. He released a covers album in the late 70s that includes a radical cover of “Magical Mystery Tour.” If I can track down that bad boy I’ll share it here for sure.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to drink all the tea and take a 30 minute shower.

Posted in B-sides, Yutaka Mogi | No Comments »

Continuing to fret over the remote possibility of nuclear war with help from The KLF

Friday, July 7th, 2017

Every time I buy one of these North Korea launches a missile. I’m sorry.

The KLF
What Time Is Love? (live at Trancentral/7″ radio edit)
What Time Is Love? (The KLF vs. The Moody Boys)
What Time Is Love? (The 1988 Pure Trance original)
3 A.M. Eternal (live at the S.S.L./7″ Radio Freedom edit)
3 A.M. Eternal (Guns of Mu Mu/12″ edit)
3 A.M. Eternal (1989 “Break for Love” mix/original Pure Trance mix)
Last Train to Trancentral (live From the Lost Continent/7″ radio edit)
Last Train to Trancentral (The Iron Horse/12″ version)
Last Train to Trancentral (The White Room version/import LP version)
Last Train to Trancentral (The 1989 Pure Trance original)

I’m writing this post before I even finish listening to the box set because it’s not like I’m going to hear one of these tracks, dislike it, and then decide not to share it. More epic KLF.

I don’t have much to say about these tracks (because they’re great and you should listen to them) so I thought I would use this space to plug the store that I bought the box set from. It’s called Shop Mecano and it’s located inside the Nakano Broadway shopping mall in Nakano. If you like my blog then you’d probably go apeshit in this shop, it’s dedicated almost entirely to electronic and new wave music from the late 70s to today, with a heavy bias towards anything influenced by Kraftwerk. The dude who runs this shop loves Kraftwerk more than you love Kraftwerk. For real. I’m pretty sure he actually wrote the liner notes for the Japanese re-issues of Kraftwerk’s back catalog a few years back. Dude is hardcore.

This store has all kinds of amazing stuff, from rare and hard-to-find imports of releases from western acts like Art Of Noise and Depeche Mode, to what seems like an endless supply of YMO and YMO-related music. This store is straight-up dangerous to my wallet, I’ve probably spent more here than I have at any other store in the greater Tokyo area. It gets the Lost Turntable seal of approval to the max. I’m not saying you should make your way to Tokyo just to go to this store, but if you made your way to Tokyo just to go to this store I certainly wouldn’t judge you for doing so.

And in case you’re wondering, you can find part II of this set here.

Posted in B-sides, Complete Albums, remixes, The KLF | 3 Comments »