Archive for January, 2018

Blue Fukamachi

Tuesday, January 30th, 2018

Somehow, for whatever reason, some five months after the fact, I got my damn Twitter account unsuspended. I have no idea how I did this. I sent them countless emails over these past few months, pleading my case from every possible angle I could think of. During that time, I’m happy that I never succumbed to the urge to send vulgar insults or baseless threats. Trust me, many an unsent message contained both.

Maybe my restraint paid off. Maybe someone finally realized their mistake. Maybe someone just pushed the wrong button. I don’t care. I’m just happy I got my fucking account back after all this damn time. Not because I really like Twitter all that much, but dammit it’s important for me to stay on brand. UnLostTurntable was a shitty replacement name.

Anyways, @LostTurntable, follow me for random things. Mostly art.

Blue Pearl
Mother Dawn (Buckateer Mix 1)
Mother Dawn (Buckateer Mix 2)
Mother Dawn (Buckateer Mix 3)
Mother Dawn (Lunacy Mix)
Blue Pearl was a side-project of Youth from Killing Joke and featured Durga McBroom on vocals. The group also sported guest appearances from David Gilmour and Richard Wright from Pink Floyd, albeit not on this track.

All of these remixes are by The Orb and sound very much like remixes by The Orb, so your mileage may vary depending on how excited that sounds to you. Me, I’m not a big fan of The Orb’s remix work. They often fuck up with source material too much, and to me that’s the problem with these remixes here. They just sound like ambient dub Orb tracks, save for the Lunacy Mix, which has an actual beat and vocals.

Jun Fukamachi’s 21st Century Band
Shin-Ku
This is jazz fusion but please keep reading.

I went bit of a buying spree of Japanese jazz fusion as of late, trying to figure out which albums in the genre appeal to me and which ones don’t. I’m super hot and cold on this stuff. I either think it’s the best stuff ever or it makes me want to slam spikes in my ears, and I wanted to figure out why. What makes “good” jazz fusion to me? I think I was able to pin down the criteria:

  1. Absolute minimum vocals.
  2. Guitar or keyboard-centric
  3. Fast tempo
  4. The most synthesizers the better

With all these components, I really dig this stuff. It takes on a funky vibe that I hella get behind, like this track by piano virtuoso Jun Fukamachi. It has a jazz core, that’s for sure, but it branches out from that really quickly. It has a weird prog bent, some bizarre electronic accents, and more a few dope solos. And whoever the drummer is, wow. They really kick it into gear in the second half. It’s about 10 minutes long, but it still has structure, it doesn’t feel like a bunch of guys in the room just jamming nonstop. At least, it doesn’t to me.

I get that this isn’t the kind of stuff that people come to this blog for, and that’s cool. But if you don’t like it…just, don’t tell me? No one is making you download this free music, after all.

If you do like it, or have recommendations based on it, let me know! Leave a comment or you can contact me on my motherfucking back from the dead Twitter account.

Damn that feels good to say.

Posted in Blue Pearl, Jun fukamachi, remixes | 2 Comments »

Heat Up With Pop Will Eat Itself

Sunday, January 28th, 2018

Things. I wrote them.

First up, a guide to buying city pop in Tokyo. I know I said I’m not the world’s biggest fan of city pop, but I am the world’s biggest fan of Tokyo record stores, so I think that should be enough to be of help to people looking for this stuff.

Second, I went to a dope Space Invaders exhibition and wrote about it for Retronauts! So go read that!

Pop Will Eat Itself
92° (Boilerhouse ‘The Birth, The Death’ Mix)
The Incredible PWEI Vs Dirty Harry
92° (Boilerhouse ‘The Birth’ Mix)
Finding a 12″ single of a song I don’t own by a band I like is a rare event in Tokyo. That has less to do with the fact that 12″ singles aren’t really that big here and more to do with the fact that I own a fuckton of 12″ singles. This is a track off of Wise Up Suckers, and I had totally forgotten about it entirely until I listened to these remixes. Wise Up Suckers isn’t the greatest PWEI album, that award obviously goes to “This Is The Day…” but it’s still a damn fine listen and a great time capsule of the era from which it came. These remixes (and the B-side in between) great, can you dig them?

Also my copy was signed? So that’s weird.

EPO
恋はハイ・タッチ-ハイ・テック (Hi-Touch Hi-Tech)
I’m not going to lie and say that I know a shitload about this artist. They could be a lost legend of the 80s Japanese synthpop scene, although I doubt it. I’m just going to say that I really like this cheesy as hell dance tune and I thought that yinz might like it too. It’s not like, great, or anything. I feel like I found the Japanese equivalent of Pretty Poison of something, but it’s a good jam for happy times.

Posted in EPO, Pop Will Eat Itself, remixes | 3 Comments »

Unfortunately Named Japanese Bands and Bambi Remixes

Sunday, January 21st, 2018

Lots of updates and news to get out of the way first!

Firstly, I was offered to be interviewed on a Japanese TV show and talk about my love of Japanese record stores and Japanese music! How exciting, right?

Well, I turned them down. Go to my other blog to find out why. Spoiler: it sucks.

Also, I’ve had a few comments recently both here and on Twitter regarding my health, as I complain about that a lot. Figured I should mention that a bit and say that, thankfully, I’m starting to feel moderately human once more. I had a bad combination of some kind of lung infection, a major fibromyalgia flare-up, and aggravated herniated disc. All of these problems are beginning to subside and I’m starting to feel like my old self again, slowly but surely. Of course, I’m sure I’ll catch the flu that everyone in Tokyo seems to have at the moment, but until then, I feel super(ish), thanks for asking.

Colored Music
Colored Music
A few months ago picked up the compilation More Better Days, which collects some of the highlights that could be found on the Better Days label. I’ve heard Better Days described as an “avant pop” label, which I guess is good enough. They were very jazzy, but understand that Japanese jazz (especially from the 80s) was a bit more on the wild side than you’d probably guess. Don’t forget that the entire Japanese synthpop scene was born out of the jazz scene of the late-70s! So when I say that the music on More Better Days has a jazz feel to it, understand that it also travels into punk, new wave, ambient, electronic and pop territories, sometimes all on the same song.

Anyways, More Better Days is like 90% bangers, and is 100% worth you time to pick up. Be warned though, that it may set you down a rabbit hole of hard-to-find and exceptionally out-of-print obscure Japanese music that’ll cost you an arm and a leg.

Example: Colored Music, who have two tracks featured on that LP. Their music is damn hard to describe. The track I’m sharing tonight reminds me heavily of Talking Heads or Material, new wave with a disco groove you can dance to. But its off-kilter in a way that neither of those bands ever were. Like, the breakdown halfway through is odd enough, but the way that segues into a Fripp-eqsue feedback-laden solo? What the hell is that? This shit is dope as fuck. Thankfully CD copies of Colored Music aren’t impossible to come by. You can find it online for about $40 or $50 new. That sounds like a lot, but CDs retail for nearly $30 in Japan, so you’re not really paying all that much of a mark-up when you think about it.

Anyways, however you want to get it, get it. I won’t judge you. This shit needs to be heard by more people.

Hajime Tachibana
Bambi
Bambi (Fashion Photograph Mix)
Bonus Bambi Groove
XP (I Love You Mix)
Bonus Whistle Groove
I had no idea that Tachibana went full electronic house in the early-90s, even going as far as to collaborate with Towa Tei for a few tracks. These are from the 12″ single to “Bambi,” the title track from the 1991 album of the same name. These don’t sound like the Tachibana songs I know. They’re decidedly less insane and have things like a recognizable song structure and melody, but they’re groovy as hell. They really feel more like Towa Tei tracks, to be honest. And that’s not really a bad thing let’s be real here.

Posted in Colored Music, Hajime Tachibana, remixes | No Comments »

His name is Ryo and he plays guitar synthesizer

Sunday, January 14th, 2018

I wrote a thing on my other site about Japanese “city pop” and how it’s becoming kind of a thing in the states to the degree that it’s now becoming kind of a thing in Japan. It’s weird.

The funny thing to me is that, in my opinion, city pop isn’t all that interesting. That is, of course, working under the assumption that city pop is an actual, definable, genre (and it’s really not). But I’m not going to harp on anyone who does dig on it. It’s different, and that’s cool.

I went through a lot of different city pop acts on YouTube, trying to find a few that might appeal to me. Usually I would find a track or two I would like by artists like Taeko Ohnuki or Junko Ohashi, but my interest would just stop there – at a track or two. They just couldn’t hold my interest.

It bums me out. I wish I could be more into this stuff. It’s funny that some form of Japanese 80s music is starting to catch on in the fringes of the outskirts of mainsteam, but it’s the one type of Japanese 80s music I’m just not that into.

You know what I am into though? Utterly bizarre cross-genre electronic music built on obscure synthesizer technology.

Ryo Kawasaki - Featuring Concierto De Aranjuez
I never heard of Kawasaki until a few weeks back, when I started getting his name in my “recommended viewing” list on YouTube due to all the city pop I was looking up. Aside from being Japanese though, Kawasaki doesn’t have much in common with city pop. While city pop certainly overlaps with jazz in many ways, Kawasaki is a jazz musician first and foremost, working exclusively as a jazz guitarist throughout most of the 70s.

I checked out a few of his 70s albums, and everything I heard was, at the very least, interesting. He’s a jazz guitarist, and some of his stuff is just too jazzy for me, but on some of those albums he branched out into great funk tangents. And throughout all of them his guitar playing is absolute stellar top-notch stuff.

But in the 80s he took a hard turn and embraced guitar synthesizers entirely. Of course, this is what I’m the most interested in and what I’m sharing tonight.

Featuring Concierto De Aranjuez is an experimental electronic album built almost entirely on guitar synthesizers. The linear notes explicitly state that no keyboard synthesizers were used on this record, only guitar synthesizers and a handful of drum machines. The album is split into two halves. The first half, like the title suggests, is based on the Concierto de Aranjuez by Joaquin Rodrigo. It starts out almost entirely acoustic, only using the synthesized melodies as a backdrop at first. But as it progresses the more synthetic sounds rise to the forefront. It’s a bizarre combination, like a Spanish guitarist somehow ended up on a Klaus Schulze record. Really amazing stuff.

Things go full digital on side B, with tracks like “Marilyn” barely using any traditional guitar sounds at all. It’s amazing that all of it was created using only guitar synths and drum machines. At times it really sounds like he’s using sequencers and keyboards. Incredible.

I really wanted to showcase this album tonight because I think it’s a dynamic and intriguing record. This is not simple “new age” music. This is not a fusion album. This is something different. This is something you really got to hear.

Ryo Kawasaki actually did a lot of other fascinating stuff in the 80s and I’m trying to track it down. I hope I can share more in the future.

Posted in Complete Albums, Ryo Kawasaki | No Comments »

One Part Funk and Three Parts Groovy

Tuesday, January 2nd, 2018

My computer, which had served me well for many years and across two continents, kicked the bucket a few weeks back. And it was rather sudden, so I had to move fast in choosing a replacement. I think I got a good one though, a beast of a machine from a local gaming PC shop called G-Tune. It plays games super great, audio editing is faster than ever, and it’s by far the quietest PC I’ve ever had. I love it.

But it really can’t play music all that well.

Although I suppose that’s really not the computer’s fault. In this situation, iTunes is entirely to blame. On my old PC, I never updated iTunes, I think I was rocking a three or four-year-old version of the program. And it was a slog and slow as hell and had all kinds of problems, but it played music well, and that was kind of the point.

On my new machine, with the newest version of iTunes, music sounds like shit. If I have just a handful of applications running, it starts to pop and crackle, almost non-stop. And I’ve tried mucking about with various settings, both in Windows and in iTunes, all to no avail.

So I thought I would try some alternative programs. The first one that I gave a try was MusicBee. I had heard good things, and it was supposed to be easy to use. And it was at first, but how that programs handles rips (or any new files in my library for that matter) is just atrocious. Simply put, they don’t seem to show up, at least, not in a matter that I would deem punctual. I add an album and have to wait several minutes for all the songs to propagate in my library. And when I would play new songs the song order would get all wonky for no damn reason. Every problem I had with the program just seemed nonsensical and beyond hope. Fuck it.

Now I’m trying MediaMonkey. Allegedly, this program is made special to handle super-large media libraries. In my experience so far, that hasn’t been the case. Constant hangups and lag whenever I try to sort anything. And searching my library often creates delays as well. The interface is just a clusterfuck. So hard to make your way around anything.

Can anyone out there recommend a media manager/music player that just fucking works? One that makes adding new media easy. One that can rip CDs. One that allows me to make playlists and gives me plenty of sorting options. I don’t even care if I have to pay for it. I have no problems paying for a program that works!

Suggestions would be welcome, thanks.

Sheila E.
Glamorous Life Medley
This is from a German 12″ single and includes truncated versions of “The Glamorous Life,” ‘Sister Fate” and “A Love Bizarre.” Medleys are sometimes good, it’s like getting a concentrated version of your favorite artist. And any excuse for me to post more Sheila E. is a good thing.

Pizzicato Five
The Audrey Hepburn Complex (Extended Stanley Donen Mix)
The 59th Street Bridge Song – Feelin’ Groovy (Club Mix – Night Owl)
Let’s Go Away For Awhile (Club Mix – Cafe Bizarre)
I haven’t talked about Pizzicato Five much, I think I’ve only written about them once on this blog. Truth be told, I don’t know all that much about them. They were kinda-sorta a little popular in the States for a brief period in the 90s, but they’ve actually been around much longer than that. They’re almost contemporaneous with YMO, with their first releases coming out in the mid-80s.

This is actually their very first single, and it really sounds ahead of its time, in an entirely retro kind of way. I mean, it’s ahead of its time in what it’s references, that mainly being music from the 60s and 70s. They were definitely throwing back to that retro sound before it was cool. Their jazzy club sound is certainly more reminiscent of acts from the 90s, with Saint Etienne being the most obvious comparison.

This shit is groovy, that’s what it is. Makes sense, as the Shibuya-Kei scene from which they came was heavily influenced by 60s and 70s pop music (I mean, one of these tracks is a Simon & Garfunkel cover after all). PIzzicato Five own some Leslie Gore albums I know it.

Posted in B-sides, Pizzicato Five, remixes, Shelia E | 6 Comments »