Epo Depot

March 24th, 2019

Epo
Performance (Overture)
Shang-Hai Etranger
Tibetan Dance
Tibetan Dance (Edited Version)

I posted some Epo tracks a while back.

She’s fun.

To be honest, I really don’t know what else to say about her. She’s just…fun. Bubbly upbeat synthpop with a sound so “1985” that it’s gone from hip to dated to retro to dated to retro to hip three times over. Epo was incredibly prolific (a common trait I’m finding in 80s J-pop), releasing a whopping 13 records between 1980 and 1992. Her early stuff is much more “city pop,” that funk/soul/pop hybrid style that vaporwave artists are always drawing their samples from. But by the time the mid-80s rolled around she traded in that downtempo jazz for some uptempo 808s and went to work, releasing several fun albums during that period.

I’ll be honest, every Epo album I’ve bought to date has been a little uneven. Even the best of the bunch that I’ve found, Hi-Touch Hi-Tech, was a little touch and go, with slow ballads dragging it down just when it was getting good. Ditto goes for Pump! Pump! an album far more sedate than it’s double-exclamation point title would suggest. Harmony, the album from which tonight’s tracks are pulled from, suffers the same fate. Just when it gets the blood pumping with some upbeat bangers, a plodding mid-tempo ballad or a forgettable filler track slams the brakes on the whole thing.

But the bangers are bangers, man. I feel like I should point out that Epo is not just a “pop idol,” meaning a pretty face put in front of a microphone. She was a singer/songwriter, often writing the majority of tracks on her albums. Usually working with her was Nobuyuki Shimizu, a musical ubergenius who played with just about everyone of note in Japan. The back cover of Harmony proudly proclaims that Shimizu plays “all keyboards, guitars, bass, drums and many other instruments” on the album. The same goes for a lot of other albums he worked on at the time. He’s like the Jack Antonoff of Japanese 80s pop music.

Like I said, Harmony is an uneven affair, but when it’s on fire damn its on fire. The opener “Performance (Overture)” melds disco string melodies with driving electronic beats like its taking the best of “On The Radio” Donna Summer and “I Feel Love” Donna Summer. “Shang-hai Étranger” is another high point, with how it combines traditional Japanese melodies with some truly radical synthesizer work. Feels like it could be a YMO b-side.

The album’s true highlight, however, is kind of a ringer, it’s a cover of Ryuichi Sakamoto’s “Tibetan Dance,” which first appeared a year earlier on his Illustrated Musical Encyclopedia album. However, calling it a cover is a bit of a misnomer. It’s straight up the track that appeared on that album, with a bit of edits and overdubs, including Epo’s vocals. The back cover just flat-out says that the backing track for the song is taken from the Sakamoto album (with permission, of course). I wonder how often such things happen, pop singers taking solid instrumental tracks from electronic producers and just singing over them with minimal edits. If it doesn’t happen a lot, why the hell not? Seems like a good, valid shortcut for finding decent backing tracks. In addition to the album version, I’m also including a special edited version that appeared on a 12″ single.

I don’t think that Epo was ever a massive huge artist, but she must’ve been at least modestly successful in the 80s if her non-stop output is any indication. Strange then that so much of her stuff is woefully out-of-print. Some of her records haven’t even been re-released on CD (although all of her best ones have). I feel like this is a common fate for B-level J-Pop acts of that era. There were just so many of them (bubble economy y’all) that some have just gotten lost in the shuffle over time. And unless you were a megastar (Seiko) or found cult success later (Taeko Ohnuki) you kind vanish to the past. Someone really needs to compile this stuff Nuggets style so the world can rediscover the hidden gems that have been lost to Disk Union 100 yen bins.

 

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This blog post is best viewed on a three-monitor display

March 14th, 2019

Zuntata
SELF – BIG Beat Remix
Living in Japan has many benefits, amazing food, a fantastic public transit system, affordable health care, no guns, and of course, easier access to limited run special editions of games.

Taito just released the Darius Cozmic Collection, which includes several versions of early Darius games, both from the arcades and home. It comes in a massively-oversized box that also serves as a home for a wonderful book full of pictures and information about the games (albeit entirely in Japanese).

All that stuff is great, and I’m happy that I finally own decent home ports of these classic games. But I’m going to be real, the the main draw for me when it comes to Darius has always been its amazing music, and this collection is no exception. Included in the box set is the Darius The Omnibus II CD, a compilation featuring remixes of several classic Darius tunes, as well as a super-limited edition bonus CD. Most of that CD is dedicated to the soundtrack to PC Engine exclusive Darius Alpha, but it opens with this exclusive remix to the track “Self.” I might be mistaken here, but I think “Self” first appeared on Darius Gaiden. It’s hard to say though. Yo, there are a lot of Darius games.

While this track is impossible to buy without shelling out $300 for an import collection of 80s arcade shooters, it’s worth mentioning that most of Zuntata’s music is not only in print, but able to buy in America on iTunes. Want the complete soundtrack to Darius Gaiden? They got it, as well a soundtracks to deep cuts like Sonic Blast Man, Space Gun, and Kid Kaikai. Credit where credit is due, good on them for making all that stuff easy to get.

ALFH LYRA
Street Fighter II Medley (GMF Version)
Nearly all Street Fighter II music is in-print and easy to come by, thanks largely to Brave Wave and their amazing Street Fighter II re-issue from a few years back. But a few tracks have fallen through the cracks, like this live medley featuring the greatest hits of Street Fighter music. This was originally performed at the 1992 Game Music Festival in Japan, and was included on the CD of the same name.

The Game Music Festival was a thing in Japan for at least a few years in the early-90s and possibly the late-80s as well. The 1990 Game Music Festival CD bills itself as “Zuntata vs SST Band” and holy shit I’m jealous that I can’t track that disc down.

Again, if you like the music to Street Fighter II, be sure to pick up Brave Wave’s absolutely incredible release that features the game’s complete soundtrack, even both the CPS-1 and CPS-2 variations. In a time where so many game music releases are limited releases manufactured with scarcity in mind, it’s important to call out the studios that are doing it right.

 

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Hot Sax and Sequencer Jazz

March 3rd, 2019

Akira Sakata – テノク・サカナ 
Room
Yarin’Age
Meuniere
Panco
Akira Sakata is a Japanese saxophonist who has worked with Bill Laswell and Jim O’Rouke. If you know anything about those artists, then I feel that pretty much says it all. Working as a frequent collaborator of those two usually earmarks you as a “weird avant-garde motherfucker for whom ideas like ‘genre’ and ‘traditional song structure’ does not apply.”

I bought this record not knowing who Sakata was, grabbing it instead because I noticed that it was put out by Better Days, a label known for their avant-garde pop releases by artists like Ryuichi Sakamoto and Yazuaki Shimizu. And this record certainly didn’t disappoint in that regard. Even if Sakata didn’t work with Laswell, I would be forced to compare the two here, this sounds like something Laswell would’ve cooked up around the same time, since its an intersection between the then burgeoning electro scene (this came out in 1980) and free, almost 100% improvisational jazz. But while Laswell’s experiments with melding electro and jazz gave us mainstream smashes like Herbie Hancock’s “Rockit,” this swings hard in the other way. The electro elements don’t make the music more mainstream, in fact, the opposite happens. Sakata’s sparse, wildly unpredictable playing takes the beats and bloops of the electronic instruments and transforms them into a tool for his free jazz freakouts.

On side A of this four-track release, that’s nearly as annoying as it sounds. Neither “Room” nor “Yarin’Age” strive to achieve any sense of form. If they’re truly improvisational sessions, they sound like them, meandering around in search or a hook or theme, and largely failing. As experiments, they’re interesting. As songs, they’re pretty nerve-grating.

Side B fairs far better though, the electronic elements are more locked-down. On “Meuniere,” the Sakata’s sax is moved far into the back of the mix, and the wild electronic sequences are given center stage. For me, this is the highlight of the album, and almost krautrock in execution. The pulsing beat is interesting enough on its own, but Sakata’s saxophone gives the song a style and sense of life I don’t hear often in electronic music. It’s Ninja Tune by way of Can. “Panco,” is the most traditional-sounding number one record, and the most full-sounding one too. Real drums are mixed with electronic beats, both serving to steady Sakata’s wailing sax. All the while, a menacing synth-strings section plays behind it all. If there was a bit more form to it, it could even work as film music.

Sakata wasn’t working alone on this, among his collaborators on this release was Shigenori Kamiya, whose name some readers of this site might recognize as he’s responsible for one of my favorite Japanese electronic albums of the 1970s, Mu. It’s probably safe to assume that the electronic bits were more his doing that Sakata’s.

Another release that’s definitely not for everyone, maybe not even me. But if you like posts I’ve shared in the past by artists like Blue Box, Toshinori Kondo, or Jun Fukamachi, then you might enjoy this one too! Let me know what you think in the comments!

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Original Music by Imitation

February 28th, 2019

Imitation – Original
Complete Album Download

Sometimes buying an album strictly because the cover pays off, as was the case with this one, Original, the hilariously-named debut album from Japanese synth act Imitation, which came out in 1980.

Imitation’s name is quite a misnomer, as they’re one of the most original and striking Japanese synthpop acts that I’ve come across. While most of the 80s pop scene in Japan was content to release polished radio-friendly AOR with a synth overlay, Imitation seemed to be way more out-there. To me, they’re akin to The Plastics, another avant-garde experimental synthpop group from the same time, as both groups seem to draw heavily from Talking Heads and Public Image Ltd., thanks to their willingness to mix synthpop with other genres and styles like funk and reggae. Imitation actually remind me the most of Polyrock, due to their tendency to use simple, repetitive rhythms akin to Philip Glass (who produced Polyrock’s records). However, since no one in any country bought Polyrock’s records, I can only guess that this must be a coincidence.

In addition to their musical style, another thing that Imitation has in common with Polyrock is that nobody bought their records either. At least, that’s what I’m assuming since I never come across them used and have never heard them mentioned in articles discussing 80s Japanese synthpop (including the ones I’ve written). It looks like they had some famous fans though, or perhaps the right connections. Their first record includes lyrics written by Chris Mosdell, who was the regular English songwriter for YMO and was produced by Kazuhiko Katoh, another longtime YMO associate. Their second LP, Muscle and Heat, includes a contribution from Sandii of Sandii and the Sunsets, while Hideki Matsutake, AKA Logic System, AKA the dude who programmed all of YMO’s sequencers drops in on their third and final album, Happy Hunting.

I haven’t been able to come across those records yet, as they’re even rare than this one. So all I’m sharing tonight is my copy of Original. It’s a vinyl rip, but I think it sounds pretty damn good. And since CDs of this sucker go for over $100 I doubt that I’ll be buying one those anytime soon. I hope that I can dig up their other two albums someday, along with the singer Cheebo’s sole solo album, as I really want to dive in more into their out-there sound.

Posted in Imitation | 3 Comments »

Synthwave(maker)

February 15th, 2019

Wavemaker – Where Are We Captain?….
Complete Album Download

Wavemaker is the third synth-focused project associated with BBC Radiophonic alum Brian Hodgson that I’ve shared on this blog. The first was Eletrophon, who released a collection of classical covers performed on electronic instruments in 1973 called In A Convent Garden. The second was the amazing Zygoat album, which came out a year later. While Hodgson is not credited on that release, that album was recorded in his Eletrophon music studio, and I can only imagine that he played some role in its creation, even if it was minor.

Wavemaker is a proper Hodgson release, a collaboration between him and Eletrophon co-founder John Lewis. Their 1974 debut release Where Are We Captain?… feels like a counterpoint to Zygoat. While the latter was a synth-funk jam of the highest degree, pushing the boundaries not only of what synthesizers were capable of in the mid-70s, but what could be considered popular music as well, Wavemaker takes things down a more restrained road with their release. Where Are We Captain?… is a spacey, out-there record for sure, but it’s far more concerned with traditional song structures, hooks, and melodies than anything on Zygoat. The only time Wavemaker takes things entirely into the experimental and avant-garde is with their namesake track, which forsakes melodies and rhythm for eerie soundscapes and excursions into “let’s see how much we can make our instruments sound like spaceships” territory.

This album also is different than Zygoat in that it features a smattering of acoustic instrumentation as well. Much of the percussion here is performed on actual honest-to-goodness drums (and tympani). The drumming, which is loose and free-flowing, contribute an almost jazz-like feeling to the proceedings, almost reminiscent of synthesizer-heavy krautrock that was coming out at the time. Unlike krautrock like Harmonia and Can though, this all sounds much more organized and put-together. There might be a smidge of improvisation here, but most of this record sounds tightly-written and well put-together. These weren’t some Berlin School dudes high on acid experimenting with knobs and sprockets, these guys knew what the hell they were doing and it shows. It almost feels like Hodgson and Lewis were trying to re-invent classical music for the 20th century, especially with the first half of the album. You could probably re-work those tracks for a proper symphony and musically speaking, they would still sound strong.

While Where Are We Captian?… lacks the what-the-fuck-is-this insanity and intensity of Zygoat’s release, it still a tremendous album, and was no doubt a technological breakthrough when it was first released some 40+ years ago. A lot of the sounds on this record still sound out-of-this-world, I can’t imagine what they must’ve sounded like to people in 1975.

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Jamma Slamma

February 5th, 2019

I was going to write a super long post tonight about an avant-garde out-of-print synth masterpiece, but I just don’t have it in me. Here are a shitload of Michael Jackson remixes.

Michael Jackson
Jam (7” Edit)
Jam (Roger’s Jeep Mix)
Jam (Atlanta Techno Dub)
Jam (Roger’s Jeep Radio Mix)
Jam (Teddy’s Jam)
Jam (More Than Enuff Mix)
Jam (Atlanta Techno Mix)
Don’t Stop ’til You Get Enough (Masters At Work Remix)
Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’ (Brothers In Rhythm House Mix)
For a short time I would say that “Jam” was my favorite Michael Jackson song. It was the fourth single off of Dangerous, following “Black or White,” “Remember The Time” and “In The Closet.” I dug the shit out of “Black or White” when I was a kid, but I was not big on those other two numbers. “Remember the Time” just felt like a mediocre mid-tempo love song to me, and I just outright hated everything about “In the Closet,” I just thought (and still think) it’s a crappy song.

But I got on “Jam” hard when it came out. The video, which featured Michael Jordon, probably had something to do with that. Like every 12 year old boy in 1992, I was a Bulls fan, often rocking my dope Bulls Starter jacket to school, so to see MJ with MJ (see how they planned that) was just too much for my little brain to take. And the song is just fucking great, even as a kid I preferred upbeat, silly dance tracks to emotional ballads or mid-tempo pop hits. I was ready to get in a groove even then.

I’ve been buying singles for “Jam” for what must be over a decade now. I’ve bought 12″ vinyl singles at least twice, both back in the states and in Japan, and each time they were scratched to high heaven. All attempts to clean them up digitally always failed. Thankfully, I was finally able to find the singles on CD this year, and get not one, not two, but seven goddamn remixes of the song. Word. Score.

But even better than the a-side remixes are the bonus cuts, remixes of MJ classics “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough” and “Wanna Be Startin’ Something” by the legendary production crews Brothers In Rhythm and Masters At Work. Holy shit.

I’m still amazed that all these fantastic remixes are sitting on a self somewhere, unreleased and unable to purchase in 2019. I get that there are…issues with MJ at the moment (I have no educated opinion on that so no comment from me) but the demand is certainly there. I don’t know how much I’d be down with another album of newly mixed and/or finished MJ tunes that were previously unreleased, but I’d be totally down for the MJ estate to re-release all of Michael’s singles, complete with their remixes. Am I in the minority here? The lack of 12″ mix re-releases by huge artists like MJ, Prince and even Madonna make me feel that maybe the demand just isn’t there. I guess that kind of makes sense, maybe most people don’t need eight versions of “Vogue” and five versions of “Smooth Criminal” BUT I SURE AS FUCK DO AND DAMMIT THEY SHOULD CARE ABOUT ME.

Seriously though, just put this shit on iTunes and streaming services already, what the fuck do they got to lose? Assholes like me are just going to share it all anyways.

Posted in Michael Jackson, remixes | 1 Comment »

Ill-Advised 90s Superfly

January 25th, 2019

If you follow me on Twitter (you shouldn’t, it’s a terrible place), you may have seen me rant and ramble about various portable audio issues lately.

I’m not going to recap it all right now, I plan on a full-length blog post about it later, but my iPod Classic finally died and replacing it has been a nightmare. I absolutely abhor the iPod Touch, and I couldn’t get it to work right on my computer. Today, I got a nice high-end Sony Walkman. And it’s a really good music player, but for some damn reason the software that came with it won’t work on my computer. I have a feeling that that 110,000 song library scares it.

Wanted to do an informal poll here, although I can imagine that my audience isn’t really representative of mainstream musical consumption habits, how do you all listen to music these days? Do any of you actually buy music? I’ve felt like a relic for buying CDs for a few years now, but now I feel like a walking anachronism for buying music at all. It seems to me that everyone I know just streams it. And the very few I know that do buy music listen to it on their phone in lieu of a dedicated MP3 player.

So, am I really just that out of touch? I feel that there’s still a market for a good mid-level MP3 player with decent computer software. But literally every major corporation on earth seems to disagree with me. Is music ownership really dead?

Here’s a…not very good song to help you while you ponder these big questions.

Ice T
Superfly 1990 (Mantronix Remix)
Superfly 1990 (Fly Mix)
Superfly 1990 (New Jack Swing Remix)
Did you know that there was a sequel to Superfly? Shit, did you know that there were two sequels to Superfly? The first, Superfly T.N.T., came out in 1973, just a year after the release of the original. That movie is allegedly terrible. I say “allegedly” because I’ve never seen it, as it’s not exactly an easy film to track down. It was never released on DVD or Blu-ray, and I doubt it’s going to pop up on Netflix in the near future. I feel like whoever owns the rights to that one wants it to stay buried.

In 1990, Superfly returned with…Return Of Superfly. Although, not really. The original Superfly, Ron O’Neil passed on the flick, and the character was recast with soap opera actor Nathan Purdee…because yeah why the fuck not.

 

 

While Superfly T.N.T. has vanished off the face of the fucking earth, you can find Return Of Superfly on Amazon Prime right this minute. I imagine the rights holders of that one realized they could get a few views based on the recent Superfly remake. I haven’t seen Return Of Superfly, but based on that amazing trailer, it looks like the entire cast dies? Seriously, how many people get blown away in that trailer? Is Charles Bronson in that movie somehow?

The nearly forgotten Return Of Superfly also had a nearly forgotten soundtrack to go along with it, featuring new songs by Curtis Mayfield, who of course composed the legendary music for the original film. In an incredibly freakish coincidence, the soundtrack came out the same day Mayfield was paralyzed when a piece of stage equipment fell on him. Making this one of the last things he worked on before his accident. Damn.

I don’t have the soundtrack proper, just the 12″ single for the main theme, which features Mayfield alongside Ice-T (with Lenny Kravtiz on guitar and as a producer). It’s an odd number. The Mayfield parts are on point, and it has a real groove to it. But Ice-T really sounds like he’s phoning it in. He’s doing this more like a spoken word piece than a rap track. I really hated this track when I first heard it, and while I still don’t love it, I do have to say that it’s grown on me. Those Mayfield parts are great, and the bassline and overall feel of the track is solid. Honestly, I wish there was a remake that removed Ice-T and just turned the track into a Mayfield solo number with some extended instrumental bits.

Anyone see the new Superfly? Was it remotely good at all?

 

Posted in Curtis Mayfield | 5 Comments »

I flunked out of Berlin School

January 14th, 2019

Tonight’s post features electronic music from the late-70s, all from albums that are out-of-print.

A lot of times, when I share music like this, I go whole hog and just put the album up in its entirety, but I wanted to consolidate and just focus on some specific highlights tonight. I feel that trying to get a bunch of random people to download an entire album of ambient/experimental electronic music might be a hard sell.

I do have some stuff by more mainstream releases in the pipe, but posts for the next month or so may be sparse. Looking for a new teaching gig (looooong story) has taken up a lot of free time as of late! But things are cool, and I got cool stuff planned, so hang tight and mellow out with these groovy tunes.

 

Hydravion
Etude En Do
Hydravion are an odd sort, halfway between electronic and rock music. While they rely heavily on keyboards and other electronic effects, they also employ more traditional instruments, often to great effect. This track straight up features a dope guitar solo, not to mention an absolutely bitchin’ bassline, the types of things you rarely find on electronic music of this era. Apparently, their guitar player, Patrick Verbeke, went on to be blues musician of some regard, and I can hear it here. Dude has style.

These guys didn’t put out much, just a pair of albums in the late-70s. Both are out-of-print, but neither command a high price in the secondary market. So if you dig this, they’re pretty easy to check out.

 

Adrian Wagner
Chasquis
Andrian Wagner’s great-great grandfather was Richard Wagner, which I imagine kind of sucked. Just think, no matter how great the musical contribution Adrian made to society, his parents could’ve been like, “granddad wrote ‘Ride of the Valkyries,’ what’s you’re problem with this synthesizer crap?”

But Adrian Wagner, who sadly passed away last year, was not only a composer, but an inventor. He was the creator of the Wasp synthesizer, which was one of the very first digital synthesizers when it came out in the late 1970s. While the wasp didn’t sell all that great when it first came out, these days they’re prized collectibles amon synth-enthusiasts, thanks to their unique look and sound.

I don’t know if Adrian used the wasp or similar sytnhs on this track from his 1978s album The Last Inca, but it certainly sounds like it. It has a cleaner and brighter sound than a lot of other instrumental electronic music of that era. Instead of sounding like a Tangerine Dream knock-off, his music actually sounds like the tunes that Tangerine Dream would be making in the second-half of the 80s, except that his music is actually good.

Wagner seemed to have a thing for Incas, this was just one release themed around Incan culture, with Instincts being the other. Neither were ever released on CD individually, but they were bundled together on one disc in 1990 for a release called Incan Gold, if you decide to seek them out.

 

Earthstar
Latin Sirens Face The Wall
Earthstar was a Berlin School ambient/electronic artist much in the vein of Klaus Schulze, so much so that he produced this album from which this track comes from, their 1972 sophomore effort, French Skyline. However, unlike literally every other artist like this, Earthstar weren’t from Germany. They were actually from New York. I’m sure there are other artists of this style that were from America, but they certainly were few and far between – this type of music seems to be distinctly European.

Earthstar put out four albums from 1978 to 1982. Their debut record, Salterbarty Tales, is in high-regard among electronic fans, but since it was an independent release and has never been repressed, original copies go for a mint these days, so I haven’t heard much of it.

This track is, like I said, very reminiscent of Klaus Schulze, but I do feel like the group do bring their own style to it, it has a more ethereal quality than a lot of Schulze, thanks to the choral effects that give it a church-from-another-world vibe. If you ever find yourself out in the middle-of-nowhere around 3am, this would be suitable background music.

French Skyline was reissued on CD about ten years ago, and its still affordable online. LPs aren’t too expensive either. If you dig it, I also recommend checking out their follow-up, Atomkraft? Nein, Danke!, which features shorter songs, and is a bit more diverse in style.

Posted in Adrian Wagner, Earthstar, Hydravion | 1 Comment »

Arranged game music for the new year

January 3rd, 2019

Capcom
Ghosts ‘n Goblins (Arrange Version)
Commando (Arrange Version)
These arrange versions are both from Capcom Game Music, a collection of tunes from Capcom games that was released by GMO Records in August of 1986 (according to the VGMdb). It was their sixth release overall, and their fourth collection of game music by a single company, following similar collections featuring Nintendo, Hudson and Konami.

While the Hudson collection featured an an entire side of arranged editions, this album copies Konami’s format, with just a pair of re-imagined tracks. Shame, I wish we would’ve been treated to arranged variations of music from games like “Section Z” or “Trojan” instead of ear-grating audio rips from “1942” and “Higemaru.”  Neither of those games feature much music, so their tracks are mostly just raw game audio, and are very hard to listen to.

Like many other early arranged versions featured on GMO releases, the arranged mixes here are by Yoshihiro Kunimoto. Unlike future arrange albums, which often featured full bands or sometimes even orchestras, these are still largely digital affairs with drum machines and synthesizers abound. Very fun stuff though. I always view arranged versions like these as what the game company wanted the music to sound like at the time, if they weren’t limited by game hardware limitations. Both of these are great, but the “Ghost ‘n Goblins” version is better, mostly because it’s just a better song overall, but also because it has plenty of dope synth bass. Said it before, I’ll say it again – I love me that synth bass.

Namco
Pac-Man A Go-Go
Solo Suite Xevious -No. 1-
Main Theme From “Rolling Thunder”
The early GMO releases would usually feature just a handful of arranged versions. The focus was always on the original music. But by the 90s this would change, and more companies would embrace the arranged version as the showcase tracks, even releasing albums comprised entirely of arranged versions. Makes sense to me. If you wanted to hear the original game music, you could always just play the game. These albums gave the companies and the composers more freedom with the music.

Like I said when talking about the Capcom albu, most arranged albums I have feature mixes that are largely still digital and based around electronic instruments.

But This is Namco!, the album from which these tracks came from, is really different. All of the tracks here focus on live instrumentation, and with some really odd choices too. The “One O’Clock Galaga ’88” track reworks the theme music from that game as a big band jazz tune, while “Solo Suite Xevious -No.1-” takes the game’s rather simple melody and transforms it for saxophone (I think – I’m not up on my brass instruments). It’s a really sparse mix too, so raw and quiet that I can even hear the player’s breath between notes and the clicks of the keys.

There are some bold choices here, but overall I think the variety is a little detrimental to the final product. There’s just too much going on, the album has no focus on defined style. Yeah, the lullaby version of Mappy’s music is alright, but it’s sandwiched between the jazzy Galaga theme and a bombastic as fuck 80s-rock take on the music from Dragon Spirit. There’s no flow. And also, some of this music just isn’t all that great or memorable. Maybe I would feel differently I was more familiar with games like The Return of Ishitar and Dragon Spirit, maybe nostalgia would help. But I have no feelings for most of the games on this album, so it’s just a collection of (sometimes not great) versions of music from games I’ve barely heard of.

There are a few standouts though! In addition to the awesome saxophone Xevious theme, the full-on jazz version of the theme to Rolling Thunder is just an absolute banger. It completely nails the suave, suit-and-tie spy aesthetic the game was going for.

Also “Pac-Man a Go-Go” is great. Because Pac-Man is great. And good on them for somehow making an entire song out of what is probably 10 seconds of original game music.

May 2019 bring us more impressively reworked game music, and less white nationalists hellbent on killing us all!

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Mythos – eccentricity over greatness

December 29th, 2018

Mythos
Oriental Journey – Hero’s Death
Transatlantik Non-Stop
Harry Chanceless
Concrete City
Quasar
Flut-e-Quenzer: The Knight

Flute really had its time in the rock spotlight in the 70s, didn’t it?

A few weeks back, I wrote about Steve Hillage. One thing I like/respect about Hillage is his willingness to change with the times and embrace new genres. He started as the guitarist of the supremely out-there Gong, went solo with a series of fantastic prog rock albums, shifted gears entirely into synthpop only to take a break from the music scene entirely for over a decade before reinventing himself as ambient/electronic musician. That’s bold.

An artist that went along a similar path to Hillage was Mythos, which started off as a group in 1972 but slowly morphed into a solo project by lead vocalist/flutist/keyboardist Stephan Kaske by the end of the decade. Their 1972 self-titled debut is a well-regarded classic by krautrock die-hards, thanks to its unique combination of jazz, folk and space rock. Their 1975 follow-up, Dreamlab, featured an entirely new line-up save for Kaske, but mostly kept the same sound. It was a little more spacey with some more keyboards thrown in, but I hazard to guess that most fans of their debut dig on that record too.

But things would take a hard turn, and fast. Again with an entirely new line-up, and this time with Kaske taking reigns creatively (he’s the sole credited songwriter on all Mythos releases from this point on), the band would release Strange Guys in 1978, followed by Concrete City in 1979. Both albums completely disregard the band’s penchant for long-form experimental pieces and lieu of hard rock mixed with synthesizer solos and the occasional flute trip. Gary Numan by way of Alice Cooper and Jethro Tull.

The lines between prog and new wave would blur even more with their next release, Quasar, which came out in 1980. I’ve listened to this record over a dozen times since discovering it last month, and I still struggle to describe it. I’ve read comparisons to Ultravox, which make sense, but while early Ultravox was synthpop masquerading as punk rock, I feel like this is prog trying to work on the dance floor. The sequencers and synthesizers are so prominent here. The acoustic drums are the only thing on this album that ground it to any rock sound at all, and they’re often so low in the mix that it barely matters. When the electronic elements mix with Kaske’s flute, the album takes on a creepy vibe. One of the tracks I’m sharing from that album, “Flut-e-equenzer – The Knight” gives Goblin and Carpenter a ride when it comes to instrumental creepiness.

Quasar is Mythos’ best album not only because of its killer combination of electronic and classic rock elements, but because it’s the only album in their entire discography where I would call Kaske’s vocals “passable.” At best. I don’t think it’s unfair to just flat-out say it: Kaske can’t sing. At all. Kaske is probably a keyboardist first, a flutist second, and a vocalist eighth (I mean, I bet he’d be better at plumbing, car repair and a myriad of other things if he gave them a go). Once you get used to it though, there is a charm to his occasionally off-key, always off-kilter way of vocalizing. Kaske isn’t the first singer with no observable singing talent, after all (insert joke about Bob Dylan). And on Quasar, the robotic nature of the music mesh well with Kaske’s vocals, which one could charitably describe “as if a robot impersonating Ian Curtis was reprogrammed to sound like Bryan Ferry on downers.”

But even Kaske had to know that vocals were weak point. In 1982 the “band” (which was finally only just Kaske and no one else) released Grand Prix, and the album is largely an instrumental electronic affair. Most all of the vocals are run through a vocoder and other distortion effects, and are brief at most. Only the hideous “Robot Secret Agents” features Kaske on lead vocals, singing in his natural voice, and boy…that track is…um…something else.

Yikes.

But aside from that, Grand Prix is a damn good record. Prog fans hate it, probably because it’s not a prog album. This is synthpop through and through, composed and performed almost entirely on electronic instruments…with flute, of course. It’s a good album of Kraftwerk-inspired technopop…with flute! I mean, how many albums can you say that about?

Jethro Tull gave flute a bad name, it’s not fair.

I find something oddly charming about Mythos. Their music is just so strange. There are more ambitious and experimental krautrock bands. There are better and more technically proficient prog bands. There are more upbeat and fun synthpop acts. Mythos tried their hands at many a genre, yet mastered none of them. They’re utterly forgotten. Failures three times over. All of their albums have weak spots. The early ones sometimes drag on too much. Their prog albums have their fair share of weak numbers. Grand Prix at times comes off as both dated and an obvious Kraftwerk rip-off. But each of them have their own qualities that make them stand out too. Their first two albums combine folk, jazz and electronics in a way that even most of their fellow krautrockers never even tried. Concrete City and Quasar and their amalgamation of metal and synthetics, create a sound that is at times menacing, and never boring. And Grand Prix is just a really fun, great-sounding record that is as charming as it is dated.

If you dig the sampling of Mythos that I’m sharing tonight, I encourage you to dig deeper and check out their albums proper. Again, I really recommend Quasar the most. But if you like pure early electronic music, you really can’t go wrong with Grand Prix either. Do be careful with their digital re-issues, however. While I haven’t found much fault with the CD copies of Grand Prix and Concrete City that I bought, a lot of reviews of their other albums cite multiple audio defects with their other CD re-issues. With those, it might be best to stick with the original vinyl copies. Thankfully, as literally no one cares about this band, you can usually find them online for a pittance.

Mythos. Occasionally amazing. Usually okay. Sometimes bad. Never boring.

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