I’ve been meaning to write about PE’Z for a long time, but I never seem to have a chance. I’d seen the band’s name pop up on various sites about a year or two before pianist Hiizami Masayuki hooked up with Shiina Ringo on Tokyo Jihen. That got the attention of stateside Japanese music fans.
But PE’Z is rather like Enya — the band’s albums are good, but they all sound the same. Unless you’re actually familiar with a particular PE’Z album, it’s not easy to tell where one begins and the other ends if you string them back to back.
It almost strikes me as pointless writing individual reviews for each album, even if I group them together in one entry.
And yet PE’Z makes an important contribution to jazz music — they make it fun again.
For a major label, Toshiba-EMI seems to have some adventurous A&R. Sony and Universal dominate where pop is concerned, but To-EMI have managed to court a large number of Musicwhore.org favorites at one point or other.
The label currently houses Shiina Ringo, Yaida Hitomi and Utada Hikaru. Zoobombs, Bleach and Number Girl were on its roster, and Hatakeyama Miyuki and PE’Z recorded for the label before moving on.
But it can’t hit a homerun everytime. So this round-up features some near-hits, almost-misses and Yorico.
If you grew up with vinyl and cassette tapes, then you know about the favorite side bias.
It’s my description of liking a particular side of a vinyl record or cassette tape over another. I don’t know if there’s a generally-accepted term for this phenomenom, but I’m sticking with "favorite side bias".
For years, I would listen to Eurythmics’ Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) starting with side two, only because the tite track opened that side of the record. As young as I was back then, I wanted instant gratification — I didn’t pay much mind to the idea an album was actually sequenced to follow a general flow.
As such, I was always left with the impression that Sweet Dreams was a tepid, ambient album. It’s a whole different story when you listen to the album from the start.
The Art of Noise played an important role in the development of my music tastes. I was in 8th grade when "Legs" became a radio hit, and I was intrigued by an instrumental group using found sounds as musical timbres.
It didn’t take much of a leap to go from Art of Noise to Kronos Quartet and eventually, a century’s worth of modern classical music.
And yet, the Art of Noise wasn’t that much artful, nor was it much noise. My siblings would argue otherwise, though.
In Visible Silence and In No Sense? Nonsense! were all I needed from the Art of Noise. I didn’t get the impression Below the Waste was worth the effort, and a 7-inch single I bought with "Close (to the Edit)" and "Beat Box (Diversion One)" didn’t convince me to investigate (Who’s Afraid of …?) The Art of Noise!
Even though ABBA isn’t as anathema as they were 20 years ago — back when it was really uncool to like them — I still remember the teasing I received for even daring to show interest in them beyond 1980.
Junior high is when kids are cruelest, and the social ostracization I received for that mishap of taste left an indelible impression. Looking back, perhaps it was the first sign I knew better, but when you’re already squarely in the unpopular category of that social strata, capitulation meant survival.
So, no, I am not going to admit to any sort of ABBA admiration. You ask me, and I will tell you I’m a fag. You ask me, and I will tell you I have every post-Like a Prayer album from Madonna. (Except American Life. I owned it for a month before I sold it for cash. Man, does Mirwais suck.)
But ask me if I like ABBA, and you will witness the very definition of denial.
So don’t think this review of The Visitors is any indication of fandom. No — it’s an evaluation of a work I could have discovered earlier in my life but didn’t. That is all.
OK. This is what Franz Ferdinand should sound like.
Vola & the Oriental Machine have succeeded where countless ’80s revivalists and the Back Horn (Ikiru Sainou?) have failed. They’ve taken the dance rhythms of New Wave but maintained the urgency of punk.
It’s a conundrum — do you dance or do you mosh? Fucking hell, do both.
I’ll admit — I blame Nakao Kentaro for busting up Number Girl.
He was the guy who wanted to leave, and recognizing a spell would be broken if any one member of Number Girl were to depart, the band called it quits.
I miss Number Girl on the days when Mukai Shuutoku thinks he’s something he’s not. (Avant-garde improviser? Um. No.) I miss Number Girl on the days when Tabuchi Hisako gets lost in the bloodthirsty butchers mix. (Helloooo, birdy!)
So of all the members who have the most to prove, I was expecting Nakao to knock my fucking socks off. And secretly, I was hoping he would.
With her previous album, irony, ACO had gone so far beyond the electronica-pop of Material and absolute ego, she would have fallen off a cliff if she went further.
So on the mini-album mask — 2 1/2 years to record six songs? — she pulls herself back into the world of beats and melodies.
Call it a creative adjustment, kind of like the market corrections on Wall Street.
And personally, I’m glad she’s brought herself down to earth.
It didn’t seem possible that Sasagawa Miwa could get any more introspective, but she does.
Yoake, her third studio album, starts off softly and never really rises to a boisterous level. At least, not in the same manner as some of her more extroverted moments on previous albums.
It’s that steady mood that gives the album a more coherent feel, even when some dead spots threaten to derail its pace.
I had a very brief encounter with Cocteau Twins back in high school.
My friends and I were exploring all kinds of music back then — just something to serve as antidote to Milli Vanili and MC Hammer dug by all the fashionable kids at the time.
For me, that meant Kronos Quartet, Stephen Sondheim, Philip Glass and John Zorn. For my friends, that meant Erasure, the Smiths, the Dead Milkmen and Cocteau Twins.
Cocteau Twins came as a recommendation to one of my friends from his cousin in college. I was in his car when he put on the cassette tape (remember those?).
I may have heard only one or two tracks in that ride, but it certainly left an indelible impression.