les rita mitsouko
cool frenesie
With their 5th original album, vocalist Catherine Ringer and multi-instrumentalist Fred Chichin have slotted back into the niche the crazy combo carved for themselves in the pop business back in 1984 with the latinophile party hit ‘Marcia Baila.’ Les Rita Mitsouko’s Conny Plank-produced debut, followed by their new wave masterpiece “The No Comprendo” with good old Tony Visconti on the console, and their streamlined, Sparks-flavored “Marc & Robert,” demonstrated that neither good taste nor a cutting-edge sound were necessary to become pop stars.
Instead the French Eurythmics/Pizzicato Five caricatures continue to live in a world of provocation — Catherine Ringer was one of the first artists ever to perform “unplugged” when she got rid of her tampon by throwing it into the audience — a world shored up by the rather unique concept that it pays to be a step behind and one note out of tune. If this just sounds like perverse Parisian arrogance, give the new album by the revitalized Rita Mitsouko 2000 (the Japanese part of the name coming from a Guerlain perfume) a try. Melodramatic chansons, electro-pop that would have been hip in the mid-eighties — let’s call it “French J-Pop” — and kitschy, catchy sing-along melodies that grow out of the anything-goes, multicultural blend the band name hints at, make Cool Frenesie a release packed with high-level pop tunes without a single boring moment.
heaven
sound of sequence
Kiyoshi Miyaura is not a rare name in Japan, but the man behind Heaven recognized its international potential to go transcendental by dropping the ‘i’ and changing it to “My Aura.” His beautiful, minimalist compositions have recently been heavily featured on J-Wave’s ambient music program, “Still Life — Night Sequence.” Like the solo Brian Eno on the international stage, My Aura is now recognized as Japan’s missing link between contemporary electronic music and so-called ‘new age/healing’ music.
Although the low-tech sleeve art might mislead you into expecting some minimal techno blubber, you’d do better to use the above-mentioned master, the instrumental half of David Sylvian’s “Gone to Earth” album (“Kool Emotion”), or quieter pieces by Autechre for reference. “Sound of Sequence” is no wall-of-sound shower but a collection of percussion-less chill-out soundscapes that hit the nail on the head. In a few pieces My Aura employs his trademark electronically tuned flute, enhancing the overall relaxing touch. Critics might say nothing really happens throughout the album, however the deftly managed patterns of sound waves and melodies manage to keep expectations high and even fulfill them in the last piece, the relatively aggressive “Web Jam.”
joseph arthur
come to where i’m from
Peter Gabriel’s Real World sound factory is one of those places with an automatic guarantee stamped on all its products. Waving the American flag for the label is Joseph Arthur, who, although now resident in London, delivers his second full album of modern US-style alternative folk rock — rough cut diamonds the sound god was wise enough not to polish with a Real-World-sheen.
As on 1997’s debut “Big City Secrets,” on “Come To Where I’m From” Joseph Arthur presents the comedies and tragedies of modern day life in 12 pieces (1 bonus track for Japan), sung and played over tastefully programmed sounds livened up with the occasional guest musician. The music is so deep and dark that, despite titles like “In The Sun,” it puts Beck’s comparatively fluffy universe in the shade. Mr. Hansen can stay cool about his place in the sun and leave the hard stuff to Joseph Arthur (The opening number In The Sun was actually recorded by Peter Gabriel for the Princess Diana tribute album). Like on the EP “Vacancy,” which was Grammy nominated last year for Best Recording Package, this CD again features Arthur’s own original cover artwork.
shéna ringo
shoso strip
Good old Ramones must have had some kind of vision when they sung “Sheena is a Punk Rocker.” In 1998 a 20 year-old girl from Fukuoka thought it would be a blast to dress up as a nurse, kick in glass screens and do other wild things others would, no doubt, get arrested for. But all that image schlock wasn’t even necessary, since Shéna Ringo’s outstanding singing and songwriting skills, combined with her naïve yet self-confident, direct way of making statements, are more than enough to take your breath away. Containing the manifest piece “Kabukicho no Joo” her debut album “Muzai Moratorium” stirred up the Japanese charts, adding a new and spicy flavour to the bland J-pop brew.
Following the once-heard-never-forgotten melody of the fill-in single “Honno,” which kept expectations high between albums, the two rather average rock ballad-style singles “Tsumi to Batsu” and “Gips” were simultaneously released earlier this year to presage opus No. 2. From inside her own little Kabukicho world Ringo sings again of dreams, disappointments and complaints, and - against the expectations of the two singles - on “Shoso Strip” she even gears up and comes across in punk, electro-pop, swing rock, and even comic-strip-sound-collage disguise. With some deft arrangement touches to cover up some of her more played out melodies, Shéna Ringo manages to make Shoso Strip a strong follow-up.
frank zappa
everything is healing nicely
Thanks to the relentless search for tapes of everyone who ever happened to be within recording distance when Zappa made a noise, the maestro’s posthumous oeuvre is set to soon break even with the more than 50 albums Frank could sign in person. While the majority of these recently released works focus on Zappa’s younger years or early ‘70s escapades, here is now a gem that documents the precious moments just before the magic circle connecting Zappa’s first and last work was about to close.
EIHN is a recording made during the first sessions with Cologne-based Ensemble Modern, which resulted in the celebrated “Yellow Shark” concerts. In this ensemble Zappa found the band of his life, which may seem surprising until it is remembered that it was composers such as Edgar Varese, Anton Webern, and Igor Stravinsky, who led teen Zappa into music. With 70 minutes of joking, jamming, and improvising, so relaxed it didn’t seem possible with Zappa’s previous bands, EIHN offers an insight to the first reactions and the spontaneous assimilation of an ensemble that had never been confronted with working methods like Zappa’s before. Moving beyond Yellow Shark’s modern classical style, EIHN sets out into free jazz, ambient, and the outstanding dadaist pieces with ‘lyrics’ read by Ensemble Modern’s pianist, Hermann Kretzschmar, from his library card and from letters to PFIQ (Piercing Fans International Quarterly) magazine. The CD comes in a luxurious velour case, and the ¥4,500 is a justified price for a set of unique, humorous, yet serious art.
rovo
pyramid
With members coming from such different fields as techno, rock, noise, jazz, and Latin music, it was mainly the poly-rhythmic structures the pieces on Rovo’s debut album “Imago” were built upon that earned the band the reputation as a Japanese answer to Tortoise. On their second long-player Rovo show a completely new approach to crossover rock in a single piece stretching for 43 minutes, with the help of guest musicians Fumie Kobayashi (voice) and Masaaki Kikuchi (contrabass).
The tricky rhythms and arrangements are gone, replaced with a linear flowing composition. Pyramid starts slowly with the unique combination of ethnic percussion and blues harmonica, flows quietly through single-note spheres created by the voice/contrabass section, to culminate in an endless, wah wah-dominated futuristic funk piece with lots of sound effects and driving percussion. Pyramid probably won’t get much radio play, but this is not what Rovo make music for.
alboth!
ecco la fiera
If you are one of those who believe that after Adolf Wölfli, H.R. Giger, and the Young Gods, there must be more to explore in the Confederation Helvetica, a.k.a. Switzerland, than Heidi and cuckoo clocks, you might have been waiting for something like this. Giving their pieces titles like Aldo Moro, Judas Priest, Herbert Von Karajan, or Frank Arsch Meyer, and singing in a kind of robot-lingo-fondue is something Alboth! have in common with Bavarian dada jazz ensemble The Blech, and in this age of remixing and remaking one
might mistake Alboth!’s pieces for early Blech compositions interpreted on a meat grinder. Transferring data digitally to a CD is the elegant way to produce masterpieces such as Alboth!’s last work, “Amor Fati,” where the band demonstrated a breathtaking balance act between grind core and 12-tone music, ambient and noise, industrial rock and free jazz in 9 pieces of unbelievable tension. Throwing the same ingredients together in a scrap press and scrunching it to the size of a CD is another way, and it seems like after moving to Berlin the now-trio tried out this method on their new album “Ecco La Fiera,” a good soundtrack to the Swiss army penknife, with occasional melodies popping up. The CD is distributed in Japan by the tiny Inoxia label, the first address in town for everything beyond the beyond.
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