2024 - Various Artists - Virtual Dreams II. Ambient Explorations in the House & Techno Age Japan 1993-1999 - 2024 @320
Virtual Dreams II explores Japan’s distinctive ’90s ambient techno scene, a key part of early club culture and the global electronic landscape. While Virtual Dreams focused on Europe’s chill-out rooms, part two highlights Japanese labels like Sublime and Transonic, which embraced the worldwide techno scene while showcasing Japan’s inventive spirit. Palomatic’s “Flutter” is a cavernous, reverb-laced instrumental with pillowy rhythms and a magnetic three-note melody (see below). Yukihiro Fukutomi’s stellar “5 Blind Boys” skitters with bell-tones, a midrange synth drone, and what sounds like a sampled marimba. This bittersweet compilation marks the final project of Jamie Tiller, founder of Music From Memory, before his untimely passing. Co-compiler Eiji Taniguchi helped bring to life their vision of honoring Japan’s unique era and its hidden sonic worlds.(In Sheeps Clothing HiFi)
Japan - 1983 - Oil On Canvas (Remastered 2003) @320
First of all: the cover. As a teenager, I was instantly intrigued by Frank Auerbach’s artwork, and then the music very definitely lived up to the packaging.
But, though billed as such, it could hardly be called a ‘live’ album. In the recent band biography ‘A Foreign Place’, Jansen reports that the only ‘live’ elements on the album are his drums – everything else was replayed in the studio. Three excellent new all-studio tracks were added too. But Oil On Canvas was released six months after the band’s break-up and proved a near-perfect farewell from one of the key groups of the early ’80s.
The fact that it ended up as Japan’s highest-selling album (shifting over 100,000 in the UK and hitting #5) must have really irked manager Simon Napier-Bell – after year of toil, the band were calling it a day just as they were getting some commercial success (read ‘A Foreign Place’ for a full explanation of the split).
Tin Drum was great but who knows what they might have come up with as a follow-up given the giant strides they had made as musicians, songwriters and arrangers since ’81. Sure enough, within a few months of their split, Duran Duran were taking their sound and image to the bank.
There is so much to enjoy on Oil On Canvas. The Tin Drum tracks have added heft and a bit more air. David Sylvian’s vocals are warmer and more expressive than on the studio albums (though he has since virtually disowned this early singing style), and his Satie-esque title track prefigures the triumphs of his solo career.
‘Ghosts’ is extended with a superb Stockhausen-meets-serialism intro/interlude thrown in while ‘Canton’ becomes a mighty parade of musical colours, with clanging synths, whip-lashing china cymbals and the late great Mick Karn’s increasingly insane bass embellishments.
There has never been a rhythm section quite like Karn and Steve Jansen (drums) and probably never will be again. They revel in open spaces and ‘non-rock’ textures, typified by the deceptively simple and downright spooky ‘Sons Of Pioneers’.
Karn sounded like no one else on fretless bass, exploring Middle Eastern concepts and weird intervals to produce a sound both complex and hilarious. Jansen came up with several of the most ingenious backbeats in pop history while always making them danceable.
Together, they produced classic grooves like ‘Visions Of China’, ‘Cantonese Boy’ and ‘Still Life In Mobile Homes’, and Richard Barbieri’s creative keys playing always emphasises texture and mood over technique. His closing instrumental ‘Temple Of Dawn’ bids a fantastic album farewell first with a chill and then with a brief shot at redemption.
Sylvian escaped to a successful, innovative solo career, Karn also went solo and hooked up with collaborators including Midge Ure, Peter Murphy and, most memorably, Kate Bush. Barbieri and Jansen teamed up regularly in various projects and recorded together as The Dolphin Brothers in 1987 but didn’t enjoy much commercial success. Against all odds, they all got together again at the end of the ’80s for the intriguing Rain Tree Crow project. (Moving the River)
