4 80s J-pop albums

These are some rips I've had sitting around for a while. A few years back, every time I would go to Academy Records there would be a couple of old japanese LPs, either enka, J-pop, or anime-related. I expect they were parting out some estate sale they'd picked up. I'd pick up a couple of them on the cheap whenever I saw them, and that was the source of the synthesizer fantasy records I've posted previously. I've got about twenty records from that estate, I figure, but the only ones I've posted have been the truly strange ones. These four LPs are some of the more average ones, but they're also some of my favorites (not hard, I think there's four or five Yamato soundtrack/drama LPs in the mix). There's a great blog here if you're interested in finding more or finding these in better quality: http://tsuzilla.blogspot.com/

Akina Nakamori - Third
Kyoko Koizumi - My Fantasy
Marina - Evergreen
Creamy Mami - Last Curtain

McCarthy - Banking, Violence, and the Inner Life Today

McCarthy - Banking, Violence, and the Inner Life Today (1990)

Here's something out of left field for you. McCarthy is probably best known today for being the indie pop band where Tim Gane & Laetetia Sadier of Stereolab met, or something like that. It's been on my mind lately since getting that Un-Kommunity tape from NLFM blog (linked in a previous post). Perhaps my favorite indie-twee group of the late 80s era, McCarthy combined polished pop tunes with clever, biting lyrics and a heavy anti-Thatcher/pro-Labour bent. Anti-capitalism is always ++ in my book, but they also touch on gay rights, sexism, and pretty much everything else a proper young socialist ought to care about. First track on the album is my favorite:

VA - So Young But So Cold

Various Artists - So Young But So Cold

Well, guess who just discovered a dvd backup of mp3 rips from 3 years back? This is a (now complete) repost of the terrifically hard-to-find french minimal synth/coldwave comp put out by tigersushi back in '04 featuring some of the best tracks of the era. Don't forget to hit up Artefact's site if you like the M.A.E. track on this comp, you can download the full album from there. (recommended above all for their version of the internationale!)

Lio - Premier Album

Lio - Premier Album (1980)

Bit of synthy electro-pop from this belgian starlet, featuring some help from superstars TELEX. From the booklet:

Born out of a belgian comics writer's imagination, the character of Lio soon became known all over Europe as the alias of glamour pop icon Wanda Maria de Vasconcelos, a 18 years old, smart and provocative singer. Teamed-up with belgian songwriters Jacques Duvall, Jay Alansky and Marc Moullin (from the electro-pioneer band TELEX), the alchemy was soon to be accomplished with their first single "Le Banana Split", a light-hearted sugary pop tune co-written by Alansky and Duvall - also known as Hagen Dierks. The first hit was launched, soon to be followed by plenty of others which would all hurl Lio at the top of european charts. The second single, and probably the most successful in France, was the now classic "Amoureux solitaires", a refreshingly naive and at the same time deeply emotional song. The text is signed by Eli Medeiros and the music is produced by Jacno (from the french infamous pop-rock duo "Eli et Jacno"), resulting a catchy halting beat with a minimalist melody which will be engraved in your memory as soon as you hear it.

Anyway, one can feel a clear and distinct touch of contemporary atmosphere all over the record, a certain kind of 'Avant-Gardism' which is not without reminding us the later oversea productions of electro legends as New Order, Yaz, Human League, etc. Intresting patchwork of typical french pop ("Si belle Et inutile", "La Petite Amazone") and dance oriented songs (see the amazing break part of "Comix Discomix" or the twisted beat of "La Panthere Rose"), this debut effort also includes, among other things, the more languid and ambient cover of Gillespie and Coot's "You Go To My Head", later interpreted by Billie Holiday.

I've got a stack of similar bits of euro and japanese electro-pop, probably start ripping more of it in the next month. Think of it like the minimal fan's answer to twee, only a lot more fun.

VA - So Young but So Cold

VA - So Young but So Cold (2004)

My first foray into minimal synth when it came out. Unfortunately I can't seem to find the original rips I did and the CD hasn't fared well, so it's missing the final three tracks. Otherwise a good rip. I'll update it if I can get the missing songs. Not a single bad track, but the one which caught my ear at the time was the Artefact track, "Mae". I'd listen to that over and over back then. To this day, I aspire to it. The rest of the tracks are amazing to me now, given a few years to increase my familiarity with the genre and contextualize. If you've never gotten into minimal synth, here's your starting point. Hit it.

VA - The Streets of Tokyo

A bit of vintage cultural tourism for tonight, another roommate request. Cigarette Blues (love that organ) and Farewell to Tokyo are the standouts to my ear, along with Black Flower Petal. Enjoy.

VA - The Streets of Tokyo (195?) (if anyone has any info on Capital T10250 let me know, it's nowhere to be found online. Mono LP.)

From the back:
Authentic Japanese pop songs and international hits in Oriental dress by Nippon's favorite singers... as you might hear them on THE STREETS OF TOKYO


TOKYO'S BUSY STREETS reflect the pulse of this modern metropolis of almost nine million. Besides being the economic and industrial center of the orient, Tokyo is also a fantastically active center of the lively arts.

Almost any evening in Tokyo you might choose your entertainment from many theaters offering traditional Japanese forms of drama and dance - kabuki, no, or bunraku - or lavish modern spectacles like the Takarazuka troupe; you might prefer to choose from some dozen nightly events of Western style symphony concerts or opera; or you might scan the brilliant marquees of the thousands of movie houses in the city, for the Japanese love both imported movies and their own fine dramatic and musical films.

Movies, radio, television, and especially long-playing records have stimulated the rise of many musical personalities. Splendid engineering facilities are producing records of excellent fidelity. Top stars compete for places on the best-seller lists, and the public is responding with devoted enthusiasm (and yen) for their favorites. Here are two girls and four young men who are among the very top artists in Japan today, singing a dozen of their hits that have won extreme popularity.

There's no international language like popular music, and just as American pops reflect many other countries - think of Morgen, Vaya con dios, and Gomen-Nasai - so Japanese pops are well up to date on European, American, and Latin-American trends. Some of these songs are characteristically Japanese, and others are Japanese versions of imported favorites. They are sung mostly in Japanese, with a chorus in another language now and then.

The older Japanese style, always fresh to Western ears for it's rhythmic brightness and its supple vocal style, is represented in this album by The Nikko Folksong and Farewell to Tokyo. The main current of Japanese pop music, with its characteristically "minor" keys and dark moods, is typified by Lullaby of the Birds and Cigarette Blues, while a strong American pops feeling is apparent in Black Flower Petal and Brown Leaves. Most of the other tracks are European and Latin hits subtly transformed by Japanese imagination and sung both in the original language and Japanese. Passion Flower is an even more fascinating transformation: it's based on the familiar piano piece of Beethoven, Fur Elise.

These then are the songs you might hear on the streets of Tokyo, piped out of the record shops and theaters. As crowds hurry by in kimono or Western style clothing they pause to hear their favorites, which belong to the world as much to Japan.

Stella - S/T

Stella - s/t


another old rip, sorry about the quality will rerip upon request