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Showing posts with label japan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label japan. Show all posts
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Melon - Serious Japanese
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Sunday, August 10, 2008
Melon - Deep Cut
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Back to Japan: Deep Cut, released in 1987, was the second album from ex-plastics Toshi Nakanishi and Chica Sato as Melon. (See here for their first album, Do You Like Japan?) On this album the band also includes Kudo (turntable, keyboard) and Gota (drums, computer programming, keyboard, guitar, backing vocals); guest musicians appearing on some tracks are Guy Pratt, bass; John L. Walters, Lyricon; Preston Heyman, percussion; Frank ricotti, percussion; and Colette, backing vocals. (See the discogs.com listing for specific track credits.) Deep Cut opens with a cover of Les Baxter's "Quiet Village" (made famous by Martin Denny), and the whole album has a loose "techno-exotica" theme, as evidenced by the song titles:
- Quiet Village
- Uptown Downtown
- Hard Core Hawaiian
- Hawaiian Break
- Time Enough For Love
- Somewhere Faraway
- Faraway
- Pleasure Before Your Breakfast
- Funkasia
- The Gate of Japonesia
Also notable is the electro vibe that Gota brings to Melon's sound (which was state-of-the-art back then), with "Pleasure" and "Funkasia" being real dancefloor contenders. Get the vinyl rip here or here.
Sunday, March 2, 2008
Melon: Do You Like Japan?
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1982 release from ex-Plastics members Toshio Nakanishi and Chica Sato. Wikipedia sez of Nakanishi:
His first band, Plastics, had a world tour with Talking Heads and The B-52's in 1980. When the band broke up in 1982, he went to New York and formed Melon with Percy Jones of Brand X, Dougie Bowne of The Lounge Lizards, Bernie Worrell of Funkadelic and Chica Sato, trying to merge funk with Japanese Group Sounds.And pulling it off pretty well, I might add. Do You Like Japan? is the first Melon album; it also features playing by Masami Tsuchiya, Haruomi Hosonom, and Yukihiro Takahashi. This was a Japan-only release, I think, on Alfa Records. Nine songs, vinyl rip, get it here or here.
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