#pretentia

For “Obscure Artist Month” I chose someone I’m familiar with but is still unknown enough stateside to not have a Wikipedia page. Miyuki Hatakeyama is the vocalist of the adult contemporary duet Port of Notes. In my opinion, she’s one of the best pop vocalists in Japan at the moment, but maybe I’m biased. Her voice is deep and full of character, well suited to songs of longing and introspective moods. She also has a tendency to choose boring material for her solo albums, though she’s been known to be a little more adventurous outside of Port of Notes and solo work. To wit, わたしのうた, a collaboration of big band standards and Japanese pop classics with famed percussionist ASA-CHANG and the Blue Hats.

The good – The album gets off to a great start with the percussive assault at the beginning of “Lover Come Back to Me.” Already more interesting than the easy listening material Hatakeyama saddles herself with, it’s a fantastic showcase of everyone in this collaboration. The overtones of longing and regret in Hatakeyama’s voice are the perfect counterpoint to the decadent big band sound the Blue Hearts whip up.

Another excellent interpretation is “Never Will I Marry,” in which Hatakeyama eschews the rakish route and instead imbues her performance with a bittersweet resignation. She’s singing happily, but her tone betrays loneliness and a nagging feeling that she’s putting on a smiling face while inside she’s not happy about her circumstances at all.

The collection benefits from mostly strong material, especially the English side, but the showstopper is without a doubt the cover of Hibari Misora’s enka melodrama “津軽のふるさと.” It’s like a Shiina Ringo’s kayokyoku hommage but with less screechy vocals. Everything works perfectly, from the electric guitar’s sparse, forlorn warble, the tension of the drums, the stop and start of the music and of course, Hatakeyama’s EXTREME ENKA REALNESS and glorious vibrato create a desolate dirge for a hometown one will never see again. Koda Kumi wishes she could fake emote this well.

The bad – I have to agree with Patty here and say “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friends” doesn’t really seem to click. The music is stupendous, and Hatakeyama’s vocals nail everything the way they should, yet it seems like an odd choice of material. This woman oozes gravitas. She can’t help it. Sure, she’s had her share of house hits (ok, songs) and remixes, but I find it a little difficult to buy her as a frivolous gold-digger.

The tragic – I don’t think there’s anything particularly tragic here, except “Diamonds” so let’s just pretend I’m not five days late with this review and had something clever to say about it.

By this point in Team Tragic history, I’ve come to expect Edu’s choices to be something I may have not picked for myself but certainly ones I enjoy. As all our selections were this month, Doopee Time is a concept album meant to be enjoyed from track to track rather than as a compilation of singular pop tracks with little to no relation. However I’ll be honest in saying I was a little underwhelmed with this album at first only because I was expecting him to nominate something of a Yoko Ono level of pretentious ridiculous. Personally I found this album to be more precocious than pretentious. That’s not to say I didn’t inevitably enjoy it though. The best comparison I can give to it is when you see an outfit that looks kinda meh on the rack but if you actually try it on you’re surprised how well it suits you. So once again Edu thanks for being my gay audio stylist. 

The good - My favorite track on Doopee Time is perhaps the poppiest, no surprise there. “Now That You've Gone” is giving me early 70s Jackson 5 vibes with Caroline’s cutesy vocals atop almost inappropriately adult lyrics. She never really does have that young Michael moment though where she absolutely kills it but the classic sounding spoken word bit makes up for that at least. I also enjoy that after the more melancholic Auntie Kim version we get a more upbeat take. Unfortunately it’s kind of the penultimate song on the album and everything that comes after is sort of an epilogue. 

I also really enjoyed the melodic strings of “Air Vibes”. The spoken word part isn’t quite so annoying here cause it isn’t quite as front and center as it is in other songs.

The bad - Again, as this is a concept album it wasn’t quite so simple to pick out particular tracks here as they’re all merely smaller parts of the bigger picture. As I mentioned above though I feel the final third of the album just kind of feels there as it’s a very drawn out resolution to the actions we hear about in the earlier part of the album. And that’s a shame because the likes of “Some Day, That Place” and “Caroline, No” are actually quite lovely. The male vocals in  “Caroline, No” are so dreamy and I love how he pronounces it “karorain”. It reminds me of the main character’s nickname in Paradise Kiss.

Overall this album is just too drawn out for my liking and as a concept album it’s difficult to get from beginning to finish. Of course we all want to know what happened to Caroline but by this point I really can’t be bothered. 

The tragic - For what serves as an opening number “Doopee Time” is just a fucking disaster. Annoying chipmunk vocals over an I Dream of Jeannie sample, really queen? I do find the track more humorous than irritating but other than being the title track does it serve any real purpose?

The second “Medical Service” began I instantly thought of Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart in his first appearance in 1970s Doctor Who giving an announcement very dryly over the PA system. The trippy sound effects also perfectly matched the show. Little did I realize that the entire midsection of the album would be a giant early 70s Doctor Who reference.

Coincidentally, or maybe not so much, it is soon followed up by “Dr. Domestic's Physical Effect #1 - Piece For Turntables And Records” with Caroline seeking help from the Doctor like she always does. Was she a long forgotten companion or something? “Dr. Domestic's Physical Effect #2 - Electronic Colored Tone And Strings” seriously has some of the same exact sound effects found in the show. One is even the classic sound of the TARDIS doors opening. 

I couldn’t help but laugh when I saw the following track was entitled “Time & Space”. Had it been titled “Time And Relative Dimension In Space” I would have thrown my arms in the air and yelled “C’MON!!!!” This time we’re treated to an appropriate late 60s/early 70s swinging pop/rock track which I could imagine Jo and the Third Doctor getting down to complete with her giant fur coat and gogo boots and his cravats and ruffles. The cutesy vocals actually work great here but after about midway through this song veers off course into kooky sound effects territory again until the end. I thought it was a bit annoying the first time around but now the Doctor Who narrative had become so deeply entrenched in my mind that I envisioned the Doctor riding off in Betsey to battle Autons or Silurians with his sonic screwdriver.

Salyu is another pretentia queen who seemed like a given for this month’s theme. While I’ve never listened to her work outside the occasional Team Tragic recommendation I have always found her satiating. With the salyu x salyu project we have the perfect pretentia pairing we didn’t know we needed as CORNELIUS joins the fray as producer. While both give us a bit of the expected from each of them, their synergy is definitely greater than the sum of its parts.

The good - From the opening of “ただのともだち” I could tell I was gonna enjoy this album. I’m a percussionist by nature so the polyrythmic nature of this track immediately had me longing for more. It’s a cadence of both vocals and percussion that is accompanied well by the backing string and piano arrangements. Think of an art house experimental project. That isn’t crap.

I don’t know why I would choose this track out of all the available greatness but something about “Sailing Days” I find entrancing. I doesn’t seem much more than generic from the start but quickly builds adding more and more vocal and instrumental bits to the fray and they all enhance rather than distract from each other. It ends in a softly chaotic blend of melody and Salyu’s sweeping coos. Another beautiful marriage of sound and rhythm.

For some reason I fully expected the title track of “s(o)un(d)beams” to be a bloated crapfest. Fortunately I was wrong, very wrong. It begins again as a very zen soundscape but eventually heads to chill house territory. CORNELIUS keeps the mood changing ever so slightly throughout that once it ends you have no idea a full seven minutes has passed. And again, Salyu’s chopped vocals are nothing but a delight.

The bad -  Personally I found this to be a perfect album from start to finish and didn’t really have any qualms about it. Except one! I agree that “Hostile To Me” seems kind of thrown in between “Mirror Neurotic” and “続きを” and breaks up the energy between those tracks. I have no idea why the fade out from “続きを” doesn’t lead into the ethereal “Hostile To Me” as a closing track. Ending on “続きを” just seems strange. The album just peters off into... nothing. You're left wondering whether that was actually the end of such a great album.

The tragic - Once again I was instantly drawn to the percussive nature of “奴隷”. On Salyu’s end however the vocals do nothing but tragify the arrangement. Throw in a corny bassline and dance track and you have a recipe for utter tragicness,

The early 80s disco funk of “Mirror Neurotic” seems so funnily juxtaposed between two much quieter tracks that it makes it all the more tragic. Salyu’s vocal sprinkles here and there actually work really well here enhancing the sound and rhythm of the track like you would expect a real funk singer to. It’s like listening to operatic Teena Marie! 

As a birthday present, I was kind enough to let Eduardo choose the theme this month. To return the favor, he blessed us with Doopee Time.

The quirky conversations between Suzi and Caroline were the most amazing thing I’ve heard in a long time. They’re so pretentious, while being campy. I couldn’t get enough of them the entire time. They made the album into some sort of hodgepodge story that made absolutely no sense, but at the same time is everything I could have asked for.

The Good

I definitely found myself becoming a bit obsessed with the more experimental tracks. Mainly the interludes. How I wish the extremely bitchy “CHOPIN Op. 28 NO. 4 A LA JIMI STYLE” was a full 7 minute trip, and the “CHOPIN Op. 28 NO. 4 with TONE CLUSTER” equally fabulous.

Things take an odd, dark turn once “MEDIMEDICAL SERVISE” comes around with talk of cancer and the album going into some sci-fi/Twilight Zone mode. This is where things start to get extremely interesting and the album caught my attention.

“DR. DOMESTIC’S PHYSICAL EFFECT #1 - PIECE FOR TURNTABLES AND RECORD” is errotic in a way, while it’s followed up with Caroline's second dose of medication in the form of pure electronic ecstasy known as “DR. DOMESTIC’S PHYSICAL EFFECT #2 - ELECTONIC COLORED TONE AND STRINGS”. The strings add a weird sense of tension, while keeping the listener relaxed at the same time. One can only imagine the craziness Caroline is going through for her fix from this mysterious doctor.

“AIR BY BUS” ushers in the third segment of this album, where the girls go to the Cayman Islands to visit Auntie Kim. Now usually one might say, “What the hell is going on?”, but by this point, is I’m not surprised by anything the album throws at me. The interlude sets up the emotional ballad “AUNTIE KIM SINGS "NOW THAT YOU’VE GONE"” rather nicely. I mean, come on, how fabulous is Auntie Kim?!

Things come to a lovely, yet somewhat sad ending with “CAROLINE, NO”, as you wonder, what did happen to dear old Caroline? The only male vocals besides samples and the creepy doctor, it’s a pleasing way to close out the album.

The Bad

I wouldn’t say “LOVE SONGS (LOVE IS A MANY RAZOR BLADED THING)” is bad, but I was a bit disappointed since I quite enjoyed the sample cutting at the beginning and end. It would have been better if this was somehow carried out a bit more in the middle, instead of just opening and closing the track.

“TIME AND SPACE” is a bit of a letdown after the string of experimental track preceding it. It’s as if they tried to mesh the sci-fi elements introduced earlier with the original sound of the album, but it’s not enough.

Finally, I can’t say I’m too fond of “ASTRO AGE STEEL ORCH. PLAYS "LOOK FOR A STAR"”. It’s not my cup of tea. No vocals and an island vibe? No, thank you.

The Tragically Fabulous

“NOW THAT YOU'VE GONE” reminds me of the 70s TV show theme song that I never grew up listening too. You can tell the vocalist is in it for the win (Caroline, Suzi? I can’t tell at this point), but even with all her might she just doesn’t quite cut it. With a voice that adorable and such strong determination, she’s forgiven. I want this played at the wedding I’ll never have!

GONE, GONE, GONE AWAY! FROM MEEEEE~!

×××

Overall, I’m obsessed with Doopee Time, to the point where I’m afraid to check out the group’s (?) other work in fear of disappointment.

Having had Cornelius' Sensuous album already in my .mp3 archive I'm sure it was an album gifted to me some time ago by none other than our resident Pretentia P.H.D Eduardo. I can imagine I heard it a couple of times, thought it was amazing and never listened to it again. That said it was a sheer delight to rediscover this piece of contemporary music artistry, this time around with a probably more discerning ear. Generally I view Sensuous as a singular work divided into pieces rather than a collection of related songs. This makes a lovely excursion for my general pop palette, one I think is for the better. 

The good - This entire work seems like it could be the musical backdrop for Adult Swim's surreal imagery early morning programming Off The Air. While the opening title track and closing track "Sleep Warm" serve as the opening and ending credits (and "Scum" as the mid programming commercial break) the ball really gets rolling with "Fit Song". Intertwining single word vocal samples with a drum solo, random percussion and electronic synths and bleeps, this track builds into a crescendo before deconstructing and reimagining itself until ultimately it melds seamlessly into "Breezin'" While "Fit Song" may have been more experimental and intriguing, "Breezin'" takes the now three syllable sampling and overlays it onto a more traditionally pleasing electronic pop format with it's catchy false 6/8 time signature. "Wataridori" with it's multiple unveiling layers and unusual bass on the up beat gets you lost in its musical hypnotism. The only thing I find disagreeable about this amazing track and only slightly is that it reminds me a little bit too much of what American and European house artists, particularly the Chemical Brothers, were doing at the time. My favorite track despite breaking the mold of the other tracks (if you could really say there is one) would have to be "Gum". It reminds me a lot of upbeat rock tracks you would hear in over the top 00s anime like Fooly Cooly but is still so unusual I appreciate it fully for itself.

The bad - Seeing as this is an abstract concept album I'm apprehensive to label single tracks as bad as they all bleed together anyway. However I do feel the opening and ending tracks seem more like intros and outros and in that sense could have been a little shorter. Other than that I would have to say the second half of the album seems comparatively subdued to the first.

The tragic - With as much well deserved praise that has already been given to "Toner", I must say that it absolutely reminds me of the in game music in Animal Crossing: New Leaf. From the unobtrusive beeps to the twinkling piano and even the printer sound effects, every thing that is quirky and simple about this track reminds me of it! The game itself adds a bit of quirkiness to the otherwise mundane so I find the comparison pleasantly appropriate.