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Citymovie
(2006) |
Living in Tokyo, you are largely insulated from the music scenes of other cities and tend to pick up what's happening only in fragments. One side-effect of this is that when great new music does break through the bubble it drops on you like a bomb.
Citymovie by Fukuoka band
Aloha is one such bomb. The genre could perhaps be categorised as some kind of mutated south-western strain of Shibuya-kei, but only in the sense that it shuns easy categorisation by other means. It's also one of the most summery records ever made, touching on laid back funk and reggae, hip hop, Hawaiian music (natch), some relatively straight pop/rock in a Weezer mode, and some songs that couldn't sound more 1920s if they had Jeeves & Wooster and Hercule Poirot in the backing band, all imbued with the same lazy atmosphere and the same easy knack for a simple pop tune. The title hints at an urban feel but it suits the brighter sun, wider spaces and slower pace of life of coastal Fukuoka than the frenetic meatgrinder that is Tokyo in midsummer.
Ian Martin Dec.10.06
