Category: Japan

I mentioned a long while back, in referring to the single Life In Tokyo as part of one the features within the ‘Shakedown 1979’ mini-series, that the time would eventually come for Japan.

That time would prove to be late 1981, and the release of their fifth studio album, Tin Drum.  In an era when synth-based pop music was becoming increasingly prevalent, Japan shifted the goalposts in quite a dramatic fashion. The songs, both in terms of their titles and the way they sounded, very much leaned towards the country and region after which the band had long ago taken their name.  The synths, drums and bass seemed to create music that seemed beyond the capabilities of most of their contemporaries, while lead singer David Sylvian‘s imitation of the Bryan Ferry-like croon was the perfect accompaniment.

The new sound proved to be a hit with the critics, with Paul Morley at the NME being particularly enthusiastic.  It was synthpop with an arty twist, possibly bordering on the pretentiousness of the type that could be thrown at some of Morley’s writing?  At the same time, the undoubted good looks of all members of the band meant the publications and magazines primed for the that teenage female market were full of photos and words about the band. It was very much a win-win situation.

The lead-off second single lifted from the album remains quite timeless,

mp3: Japan – Visions Of China

The b-side was a remix of a song that had originally closed their previous studio album, Gentlemen Take Polaroids.

mp3: Japan – Taking Islands in Africa (remix)

It wasn’t quite as big a hit as I had actually thought, spending just three weeks in the Top 40 and peaking at #32. I’m guessing it was just a bit too strange sounding for daytime radio and with the album not yet having been released, the critics had yet to really do their fawning pieces on the band that would take them into the higher echelons of the charts.

JC

A recent post featured Nick Heyward while today’s has the talents of David Sylvian, two of the faces you’d find most regularly in the pop magazines aimed at teenage girls in the early 80s.

While Haircut 100 never got any critical acclaim due to being just too pop-charts orientated, the initial crime of Japan was  that of making music deemed unfashionable. Three LPs released on Hansa Records in 1978 and 1979 were seen as rip offs of the arty side of glam, with Roxy Music and mid 70s Bowie no longer in vogue as punk and new-wave came to the fore.  A move into Eurodisco working alongside Giorgio Moroder also brought nothing.

But to the surprise of many, Japan were snapped up by Virgin Records in 1980 at a time when the label was seen at the cutting edge of the new wave movement.  The sound and feel of the band was different to what had gone before and the marketing men at the label were not slow in exploiting the good looks of Sylvian pushing all sorts of profiles into the magazines.  And coming just as the New Romantics were bursting onto the scene, the look, feel and sound of new Japan was in the right place at the right time.

Chart success, and then some, followed thanks to the hits on Virgin and the shameless exploitation of the back catalogue by Hansa Records who seemed hell-bent on issuing a new single every few weeks.  This time round, the radio stations lapped it all up, and thanks to effectively being on two labels at the one time, Japan enjoyed eight Top 40 hits in a little over a year, including a re-released remix of a 60s cover:-

mp3 : Japan – I Second That Emotion (extended remix)

It went all the way to #9 in the charts and was their second biggest hit of all behind Ghosts.

This was the b-side:-

mp3 : Japan – Halloween

Yet another single picked up for pennies during a rummage.

Enjoy!!