Label: Ki/oon Records
Country: Japan
Release Date: 2007.03.21

Yoshinori Sunahara is a Japanese DJ and club programmer, particularly prominent in the Shibuya-kei and chillout scene. He was born in Sapporo, Japan, on September 13, 1969. His style consists of a mixture of funk, bossa nova, Shibuya-kei, and 70’s music. He is known to be infatuated with airplanes, as several of his albums have to do with flight.

This collection proves, if anything else, that Sunahara’s production talents are just as important to his career than any of his original compositions. I’ve wondered what he’s been doing since his last studio album Love Beat in 2001, and this collection provides some answers.

CD1: comprises of 11 tracks covering his four studio albums. All of the tracks are in their original form except for “Elegant World,” which has a different mix and which has the orchrestral intro and outro cut out as well as the girl speaking (thankfully). These tracks have been remastered. Apart from the standard audio punchup you get from a remastering, I also noticed more of a separation in the mixes. This clarity is more striking when you listen to the tracks through headphones. Perhaps this was the more pressing need for the remastering since we’re dealing with albums that were released fairly recently.

CD2: comprises of his remix work of various artists (most of, if not all, are Japanese) from 1995-2005. As expected from a compilation like this, the quality can be all over the map. I don’t like everything on here, but I liked more than I thought I would. The chillout style is most prominent on this CD. As the songs and years progress, the styles switch. At the end of the CD, you’re getting a Japanese hip-hop song and remixes that sound like they came straight from the early-to-mid 1980’s. There are various sound elements that Sunahara fans have heard before– electronic bleeps and bloops, steel drums, and musical and spoken-word breaks that were used in prior songs.

Label: Knife Edge
Country: Japan
Release Date: 2008.12.17

One of the strongest albums from Jazztronik in years — a soulful celebration of the 10th Anniversary of Ryota Nozaki’s great project — and a record that’s filled with the upbeat, positive grooves! There’s a sense of focus here that’s totally great — a mix of the dancefloor numbers that have always gotten international attention for Jazztronik, with some of the deeper strands that run through Nozaki’s compositions — hints of jazz, soundtrack, and Latin elements — swirled together beautifully with some strings, and really top-shelf production throughout! Lyrics are in English and Japanese — sung by Valerie Etienne, Robert Gallagher, Emi Meyer, and others — but the best tracks are almost the instrumental ones, as they stretch forth with a sense of mature brilliance that really shows the development of the Jazztronik sound over the years. Titles include “For You”, “Room 204″, “Hayabusa”, “Reminiscing”, “JTK”, “Click Clock”, “Black Dragon”, “LEAP”, “Real Clothes”, and “Peche Mignon”. (by dusty groove)

Label: Knife Edge
Country: Japan
Release Date: 2008.09.17

About M-Swift aka Shouhei Matsushita was born in Hiroshima in 1973. With the age of 14 he started playing guitar and listening to soul and jazz. When he was 18 he moved to Tokyo and started a career as a guitarist, playing for diverse bands in clubs all around Tokyo. In 2002 he started his production network called “M-Swift”. His first productions were released by Irma Records (Italy) and Flower Records (Japan), who licensed his songs to several compilations. In between he remixed artists like Yukihiro Fukutomi, Notenshun, Arcoiris, Donaldo McCollum, Real, Gazzara, Paris Match, etc… for labels like King (Japan), Columbia, Apperitivo, Dome, Victor etc…. In 2005 he moved to London, looking for collaborations with UK musicians. Straight after he arrived, he got an offer from Irma Records to produce his debut album during his stay in London. Currently he is working with Vanessa Haynes, Marcus Begg (restless soul, Nathan Haines, Isoul 8), Nick Cohen (Incognito, Bah Samba) on this project, which will be released in spring 2007. The debut single “Morning Light” feat. Vanessa Haynes, was released In October 2006 with remixes by Notenshun and Nubian Mindz.. and 2nd single “Kosmic Love” feat. Vanessa Haynes,was released at the beginning of 2007 woth remix by Tiger Stripes.

Label: Matador
Country: Japan
Release Date: 2000.11.14

More post-modern irony a-go-go, sliced and diced from the detritus of late ’60s and early ’70s pop culture by Japan’s swingingest kitsch merchants. “Room With a View”, for example, with its skittering harpsichord and strings and la-la choruses, could be a song Jimmy Webb forgot to give to the FifthDimension, or perhaps the theme from some alternate universe THAT GIRL tv sitcom.
Similarly, the charming flutes andchurning early ’70s bass and drums that undergird “La Guerre Est Finie” make the whole thing sound like music you’d expect to hear in a hazily photographed dialogue-less montage from a period romantic comedy. Oddly, several of the songs are preceded by spoken word intros sampled from Kermit Schafer’s old PARDON MY BLOOPER comedy albums.

Label: Avex Trax
Country: Japan
Release Date: 2008.11.19

Often dismissed in their early days as a poor man’s Pizzicato 5, Capsule nevertheless quickly formed a reputation for themselves as torchbearers into the new millennium of the 1990s Shibuya-kei boom. However, as Pizzicato 5’s Yasuharu Konishi’s flirtations with manufactured pop as a producer working with Kyoko Fukada and Aya Matsuura never really influenced the mainstream, Capsule’s Yasutaka Nakata dropped a bomb into the heart of J-pop with his electro-heavy work behind pop acts such as Meg and Perfume. With “More! More! More!,” Nakata seems to have taken the lessons from his mainstream success and applied them to his own band project. The 1990s Shibuya-kei influence is long gone, replaced by heavy electro synths and dance beats. Obviously drawn from the same place as Nakata’s recent work with Perfume (particularly the trio’s album title track “Game” and the excellent recent B-side “Edge”), “More! More! More!” nevertheless pushes the sound in a harder, more uncompromising direction, revealing how much he has been holding back in his more mainstream work. As a followup to 2007’s “Flash Back,” it develops existing themes, with the glitter beat of “Phantom” inviting more comparisons with experimental postrock band Battles than Perfume, and “Pleasure Ground” demonstrating Nakata’s love of Daft Punk. It’s a thrilling, well-produced piece of work; however, while Capsule certainly have a grip on the zeitgeist right now, once the mainstream hype dies away, “More! More! More!” is likely to date quickly. (by ian martin)

Label: Coolism Records
Country: Japan
Release Date: 2008.03.23

There is a fine line that musicians have to draw when coming out with new material. They could go the experimental route or the tried and tested route. Both routes have their pitfalls, if you get too experimental you risk isolating your listeners and making them forget why they listen to you in the first place but going the tried and tested route will make you seem boring and dull, your fans would want to hear something new from you every once in a while. I was worried that Paris Match had gone too far down the experimental route when I listened to their album titled “After Six.” In it they focused on club sounds and electronica, the end result became way too “techno” for me. Other than one or two tracks that retained their unique style the rest of the album was well below par compared with their best work. I was worried, perhaps they have finally run out of ideas after so many albums. But I was to be proven wrong. When my fellow “Paris Match kaki” told me that they had released a new album titled “Flight 7″, I was getting ready to go to Japan so the timing was just right for me to go buy it. He also told me assuringly that they were back to their old style and after buying the album and listening to it, I totally agree. The first track titled “Rainbow Puzzle” (roughly translated from Japanese) simply oozes charm, sophistication and technical brilliance through its Bossa-like beat and multi-melodic tunes. It simply just catches your attention and it serves as an excellent lead up to the rest of the album which is musically along the same lines. It is 100% old school Paris Match and then some. Even after so many albums, they have shown no sign of fatigue or slowing down, they are still churning out material that are of the highest of musical standards in my book at least. All in all, “Flight 7″ has reminded me why I liked their music in the first place and left me wanting for more. (by eugene)

Label: Matador
Country: Japan
Release Date: 2006

Godfathers of the Shibuya-kei scene, Tokyo kitsch-pop deconstructionists Pizzicato Five originally began taking shape as far back as 1979, when university students Yasuharu Konishi and Keitaro Takanami first met at a local music society meeting. Agreeing to form a band, they soon recruited fellow society member Ryo Kamamiya; their search for a suitable vocalist proved frustrating, however, and only in late 1984 did they settle on singer Mamiko Sasaki. The first Pizzicato Five single, “Audrey Hepburn Complex,” followed a year later, and in 1986 the group issued their debut LP, Pizzicato Five in Action; a slew of subsequent records established them among the most popular acts in Japan, in spite of a series of line-up fluctuations which saw both Kamamiya and Sasaki exit in 1988, replaced soon after by vocalist Takao Tajima (who in turn quit the following year). Beginning with the 1990 single “Lovers Rock,” Maki Nomiya was the new P5 vocalist; their popularity at home continued to soar, and in 1994 the American indie label Matador agreed to issue the compilation EP Five by Five. Takanami quit shortly after its release, however, reducing the group to a duo; after a pair of other US compilations, Made in USA and The Sound of Music by Pizzicato Five, in 1997 they issued Happy End of the World, the first of their LPs to enjoy simultaneous Japanese and American release. The International Playboy and Playgirl Record followed two years later, and the group’s last proper album of the millennium, Pizzicato Five ™, appeared in November 1999. (by amg)