The final Japan release was sold and marketed as a live album, though actually it's a bit of a catchall -- it is indeed mostly from concerts, but also includes a variety of studio instrumentals and a re-recorded version of "Nightporter" mixed in to sound like it's part of the show. The various re-releases of the albums over the years confused ...
Partially growing out of their success in the country they were named after, as well as growing friendship and affiliation with such bands as Yellow Magic Orchestra, Japan, on Tin Drum, made its most unique, challenging, and striking album. It was also the final full studio effort from the group, and what a way to bow out -- there was practically ...
The 1981 compilation Assemblage gives a skewed, incomplete picture of Japan's early career; this is not necessarily a bad thing because, frankly, Japan's early career wasn't very good, and it certainly had little to do with the mature, studied art-pop of their later albums. For example, the glammy disco thump of the opening "Adolescent Sex" has ...
Volume 4 of Just Can't Get Enough: New Wave Hits of the 80's was for the new wave diehards -- Volume 5 is for the doubters. This is the installment for neophytes, or for the doubters who don't believe that new wave was a spectacular singles era. That doesn't mean that everything here is terrific, or every listener will like everything here, but it ...
Japanese composer Joe Hisaishi is best known for his Takeshi Kitano and Hazao Miyazaki scores -- and yet the two directors couldn't be more different. Kitano's films are mostly adult crime dramas, while Miyazaki's are mostly animated family features. But both are wildly adventurous and deeply (sometimes even secretly) romantic. Hisaishi has done ...
The last album with Rob Dean, Gentlemen Take Polaroids was also unquestionably the album in which Japan truly found its own unique voice and aesthetic approach. The glam influences still hung heavy, particularly from Roxy Music, but now the band found itself starting to affect others in turn. Even the back cover photo says as much -- looking cool ...
Quiet Life is the album that transformed Japan from past-tense glam rockers into futuristic synth popsters, though they'd been leaning in that direction for a while. It's also a solid proto-New Romantic synthesizer record, enhanced by Mick Karn's superb fretless bass work and David Sylvian's smooth, sneering vocals spread over pop hits like the ...
After 25 volumes of Johann Sebastian Bach's sacred cantatas on BIS, Masaaki Suzuki and the Bach Collegium Japan have found the time to make a disc of secular cantatas. J.S. Bach: Secular Cantatas BWV 210 & 211 combines one of Bach's wedding cantatas, O holder tag, with Schweigt stille, plaudert nicht, the famous Coffee Cantata. Soprano Carolyn ...
Although Japan later became one of new romantics' poster children, their 1978 Adolescent Sex LP predated the movement by two years. A remarkable debut, the set snarls with leftover punk intent, a few glam rock riffs, and a wealth of electronics that not only reach back to the band's youth, but also predate much of what would explode out of the ...
Whole Numbers Play the Basics is another triumph for Casino Versus Japan's Eric Kowalski, and if it just misses carrying the freshness and sense of imagination evident on Go Hawaii, it's a better record for being slightly less precious. (Yes, the children's vocal samples of "Very Sunny" would sound odd on this record of chilled grandeur.) Scottish ...
Within six months of being discovered in the summer of 2005, Bach's Aria "Alles mit Gott und nicht ohn' ihn" (All things with God and nothing without Him) received three recordings: one by John Eliot Gardiner, one by Ton Koopman, and this one by Masaaki Suzuki. This is well and proper: any "new" work by Bach is worth hearing and a terrific "new" ...
Masaaki Suzuki and his Bach Collegium Japan have once again turned in a superlative volume in their series of discs dedicated to the complete cantatas of J.S. Bach. This volume, number 35, includes four works: Auf Christi Himmelfahrt allein, BWV 128; Es ist ein trotzig und versagt Ding, BWV 176; Bisher habt ihr nichts gebeten in meinem Namen, BWV ...
The last album with Rob Dean, Gentlemen Take Polaroids was also unquestionably the album in which Japan truly found its own unique voice and aesthetic approach. The glam influences still hung heavy, particularly from Roxy Music, but now the band found itself starting to affect others in turn. Even the back cover photo says as much -- looking cool ...
While most people who purchase a CD sampler are usually somewhat familiar with some of the artists on it, there are always a few surprises. Much of the material on here is standard pop-punk, Fat Wreck Chords-type fare. Therefore, if the listener is familiar with the California pop-punk sound, this should be a very comfortable listen for the most ...
Although Japan later became one of new romantics' poster children, their 1978 Adolescent Sex LP predated the movement by two years. A remarkable debut, the set snarls with leftover punk intent, a few glam rock riffs, and a wealth of electronics that not only reach back to the band's youth, but also predate much of what would explode out of the ...
The three cantatas on this disc, volume 33 of the ongoing complete edition by conductor Masaaki Suzuki and his historical-instrument Bach Collegium Japan, aren't familiar items. But they make a marvelous program that introduces the listener to many of the specific virtues of Suzuki's series. Those virtues do not run especially in the direction of ...
These are the days of miracles and wonders; not only are there already two complete recordings of all Bach's cantatas -- the greatest body of sacred music since the Renaissance -- but there are more cycles in progress. But while it is indeed wonderful to have so many recordings of so much great music available, there are drawbacks to each cycle. ...
Buddha's Poptronica series boasts a title that's a play on the prevalent term for techno in the '90s, electronica. In the early '80s, however, synth pop was often called techno -- something that the compilers of Poptronica remembered when it came time to assemble a three-disc series of synth pop hits from the '80s. Though Poptronica has a bit of a ...
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![Assemblage [Germany Bonus Tracks]](http://images.alibris.com/cover/h98225ra4ma_t.jpg)
![Gentlemen Take Polaroids [Bonus Track]](http://images.alibris.com/cover/i57068npsb2_t.jpg)
![Quiet Life [Bonus Tracks]](http://images.alibris.com/cover/h98335q2htv_t.jpg)
![Bach: Cantatas 26, 62, 116, 139 [Hybrid SACD]](http://images.alibris.com/cover/m13848wfxvx_t.jpg)
![Adolescent Sex [Expanded]](http://images.alibris.com/cover/h98528a2u80_t.jpg)
![Bach: Cantatas, Vol. 30 [Hybrid SACD]](http://images.alibris.com/cover/m18049mbgde_t.jpg)
![Bach: Cantatas Nos. 74, 87, 128, & 176 [Hybrid SACD]](http://images.alibris.com/cover/m35453pt29h_t.jpg)
![Bach: Cantatas, Vol. 33 [Hybrid SACD]](http://images.alibris.com/cover/m24794n300g_t.jpg)
![A Christmas Festival [RCA Gold Seal]](http://images.alibris.com/cover/d600881i06c_t.jpg)
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