And so here it is, the final part of David‘s massive Pizzicato Five discography review series. The fact that I’ve highlighted every part here probably gives away that I so love that David took the time to do this, and it was fun to read along and listen again to a lot of these records. I first met David through a Pizzicato Five mailing list (P5ML) during the years leading up to my move to Tokyo in 1998 (after visiting in 1997) and it’s great to be celebrating this stuff again together almost 20 years later.
Tag: p5ml
As I think I’ve written in recent posts, since unearthing my archives and going through my old posts, it’s gotten me back into the music I was listening to at that time, which mostly revolved around the Shibuya-kei scene. Through various means I’ve been able to start rebuilding my collection — the biggest thanks go out to Tom, one of the originals from the old Pizzicato Five Mailing List, who has been my savior — and it not only has me listening to this music again, but talking about it as well — often with David, another P5ML alumni. Miniflex came up, a name I remembered from those days but nothing more than that, but since listening to the album (or mini-album, as it’s pretty short) Sud on Friday night, I’ve been absolutely obsessed, and have been listening to it pretty much non-stop.
Miniflex is a solo project by producer Yugo Katayama, who was the man behind the music of Yukari Fresh, one of my favorite artists from those days. It looks like Sud was the only release he did under the name Miniflex, and that makes me pretty sad — I’m hunting for anything else that would be original music from him, but falling short.
And speaking of David, he’s currently listening to every single Pizzicato Five release (or at least pretty much all of them) and writing a review and scoring each of those releases. I’ve already read a few of them and they’re great (and they in turn made me revisit some of those records with a fresh pair of ears). I think he’s only planning on publishing the reviews once he’s written all of them, but I’ll make sure to link to them when he does do that.
One of the first friends I made when I moved to Tokyo was Patrick Benny, who I had met through a Pizzicato Five mailing list (P5ML) — I met quite a few good friends that way, including W. David Marx and Jesper Larsson. We all shared a love for Shibuya-kei music, and Patrick was especially into the scene, and to this day continues to update his Tokyo’s Coolest Sound site, and still runs his Tokyo Recohan online store.
As I’ve been heavily into listening to Shibuya-kei of late (I’m listening to Fantastic Plastic Machine’s Moments compilation as I write this), I’ve also been taking a look again at Patrick’s Tokyo’s Coolest Sound, where the latest post highlights the upcoming release of a new Maki Nomiya album that celebrates the influence of French culture on Shibuya-kei. This video will give you a taste of one of the tracks (a duet between Nomiya and Crazy Ken Band’s Ken Yokoyama of “Un homme et une femme”). Very much looking forward to hearing the rest of the record.