Luna - Comment Sa Va ? -1985- (EP, Toypick, Zero Records), Japan

Luna was a female duo from Kyoto, Japan that made this jewel of an EP in 1985. Backed by other musicians they created these songs of naive wave sweetness in French, complete with the grammatically incorrect way of spelling Comment ça va? It got released on a sublabel of Zero Records that also released early Shonen Knife and After Dinner.

The EP contains four songs that remind me of other Japanese music from the eighties that used the French chanson style as their conceptual image and sound like a.o. Variètè, Ichiko Hashimoto or Corina Corrina. Actually this cultural appropriation often displays great sensitivity. Furthermore it uses a format which feels like a very honest approach to music. Let's say a toy keyboard, a synth, some simple percussion, a duo or a person by itself, broken language, childish naivety, simple melodies and timid vocals. An example of pure simplicity transformed into honest emotion and love.

Today these type of sounds are for example still to be found in acts like EYE or maybe Le Fruit Vert. Other acts from the past with a similar sensibility that come to mind are The Same, Aksak Maboul or Antena. Ofcourse they have nothing to do with each other contextually. And yeah I guess I'm a sucker for this type of music. 

So far only the main track Comment Sa Va ? was around, which is still the highlight, but finally it's here in its entirety.

Hopefully this adds to a naive, warm, healthy, and romantic summer for you all !

Get it HERE

にんぷたい (I Want Pregnant Women) - Nymph -1987- (Cassingle, Elecuitel Records), Japan

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So usually I don't really post stuff if I don't know what it is that I exactly share, but then again that really happens rarely. This is a Japanese cassingle from 1987 of a band which name would be more suitable for some sort of Japanese harsh-noise project. I translated the Japanese band name and found out it meant I Want Pregnant Women, what to think of such a band name? Anyway, it turned out that this is everything but harsh-noise: the music is strange kawai Japanese new-wave pop or something like that.

The three song-cassette contains the song Nymph in two different versions and a cool weird late eighties electronic track with drumcomputers. The only thing I know is that this was released by the Elecuitel label in Japan, which also published the great Dali-Soli flexi disc (might be the same group) that was presented years ago on Habit of Sex, a blog specialized in Japanese underground music. I recommend you -if you haven't done it yet- to walk through the archives of the Habit of Sex and Stalking Duppi blogs to discover endless great recordings from the Japanese eighties underground.

UPDATE: Thanks to a follower of the blog I now know that the sound engineer was Masaharu Tanigawa who made a strange record in the early eighties and also played on the first Ché-SHIZU album. Also the band consisted of about five people playing different instruments. Check out the comments for more information.

Get it HERE