The same moon shines, the same wind blows for both of us and time is but a paper moon

Man, these algorithms that power social media sure are something else, something spooky. For all the talk about AI, the algorithms sure disturb me quite a bit more - at least for now. So I was doing some research for a topic I'll be doing in the near future, and while I was thinking about said topic, my mind flashed back to a memory I had buried in my mind - quite likely something that was now over forty years ago. When I was a kid, my mother used to work at the only TV station we had, and because it was not that far from where I lived, I visited her very, very often. Sometimes she'd be doing office work, other times she'd be doing studio work. She was working for the department that handled foreign content, and part of her duties were - among many other things - to view - and I should note that by 'view' I don't mean she actually watched the whole thing; no, she watched a few minutes only, took some notes, fastforwarded a few minutes until the next segment, and rinse and repeat -  analyze, and write reports on whatever content was being shopped around from foreign networks, and it could be something contemporary or not. There was no actual distinction between what kind of content she had to view - it could be soap operas, regular TV shows, cartoons or even music shows. 

Often, when I visited her, and she was busy viewing something, I'd sit beside her and watch along, or if she had to go to a meeting, she'd sit me down and put on something for me to watch. In one of those instances, she was viewing music shows and I remember a band playing that immediately got on my nerves. I mean, even then, even at that young an age, I knew I was listening to something so stupidly pretentious, I'm surprised I didn't throw a tantrum. And the people playing, what were they, Japanese? Did music even exist in Japan? I was shocked, disgusted and traumatized.

And that - dear readers - was that. That was the end of that story. That is, until this week.

The algorithms, right? I'm used to getting suggestions based on whatever I search for - though some turn out to be wildly off the mark - and sometimes I get suggestions that make me think that my phone really is listening to me. But what scares me was when I think of something - I don't even verbalize it or look it up or whatever... and within minutes I'm getting suggestions that match exactly what I was thinking. And what did good ol' Youtube do? Motherfuckers, the video that I had seen once and only the once in my childhood appears in my feed. I had no idea what they were called, but as soon as I saw the thumbnail, I was like '...is it? Could it be? After all these years, could I have found that music from my childhood that I truly detested?', and a few seconds into it, sure enough - it's the very same band, and wouldn't you know, I actually found it pretty good!

Day 243 - Sadistic Mika Band - 'Hot! Menu'

So the song that almost made me wretch as a kid was actually the first song from their 1975 record 'Hot! Menu', called 'Wa-Kah! Chico'. For some reason, as a kid I didn't think it was actually real people playing that song, but rather robots with realistic skin. Because they played so... so precisely in time with each other. Like machines whose programming made all the pieces fall neatly and unerringly into place. And I didn't know it at the time, I had no idea what it was called, but man... noodling is something that I really am not such a huge fan of. And yet... I actually liked it here. And thinking that the rest of the album was going to be me much of the same... it's actually quite different. Proggy, yes, and some fusion-y bits as well, with some rock thrown in. It's funny how something I loathed as a kid would turn out to be pretty interesting! I'll give a pretty decent 7/10

Day 244 - Yellow Magic Orchestra - 'Solid State Survivor'

Well, this is the band where Yukihiro Takahashi (the drummer) was before Sadistic Mika Band, so it's got some family ties going on. This album is quite interesting - and apparently highly influential in a number of music genres, ranging from hip-hop to techno - in that it's mostly instrumental music that would not be - at all - amiss in 8 Bit videogames, and for my part, that's actually the most enjoyable bit of the album. Not to say that what's left was bad, but rather it's more akin to, say, Roxy Music. All in all a pretty groovy listen, it gets a 7/10

Day 245 - Far East Family Band - 'Nipponjin'

Very, very much on the spacey side of prog, this was a very interesting listen. It wears its Pink Floyd influences proudly on their sleeves, though they veer more towards the space rock end of that particular spectrum. A funny thing I learned about this band while researching them is that a fellow called Masanori Takahashi was their keyboard player, more famously known as Kitarō, he of new age music renown. And it shows here and there, especially in the more instrumental bits. Whilst I enjoyed the record, there's nothing really groundbreaking here - even for a 1975 record. All in all, I think it deserves a 6.5/10

Day 246 - Kenso - 'Kenso III'

I don't know what to make of this, really. On the one hand, it's a highly regarded album critically, and on the other it just feels terribly derivative - but I say that in a positive way. This album is classified as being Fusion or Jazz Rock, though I don't know too many records of that genre that would sway me to fit them in any of those categories. It does sound much more proggy than anything else, really, especially close to some Genesis stuff. Steve Hackett's guitar work is clearly an inspiration here. It's all very, very much instrumental, with only some vocal harmonies here and there, and though that's ok in and of itself, I am a huge fan of music with, well, actual singing. Nothing about that takes away from the album, though, and I found myself enjoying the latter part of the album quite a bit more than the rest of it. Didn't wow me, and neither did it make me feel like my time was stolen. I'll give it a 6.5/10

Day 247 - Kazumi Watanabe - 'Killowatt'

Or should the album be called 'Kirowatt'? At least that's how it's called in Apple Music.

Now, granted, there's much about Jazz Fusion/Jazz Rock that is still very unknown to me. I haven't listened to much of it, so I rarely know what to expect. From what I could ascertain online, this one skews more toward the Jazz Fusion side, and I can see that, but there's some bits of rocking guitar here. And to be sure, I can't fault any of the playing here, and if there's something I really love here is just how prominent the bass sound is. But (unfortunately) for me, most of this record was just music that I could safely ignore while listening to it. Some of it just gets too close to Muzak for my tastes, and it's in one ear and out the other. Only maybe the first and last couple of tracks really stood out to me. Not bad, not by a longshot, but just not my cup of tea. Still, it gets a 6/10

Day 248 - Ruins - 'Symphonica'

Well, listening to this made me think of a very specific moment in my life where I felt like doing the Homer Simpson backing into the bushes meme. There used to be a record store close to where I worked, and they only sold Prog/Psych records, and variants and subgenres thereof. I never went there a lot - maybe only a couple of times, really - and this specific time I went in and heard something so outlandishly ridiculous that my instinct was to back away and return another time, if at all. But curiosity got the best of me and I asked the guy who owned the store what was we were listening to. And he says it's a band called 'Magma', and I reply, 'Weird, this sounds nothing like the Magnum I know', to which he says, obviously frustrated with my stupidity, 'Magma! MAGMA! MAG-MA!'. And for god knows how many years thereafter, I never revisited the band, nor had I any real inclination to do so.

About maybe a couple of years ago, in one of those nights one has when you can't find any sleep, and some stray thought crosses your mind, and you end up in Wikipedia, and about three searches later you've deviated so far from what you were originally looking for, and you end up in Magma's wiki page. And that's how I came to learn that these French visionaries play a sort of music called Zeuhl, which is, apparently, a mix of Jazz Fusion, Symphonic Rock and Neoclassical music. It's also sang in the completely made up language of Kobaïan... and it's got something that I hate with a burning passion, which is Free Jazz, but the why is reserved for a future post.

And everything I just mentioned is very much prominently on display here. And it's weird - too weird for me, if I'm honest. Is it bad? No, it's - I think - quite good for what it attempts to do. It's complex, and well arranged, and you can certainly see these people know what they're doing. So it's not bad, it's good. Right? Right?? Well, that's as may be. As I've stated here often enough, something being 'good' does not necessarily equate to being 'enjoyable'. And ultimately... I found myself calculating just how much time I had left of this torture. I'm not sorry I listened to this - it does have its genuinely good moments, but the weird/unenjoyable ones far outweigh them. I'll give it a generous 5/10

Day 249 - Gerard - 'Irony Of Fate'

I had, in fact, elected another band to listen to but Apple Music wasn't having it, they had none of their albums there, so I had to choose another one. This one had been on my radar, and when I did some research on them, lo and behold!, I find they have an album whose cover is none other than John William Waterhouse's sublime painting 'The Lady of Shalott'. So I did some more research and apparently this album isn't widely well regarded. This is more on the Neo-Prog side (think British bands like Marillion, Pallas, IQ or bands like The Flower Kings and Symphony X.) My listen of this album was very pleasant - everything was very well played, in particular the keyboards which were melodic, symphonic, melancholic and probably a lot more words that end in '-ic'. I liked the singer's voice - though it's hardly spectacular. He sings mostly in Japanese, but sometimes with a little English thrown in, and yes - a little bit of 'Engrish' here and there as well. It was pretty good, and I wouldn't mind listening to something else by them. It gets a deserved 7/10

Next week we go to Italy. I think.