TO EAR - JAPAN SONGS '86

A personal compilation, recorded and edited by Rob from John Peel radio show broadcasts, 10 - 12 pm every weekday night.
I don't know the names of any of the bands or any of the song titles (can anyone help me here?)...
but let's not allow that to be a barrier...Instead, let us go on an aural journey - to Japan, in 1986! Hai!

Side one:
1. Traditional vocal intro.
2. Big pop! I've just realised that this is all programmed, CX5M?, QX1?. I'd always assumed it was a band playing! Mind you, it's a fair few years since I've listened to this tape!
3. Something about Romeo? "What am I, who are you..."
4. Industrial, Germanic feel to this one.
5. Cool sequencer opening. An interesting but rather lengthy pop song.
6. Er, hip-hop version of a Beatles song!
7. Special collection? Do you like the man or do you like the woman?
8. Collage with sequenced synth! Is this Japanese?
9. Female voice, guitar, 80s feel...
10. Yaah, yaah, etc... Yes kids, this inventive music was, to my mind, making the bulk of commercial music sound like pallid dross 25 years ago, let alone today!
High five - mission impossible!
11. Punk! "Crazy boys!!"
12. Kitchen sink time, yay! This is not (yet) another love song!
13. Oh no, it's another wacky take on a Beatles song! They did (still do?) like their Beatles in Japan! Love the middle switch to what I call "Mystical ninja game soundtrack-type music!", which is probably just typical traditional Japanese music.

Side Two:
1. Ahh - lush, beautiful and well produced.
2. Guitars, screaming, thumping drums, Nina Hagen-type vocals. Piano, more screams. You like?
3. Funky synth-bass sequence and guitar, lush strings - a bit "western" this one? Reminds me of Art of Noise's Dragnet. Goes a bit prog later... oh I give up! (followed on the tape by a snippet of Toshinori Kondo!)
4. Thinks: Why can't all pop music sound like this? ...Wake up Rob!.. Guitar loop frenzy.
5. Beautiful Anime-type pop song. "A revolution."
6. More J-pop, though I'm not sure that term existed back in the day. Anyway, straight verses, quirky choruses...and a developing fm synth section later. In fact a song that just keeps throwing in those samples!
7. Tribal drumming and high guitars that evolve into a very Roxy Music-esque song. In fact I could have got it wrong here - this might actually be Roxy Music! Oops. Help anyone? Well it sounds pretty Japanese to me, quite Sandii and the Sunsetz, Ippu-Do. "I cry over you". (Bit of a nasty jump in here - but you see, this is what us music fans would do - endlessly tape music off the radio - analogue downloading -. Then the recordings would be compiled onto a new tape, as happened here, which perhaps explains some of the jumpy edits.) Well, it's a good song and it's on the original tape soooo....Um, next.
8. Synth, guitar, bass, drums - yep, it's definitely pop music! "Don't need the hurricane, you see the sunshine", certainly more great Japo-pop!! Phew.
9. OK, er, heavy, jazz fusion-inflected, blah blah, um..."Sonic boom - Shake, bake". Industrial yet joyful?
10. Groovy, poppy, happy-happy I hope you are ... to find all this great music from another time, another place. And that's yer lot!

I remember now that The Frank Chickens were invited onto the John Peel radio show, maybe a couple of times, to play Japanese pop music, but I'm not sure if this is one of their selections? Hmmm - more rummaging to do methinks.