Japan - Were they EVER good?

wow i agree with Geir, whats the world coming too

On sounding dated i think its to do with digital synths in the 80s and cheap sampling in the late 80s/early 90s

Yes, it is. But also some of those DX7 sounds that were being used way too often.

The DX7 (and the FM synths that followed) was a strange creature. Technically, it was a synth and not a sampler. But the sounds it made sounded more like badly sampled samples than like synth sounds. Avoiding the most cliche-liked sounds (also the el piano sound) FM synths can still work nicely together with analogue synths to create more varied sounds though.

But, well.... Better keep to Japan here. And they did not use DX7 or samples. :)

I have to agree with Geir here about early 80s synth before everything got all poopy. However Japan are so depressing! Were then and are now! Am happy to be reminded of this.

It's Sylvian's Ferryesque croon on the Japan records that I have a hard time coming to terms with. Thankfully he mostly dropped that affectation when he went solo. I love "Ghosts" and (even more) "Nightporter" but he should have redone the vox on those songs later.

I always thought "Burning Bridges" felt like a sort of practice run for what they wanted to do on "Ghosts," except with a saxophone instead of some crushingly bleak lyrics.

Sylvian re-recorded the vocals for "Ghosts" on the "Everything & Nothing" compilation.

Is that worth checking out? FWIW I *love* the vocals on original flavor Ghosts.

it's a good compilation that criminally doesn't include any version of forbidden colors. the re-recordings and remixing isn't super noticable unless you are the sort who a/b tests versions of songs obsessively. I'm not sure why he did it.

Partly because early 80s synth based music hasn't and will never date.

"I still like it" doesn't mean it hasn't dated. I like a lot of music played on the harpsichord but guess what it's dated. I know it is useless to argue w/you but I feel it is my duty to tell you you're wrong.

Except for the drum machines being more advanced these days, current chartpop sounds like early 80s synth based music.

(And, well, today's chart pop is dominated by female singers whereas male ones dominated in the 80s - but it would be a bit weird to claim that the idea of a male lead singer is dated)

Oh man akm thank you for reminding me of "Forbidden Colors"! I had been trying to figure out what it was for the past couple months, playing "Every Color You Are" and getting sad when it wasn't the song I was thinking of.

People who dislike Japan just have no...taste.

Speaking of taste:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mxr3B1rNHGc

One of my fave bands evah...Probably the only band I would pay good money to see if they reformed...love the early stuff...Adolescent Sex is so funky...Karn and Jansen are one of the best rhythm sections this country produced...if they were American I reckon Miles Davis would have picked them up...

So sad about Karn's cancer :(

"sometimes i feel so low" is GOOD

The sound of the 80s was intermediately dated during the 90s, but has been reinstated during the 00s. The 90s was a very different decade that will remain different forever and have little relevance on music beyond the 90s.

― Tied Up In Geir (Geir Hongro), Friday, October 1, 2010 1:52 AM (eight years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i love this post

You love that post because its terrible?

I always had this band down as the worst example of New Romantic pretentiousness/preciousness/ponciness but "gentlemen take polaroids" and "tin drum" are excellent albums

Like Eno if he stayed with Roxy Music and a bit of Bowie coke mirror art-funk thrown in for good measure. the musicianship is incredible

"art of parties" is my jam lately

the Mao chic is a bit much

Doesn't Sylvian look like Sally Jesse Raphael on that cover?

he really does

“The Art of Parties” is GREAT. One of my favorite songs on the entire Just Can’t Get Enough New Wave Hits of the 80s series.

Love Japan, especially Quiet Life and Tin Drum which are all time favorites.

Recently acquired the 2xLP reissue of the ambient albums Sylvian did with Holger Czukay (which I'd somehow never heard before this reissue) and it's pretty much all I want to listen to right now. You can really hear in this the tracks being laid for the Sylvian solo records that follow

Abbot's Yes related dn name from 8 years ago just made raspberry ginger wine come out of my nose.

My jam:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=to-e3eFcHgg

Why does Japan have such a horrible reputation? It's primarily outside of England that this is the case. I remember Blender mag foolishly declaring them one of the worst bands of all time in the early 2000s. Look at this thread title: YES, of course they were. The most innovative band in the world for a short while in the early 80s. And they were popular at the time!

When did the backlash happen? Was it just that the band had a very new wavey 1980s aesthetic and was subsequently misjudged and tossed in with the more processed bands of the time?

https://i.ibb.co/vZc91pF/viz.jpg

Why does Japan have such a horrible reputation? It's primarily outside of England that this is the case. I remember Blender mag foolishly declaring them one of the worst bands of all time in the early 2000s. Look at this thread title: YES, of course they were. The most innovative band in the world for a short while in the early 80s. And they were popular at the time!

When did the backlash happen? Was it just that the band had a very new wavey 1980s aesthetic and was subsequently misjudged and tossed in with the more processed bands of the time?

― Totally different head. Totally. (Austin)

uh well they had no American reputation at all unless you read Trouser Press or some shit

Japan didn't have a particularly great reputation in the UK on their first couple of albums, as it happens. In fact, it took them until Gentlemen Take Polaroids to finally get the recognition they deserved in the UK. They were completely out of step with what was going on at the time in the UK on Adolescent Sex. On the other hand, Quiet Life was a little ahead of its time - it performed poorly on the chart and the title track was only a hit when it was reissued about a year and a half after the album had been out. It sounds like proto-Duran Duran now, but the UK hadn't caught up with what they were doing yet. By the time they'd truly cracked it critically and commercially with 'Ghosts' and Tin Drum, they were finished. To the casual observer in the UK, it must have seemed like they were here today and gone tomorrow, even though they were big in Japan from the beginning. You have to remember, the Quiet Life to Tin Drum period wasn't really that long a period of time, and by the time Japan called it quits, Duran Duran had arrived with a far more accessible (although admittedly not as good - bar Rio) take on what Japan were doing - and they were better looking and more willing to play the fame game.

It's true that Japan's reputation has only increased with time, though - I still remember seeing the video for 'Visions of China' on MTV in the '90s! There was a lot of "the '80s were crap and the music sucked" talk in the '90s, which I basically put down to that natural thing of there being nothing that seems as uncool as things from the previous decade. That kinda perception got readjusted in the '00s, and then further this decade.

I was reading pro-Japan articles in the early '90s, in the throes of my Ferry obsession.

Yup. Japan seemed more immune to the '90s backlash against "'80s music" than most. They'd also got back together to do the Rain Tree Crow album in '91, which I'm really glad didn't come out as a Japan album because it's a different thing.

Bumping this thread to post a link to this recent interview with Rob Dean:

http://www.electricityclub.co.uk/missing-in-action-rob-dean/

Also, there are two types of people in the world: those who think Japan/DS/JBK/all other associated artists are AWESOME and the people who are so wrong they may as well be the mayor of Wrongville.

great interview... thanks for posting it.

Well, yeah.

Some nice insights from Steve Jansen here

https://timstwitterlisteningparty.com/pages/replay/feed_683.html

& a listening party for Gentlemen Take Polaroids on May 1st

I went through Steve Jansen's Tin Drum listening party. I thought it was odd that he had no comments, mentions, namechecks or any callouts whatsoever to David Sylvian, while on the other hand both Richard and Mick were frequently mentioned. Hope that was unintentional.

I'm pretty sure that, despite being brothers, they don't get along. Sylvian made some pointed comments about musicians "who should know better" who try to duplicate the sounds of others to create product that I'm pretty sure were aimed at Jansen.

no comments, mentions, namechecks or any callouts whatsoever to David Sylvian

The same phenomenon can be observed in a recent interview that Jansen and Rob Dean gave to promote the Quiet Life reissue. Someone asked about this in the comments section, and the interviewer replied, "The reality is, David wants nothing to do with his past – not only does he refuse any part in promoting Japan, he won’t even promote his past solo career."
So perhaps Jansen is just respecting his brother's desire to completely disassociate himself from Japan.

I guess Sylvian doesn't want to talk about anything at all, since he's not making any new music to discuss.

Sylvian has been on Twitter a bit, recently. More often than not he's recommending other people's music but he did seem to engage with questions briefly ... but held a fairly hard line of, I dunno, disinterest in old music.

So perhaps Jansen is just respecting his brother's desire to completely disassociate himself from Japan.

David Sylvian often said that he didn't want to dwell on the past or live in nostalgia. During his solo career he already often disassociated himself from Japan (save for Ghosts). I remember he had announced his last tour in 2007 as a final outing of his past work. The performances were really good though, it didn't seem as if he minded playing them once more.
I recall how I briefly spoke to him in 2003 after a concert, which had surprisingly featured Japan's 'The Other Side Of Life'. I thanked him for playing that song and he smiled very proudly in return. I then asked him if the recent reissues of his albums were his choice or the studio, he said it was partly the studio but also partly him, I said that I kinda minded that some remixes closed the first disc of Gone To Earth which disrupted the album flow for me, he said it was the only reissue he also wasn't sure of.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99s9hTIELCo

I recall how I briefly spoke to him in 2003 after a concert,

this is an amazing recollection. i know he's a real person, but i guess i've always just imagined david sylvian to be this opaque aura of an existence. i know he's able to speak in a normal conversational voice, but i can't be anything other than intimidated when i try to imagine what that must have been like. he's like a greek god or something to me by this point.

I had exactly the same reaction.

jansen played extensively on all of sylvian's solo work up until dead bees on a cake, played live with him (including on sylvian's final tour in 2007), was part of nine horses with him, and played on the title track on died in the wool which was released in 2011 so if they fell out or anything it must have been relatively recent

have been getting really into sylvian lately, somehow his work never clicked for me last time i'd tried listening to it ages ago but this time it's all incredible to me

The Rain Tree Crow project fell apart when Sylvian had a physical altercation with Jansen, it's said. They're a little more discreet about this sort of thing than the Gallaghers or Davies brothers, though, so who knows.