Am I allowed to punt on this one? Literally, it’s all there — right on the album cover. Magical computer music by Magical Power Mako. I’ll never top this description. Just one look at the album cover puts you there — a smoldering Makoto Kurita surrounded by a shoji panel, two TVs playing VHS tapes, two digital poly synthesizers, one MSX personal computer, and a potted plant. Of course, try not to pay any mind to the aquatic, vaporous background surrounding Makoto’s union of neon glow samurai fashion and post-modernist fashion. If we didn’t have the internet to create vaporwave or to fashion meme aesthetics, surely Makoto created it here. Let’s try to get beyond that, though. Let’s view this video on YouTube — after the jump — of a thankless, anonymous Japanese, MSX aficionado recreate one (of only three) tracks that could only be played from mAgicAl compUteR MusiC by loading the files found on its one-and-only CD release on an emulator. Simply imagine trying to recreate it back then, in 1985, when you’d have to be the proud owner of a CD-ROM drive first (no small chunk of change for sure)…
Magical Power Music presents a MSX Program for CBS SONY COMPACT disc. That program, as seen on the video, leads to a multimedia performance of “L5” from mAgicAl compUteR MusiC right on your personal computer. The technology behind the album was Microsoft’s surprisingly popular (in Japan) MSX personal computer and Yahama’s own FM Music Composer software running their SFG-01 music cartridge — yes, cartridge. The man behind this album was/is Japan’s answer to England’s Julian Cope: the insanely genius, or the genius in spite the lack of insanity Makoto Kurita, the once wunderkind who, under the nom de plume Magical Power Mako began as a musician knee-deep in out-there psychedelia only to revert to a different form and transform himself into a techno-pop visionary. And in mAgicAl compUteR MusiC it doesn’t get any more visionary than that.
Listen to track “L5” in the album an all you hear is noise approximating a modem dialing in. Use it and wiew it in it’s proper context, and you find it’s a shot across the bow — mixing music, computer art, and abstract symbolism in a way you wouldn’t expect to experience, much less see, on a major label release, in its time. Programmed by himself, recorded by himself, and done all within the box itself, mAgicAl compUteR MusiC simply put, was like nothing else out there.
In 1983, to promote his final release (the appropriately titled Music From Heaven), on Japan’s first indie record label (the appropriately titled Marquee Moon), Makoto came upon the idea of creating the world’s first music and computer graphics live show. Working with big names like Commodore, Toshiba, NEC, Misawa Home and Apple, Makoto found some way to make that happen and perform at Shibuya’s PARCO museum this unlikely meeting of digital sight and sound.
Somehow, within the next two years, Makoto developed enough proficiency in BASIC computer programming to become a writer who could convey the importance and knowledge required to explain the process of making music with computers. On the pages of MSX Magazine, one wouldn’t be surprised to see Makoto use a recurring column to expand upon the technology available to contemporary music composers.
Behind the scenes, though, for nearly two years, Makoto had in fact been working on what would become mAgicAl compUteR MusiC. Taking inspiration from video game soundtracks, BGM, techno-pop, and minimalism, mAgicAl compUteR MusiC found Makoto reimagining the acid-fried, floating psychedelia of Music From Heaven as a gateway to pling-plong-y, wave-y, eccentric world of Pop music.
Barring a few vocal dubs, everything you hear on mAgicAl compUteR MusiC was sequenced, synthesized, and bounced right on the MSX. Peak FM synthesis at work, under Magical Power Mako’s hand sounds that he would have created from real instrumentation was now fashioned with all sorts of interesting accoutrements. The first two tracks give you a perfect example of what that was. “Load the Virgin” approximates cyclical, minimal music using a combo of electronic bass plunks and mallet instruments. Delightfully weird accents of tropical music via thin, nasal, synthetic organ gives way to floating, not-quite-bird but bird-sounding sounds that whisk you away to the next left-beat stab at heavily fragmented minimal music.
“Chiengmai” a deliberate misspelling of mythical Thai city of Chiang Mai, captures, through speeding gamelan-esque FM synthesis, a spell-binding mix of Phillip Glass-like minimalism and the stop-start mysticism of a decaying keyboard arpeggiator mechanism hooked on a randomizer setting. Skipping ahead “This Is The Computer Music” pans around music that would perfectly slot in any PC video game cartridge. I hear it soundtracking a racing game of sort. “Studio MIDI” name checks the technology that allows Makoto to pull this off, by pulling off delay techniques on a FM pad that could only inhumanly be done a computer, before segueing into something that would work on a video game based on a Michael Mann movie. “Metal CPU” successfully tries to do some head-banging boogie rock via FM horns and assorted synthesized sounds. The first vocal track “You Need A Sweet Little Computer” makes the most epic track out of some of the thinnest sounding percussion and pseudo-guitar sounds ever. It’s quite figuratively ELO via a trip through some silicon chip, where a segue complete with fake dog barking noises, doesn’t sound quite out of place.
My favorite cuts really begin with the last five tracks before everyone would jettison off the CD. From “Live On the Music” onwards to “Spring Storm” Magical Power Mako truly touches on some magical computer music atmosphere. To me, this less busy section captures the gorgeous sentimentality found in peak ambient Pop ballads. Touches of Eno’s work on Another Green World is present here. Hideki Matsutake-like computer lovelorn vocaloid balladry plunks forward on tracks like “I’ll Fade Away”. Isao Tomita on Jolt Cola makes a track like “From Number Six to Ten” a fascinating track to take in for all its 11 minute track length. It’s just a wonder to hear what the MSX could pull off in the hands of a mind like Makoto. “My Land” somehow stumbles onto the tweest techno music and makes it quite clear how many of these tracks seem to have been cut live as Makoto tweaked away at sequences as they rolled forward. “Spring Storm” then ends the proper audio side with a mix of dark atmospheric music that evolves into a weirdly satisfying electro-boogie that cuts many vanguardist ideas around before throwing you into the purest silence.
For many of us, the album would end there, in spite of the beaucoup of Japanese instructions detailing how to setup and load final three tracks on your computer. For many us, how to position our speakers and keyboards would mean little since we’d have little chance to track down the exact technology needed to experience these final tracks. mAgicAl compUteR MusiC is the rare album that is both obsolete and forever attainable. Only time will tell if someone else can try to decode the two other tracks for us to experience. Heck, I’d love for someone else to try to decode the whole album to begin with!
One response
This album is fantastic. so of it’s time yet so fresh.