I might be stringing myself out there but it’s due time for me to bring up the unbridled, unheralded genius of Seiji Toda — and to be more specific: Real Fish’s Tenon. Much like Scritti Politti’s Green Gartside, one listen to a Seiji Toda group — Shi-Shonen, Real Fish, or Fairchild — or his production work for Yukako Hayase’s Polyester reveals a side of Pop music that is quite different than most of its peers. As interested in weird, tangential texture, as it was in left-field catchiness, it’s these two who had an obvious, shared, profound love of Pop music with equal desire to figure out how to tear it apart, as a means to some other end. For Seiji, I believe, nothing showed his expertise at doing so more than his work under Real Fish and this album in particular.
Under the band Real Fish, Seiji would ride various instrumental waves to capture some mid-point between the futurist Pop of New Musik or Telex and the experimental art rock found in the veins of various Trevor Horn productions. A wiz kid at production and all sorts of instruments, Seiji had an idea of spreading his vision out over two different bands. Real Fish, would be the more cerebral, thinking man’s band that took obvious influence from the work of Simon Jeffe’s Penguin Cafe Orchestra. This would be the band that really had no set genre or style to pin on. Shi-Shonen, would be the other, where he could give structure and use his Pop smarts to make a run at the radio dial with all sorts of left-field music.
Shi-Shonen, at first, was where his loyalty lay in. With the help of other friends from Chuo University, Shingo Tomoda, Hitoshi Watanabe, and Mari Fukuhara they signed a record deal with Haruomi Hosono’s Non-Standard record label. Originally, it was Seiji who outgrew an early love for Neil Young and Led Zeppelin, and taught himself the ins/outs of modular synthesizers and computer sequencers. With Shi-Shoen finally Seiji was able to put forth an idea of computer-driven Pop music that understood the limits and possibilities of such technology, to fully exploit its full potential.
Shi-Shonen’s Singing Circuit remains this beacon of out-there Japanese Pop music that has one foot deep into the music of Van Dyke Parks and the other into some post-Devo sonic tomfoolery. Haruomi Hosono, serving as executive producer, simply sealed whatever they were doing as being the next generation of what YMO helped introduce. More mischievous than reverential, Seiji guided Shi-Shonen to something resembling Godley & Creme’s equal meeting of circuitry and Pop hook.
At first, though, Real Fish had to have felt like the lesser of the two groups. Really serving more of a playground where this same group of musician could work on their compositional and experimental chops, Real Fish began exactly as that. Rolling in Hirono Mio from Mio Fou and jazz saxophonist Hiroyasu Yaguchi, Real Fish grew as a large, full-on sextet that could take on anything from vaudeville, environmental music, electro dance rock, exotica, folk, Chanson, funk, and eccentric minimalism in different tracks…or all through one track altogether.
They were a World Standard before Masaharu Mikami and Sohichiro Suzuki conjured up such a creation. Whereas Shi-Shonen was more Seiji’s creation, Real Fish featured songs developed more democratically (of which songs by Hiroyasu Yaguchi and Mari Fukuhara were particularly more inspired to write) — serving unexpectedly as a boon to Seiji the producer/caretaker. Their sophomore debut allowed Real Fish to present a different side to this loose limb musical reach.
I can’t tell whether it was because of the strains of writing for two bands or simply a matter of growing up, but Real Fish decided to get serious, a year later, with Tenon. Rather than function as a group with different agendas, on Tenon they honed in deeply as a unit to smooth out unrefined edges and really go for emotion over prior releases’ aims for unpretentious sprawl. For me, much of the work on Tenon reminds me of Ryuichi’s work on Illustrated Musical Encyclopedia and very much their closest cohorts: Killing Time by capturing the essences of various “exotic” musics only for the purpose of restyling them in more personable, personal ways.
Big hearted openers like “Bit Walk”, reach peak, crisp production but still hit on gorgeous notes of jazz, wiry electro, and even bittersweet hints of yearning ambiance. “Boomerang” expands on some wickedly dextrous drum machine sequencing to touch base with a magical bit lilting Latin music going through all sorts of interesting/sensitive sonic twist and turns. At its core it’s very pleasant music, but with an open mind (and an open heart), one can be hear something meticulously engaging. Miss one second and you’re bound to miss some bit of spontaneous beauty.
The peerless stretch that begins with “By Me” all the way to the end of the album further expands on a special kind of fusion Real Fish stumbled upon. Bits on the A-side of the album, especially on an album highlight like “By Me” written by Seiji, use intricate sonic manipulation made possible by a Fairlight CMI sampler, in a way that seemed more in tune with contemporary indie or lo-fi Pop. Samples were less used as gimmicky sounds and more as nostalgic triggers to touch certain, emotional points, even if the music has a heavy dose of rhythm to it. The absolutely breathtaking “Belly Roll” then caps off the A-side with a mini suite of deep, meditative, ambient electronics, that somehow segues itself into positively joyful English Folk-lilting Pop Jazz that’s equally as gorgeous. It’s that segue that introduces you to the B-side which attempts to flip the script, and push all the arrangements forward using purely acoustic instruments and orchestration.
Mari Fukuhara’s sparkling “水がわたしにくれたもの”, that kicks off the B-side, instantly brings to mind the floating Art Pop of Mio Fou, both seemingly sharing a stupendous sense of sentimentality unweighted by schmaltz. Album sequencing truly makes the B-side shine. Hiroyasu Yaguchi’s ” 被写体” takes great care to carry on with the wonderfully eccentric romantic mood begun by Mari. Best way to describe this track: Debussy being sucked into score a cowboy film set in space. Really this is al precious, impressionist music scored by oddballs trying to meet it halfway — which aptly describes flip-side of that equation the following track “夜の突起物”. “夜の突起物” struggles to shake off it’s wayward muse, pushing it to go out and be weird (for weird’s sake), only to figure out how to really nail that emotion…and finish it off in one of the most sublime ways possible…until the end of the album, when they show how they were able to really make it possible.
Surprises of surprises, try to catch how many times you’ll come back to this album. Like that particularly lived in sweater you love, or that adorable teddy you can’t just get rid of, it’s comforting in a way that only you can understand. At the moment I’m still struggling to understand just how much pull it’s had on me. Hearing “星が来る” it could just be that string section conducted by Seiji reminding me of the greatest Pop songs that ever existed. Thankfully, I don’t have to wait for any of those to reappear, right here there are a few where there is that magic…