Two Sunsets: C86 Meets Japanese Minimalism
There are twenty two years and a million miles between the Pastels’ debut album Up For A Bit, a Daniel Johnston /Jonathan Richman obsessed affair, and this collaboration with Japanese minimalists Tenniscoats. Gone are the quirky lyrics and twanging guitars, replaced with soft melodies and a light jazzy feel added by Bill Wells.
Also on the record is Teenage Fanclub’s Gerard Love who surfaces most clearly on Vivid Youth which sounds like Astrud Gilberto joined the Fanclub.
Vocal duties are shared by Tenniscoats and the Pastels, with Katrina Mitchell’s breathy voice counterpoised by Stephen Pastel, a man whose singing voice continues to offer hope to those of us who dare only sing in an empty house.
Not speaking Japanese, it’s impossible to know what some of the songs are about, but on the basis of the lyrics sung in English and the almost tentative feel of the songs, they are unlikely to be about sacrificing virgins.
One word of warning though: Halfway through the brief instrumental Modesty Piece, there are some pan pies. What they are doing there is anybody’s guess; surely Stephen Pastel knows that the proper use of a pan pipe is for bored looking South American Indians to use to perform covers of Phil Collins songs in shopping centres around the British Isles.
When I was converting my vinyl collection to digital format, I used a piece of software which would automatically cut the recording into separate tracks. Songs with very quiet intros, breaks in the middle and false endings could end up being cut into two separate tracks. The software settings would need to be adjusted and the song re-recorded. This could be a little tiresome. It would be an absolute bugger with this album.
Temporacha is, you see, a very, very, very quiet record. Not perhaps as pretty as their previous albums, this is a much more spectral affair, Tenniscoats, have produced a whisper of a record. Plucked strings are left to reverberate into the ether, leaving long gaps punctuated only by birdsong, the sound of a downpour or a car passing. Three or four note patterns are repeated without ever sounding like they are about to flourish into a full blown tune. This is about as minimalist as you can get.
The album is actually a collaboration between the Japanese duo of Saya and Takashi Ueno with Lawrence English of the Room40 label. The idea was to use field recordings taken in Japan of rural and urban environments and build an album to capture the essence of these settings.
For such a sparse sound, it is a strangely compelling listen. Rather than being a random collage of background sounds, it demands your attention and washes over you. Back in the early 1990s, Alex Patterson of The Orb frequently extolled the virtues of floatation tanks as a means of achieving a state of complete relaxation. I myself have never spent time in one, but if I did shell out for one and it didn’t sound like Temporacha in there, I think I’d be asking for my money back.
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