Fujiya & Miyagi ‎– Fujiya & Miyagi (2017)

Style: Krautrock, Indie Rock, Synth-pop
Format: CD, Vinyl
Label: Impossible Objects of Desire

Tracklist:
01.   Magnesium Flares
02.   Serotonin Rushes
03.   Solitaire
04.   To The Last Beat of My Heart
05.   Extended Dance Mix
06.   Outstripping (The Speed of Light)
07.   Swoon
08.   Freudian Slips
09.   Impossible Objects of Desire
10.   Synthetic Symphonies
11.   R.S.I.
12.   Impossible Objects Of Desire (Radio Edit)

Credits:
Engineer – Julian Tardo, Paul Pascoe
Mastered By – Eric James (5)
Mixed By – Ed Chivers
Producer – Stephen Lewis
Written-By – Fujiya & Miyagi

Fujiya & Miyagi ‎– Artificial Sweeteners (2014)

Style: Synth-pop, Krautrock
Format: CD, Vinyl
Label: Yep Roc Records

Tracklist:
1.   Flaws
2.   Acid To My Alkaline
3.   Rayleigh Scattering
4.   Artificial Sweeteners
5.   Little Stabs At Happiness
6.   Tetrahydrofolic Acid
7.   Daggers
8.   Vagaries Of Fashion
9.   A Sea Ringed With Visions

Credits:
Bass – Matthew Hainsby
Design – Charlie Rowlins
Guitar – David Best
Synthesizer – David Best, Steve Lewis
Vocals – David Best
Backing Vocals – Matthew Hainsby, Steve Lewis
Mastered By – Simon Davey
Mixed By – Alan Boorman
Producer – Stephen Lewi

Fujiya & Miyagi ‎– Ventriloquizzing (2011)

Style: Krautrock, Synth-pop
Format: CD, Vinyl
Label: Full Time Hobby, Yep Roc Records

Tracklist:
01.   Ventriloquizzing
02.   Sixteen Shades Of Black & Blue
03.   Cat Got Your Tongue
04.   Taiwanese Boots
05.   Yoyo
06.   Pills
07.   OK
08.   Minestrone
09.   Spilt Milk
10.   Tinsel & Glitter
11.   Universe

Credits:
Engineer, Mixed By – Thom Monahan
Other (Dummies) – Clare Barr
Fujiya & Miyagi Are – David Best, Lee Adams, Matt Hainsby, Stephen Lewis
Producer – Fujiya & Miyagi, Thom Monahan

Fujiya & Miyagi ‎– Lightbulbs (2008)

Style: Krautrock, Indie Rock, Disco
Format: CD
Label: Grönland Records, Pod, Inertia Recordings

Tracklist:
01.   Knickerbocker
02.   Uh
03.   Pickpocket
04.   Goosebumps
05.   Rook To Queen's Pawn Six
06.   Sore Thumb
07.   Dishwasher
08.   Pteradactyls
09.   Pussyfooting
10.   Lightbulbs
11.   Hundreds & Thousands

Credits:
Mastered By – Graeme Durham
Mixed By – Alan Boorman
Recorded By – Fujiya & Miyagi, Julian Tardo
Written-By, Producer – Fujiya & Miyagi

Fujiya & Miyagi ‎– Transparent Things (2006)

Style: Indie Rock, Prog Rock, Krautrock, Space Rock, Disco
Format: CD, Vinyl
Label: Tirk, Deaf Dumb & Blind, Impossible Objects of Desire

Tracklist:
1.   Ankle Injuries
2.   Collarbone
3.   Photocopier
4.   Conductor 71
5.   Transparent Things
6.   Sucker Punch
7.   In One Ear & Out The Other
8.   Cassettesingle
9.   Cylinders

Credits:
Mixed By – Alan Boorman
Producer, Written-By – Fujiya & Miyagi
Recorded By – Julian Tardo
Written-By – Matt Avery

This Brighton trio's third long-player, a singles-compilation-plus, is big fun to overthink. The witty lyrics toss biomatter into the same heap of vague "things" as technomatter; thus you get songs called "Photocopier" and "Cassettesingle" snugly beside songs called "Collarbone" and "Ankle Injuries". Obsessing about F&M's obsession with thingness forces one to conclude that this album is a mysterious relic from an alternate 1971. 

Think about it: In 1971, British writer Alan Watts released Does It Matter?: Essays on Man's Relation to Materiality, in which he argued (among other "things") that humans aren't really true materialists, with our reverence for materials, resources and craft. Rather, he typed, we're abstractists, caught in our preference for stockpiling plastic gewgaws. Transparent Things playfully spoofs and luxuriates in how we're possessed by our possessions. One song's speaker wants to "kick it" with a girl, but first he's "got to get a new pair of shoes." Another's chorus taunts, "I'm just monkeying around with your furniture," after the verse cites spilled "bodily fluids" and how the subject "must be off [his/her] bleeding rocker." In context, "bleeding" suggests actual blood rather than the UK default pejorative. With comic detachment, the lyrics' casual violence contrasts with the music's antiseptic cleanness enough to make one recall the sterile/obscene, bodylike/inorganic sculptures from the milkbar and the murder victim's house in Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (ahem, 1971). 

Anyway: Alan Watts went on to become a Nipponophile, leading temple tours in Japan and even getting accused of faking his enlightenment; Fujiya & Miyagi readily admit their impostorship in a chorus on this album, as if the whole thing was a meticulous piss-take: "We were just pretending to be Japanese." True: Fujiya's a turntable company, and Miyagi's the filmic Okinawan played by Pat Morita who instructs sullen white kids in martial arts. Fujiya & Miyagi presumably relish urban Japan's cultural gizmosis, the fixation with gadgetry and the attention to detail paid even on the level of toy eraser design. F&M's carefully constructed retro-futuristic electronica definitely suggests the quaint, boxy dawn of portable media. And what year did Sony begin selling televisions in Britain, prompting the Time Magazine cover story "Japan, Inc"? That would be 1971.

The "coincidence" continues: Can and Neu! are the acts whose production and syncopation F&M most acefully cop; both acts were either recording or releasing their crucial work in 71. "In One Ear and Out the Other" bounces with Eno-era Roxy Music's eerie psychedelic-lounge sound; yup, they formed and recorded their debut in 71. "Sucking Punch" apes the falsetto vox, pimpy guitar, and whomping, slinky bass of both Curtis Mayfield's 1971-recorded Superfly and Serge Gainsbourg's 1971 LP Historie de Melody Nelson. And the name of the lengthy instrumental that best synthesizes (the 1971-recorded) Kraftwerk 2 with the best of the rest of krautrock's stoner-jazz and metronome-prog? "Conductor 71". 

To be fair, Can and Neu! aren't the only three-letter outfits that F&M echo: This band has processed bits of contemporaries such as Air, DFA/LCD, and BoC. At points, the funk and the unrhyming lyrics even mount to imply various UK greats: A muted Happy Mondays here, a stream-of-consciousness Streets there. And yet, F&M's coy pose comes off as somehow original. David Best doesn't speak-sing about commodities with the abandon of say, Sisqo harmonizing "thong-th-thong-thong-thong," but he also sidesteps the posthuman staidness with which Ladytron tried to address blue jeans and cracked plastic (during "Blue Jeans" and "Cracked Plastic", respectively) back on Light & Magic. 

A kind of consumer-Zen can be heard in the way Best sings the fabulously confident title track's refrain, "I look through transparent things and I feel okay," pronouncing the last word, "O-kehh." Is he talking about seeing through eyeglasses? Drink glasses? Or, by noting the behavioral norms (of litterbugs, cyclists, and college students) and their "grids," "zones," and "boxes," is Best referring to the matrixy systems in which most of us are transparently ensnared? Either way, F&M's execution of old modes is authoritative enough to ward off soundalike syndrome, just as Interpol somehow dodge their ancestors' arrows. 

The album's weaker spots are its louder numbers about actual monogamous desire, which seem banal next to the whispered, anchorless prosaic observations of the songs that would only count as "rave-ups" at some secret librarian party held on a monastery's roof. A group so adept at merely creating an irresistible pulse seems overextended when trying to concoct a banger. I mean, come on, they begin this album with shy in-house brand enthusiasm, chanting "Fujiya" and "Miyagi" in barely audible voices! 

The relatively effete and Euro-centric American poet Wallace Stevens is famously supposed to have said to the relatively dudeish and homelandy American poet Robert Frost, upon meeting: "The trouble with you is you write about things." To which Frost replied: "The trouble with you is you write about bric-a-brac." Via fiery slightness, Fujiya & Miyagi humbly request that you dance to both. 

William Bowers / Pitchfork

Fujiya & Miyagi ‎– Electro Karaoke In The Negative Style (2002)

Style: Indie Rock, Prog Rock, Krautrock, Space Rock, Disco
Format: CD
Label: Massive Advance

Tracklist:
01.   New Accounts Analysts
02.   Rot
03.   King Holer
04.   Simeone Slides
05.   Skinny Punk
06.   Tarr's White Collar
07.   Skeleton Phone Cover
08.   Uptight
09.   Diagrams
10.   Shake
11.   Electro Karaoke
12.   Lolalucamilla

Credits:
Programmed By , Keyboards, Bass, Backing Vocals – Steve Lewis
Vocals, Guitar, Bass – David Best
Written-By, Producer – Fujiya & Miyagi

Romare ‎– Projections (2015)

Style: House, Hip Hop
Format: CD, Vinyl
Label: Ninja Tune

Tracklist:
01.   Nina’s Charm
02.   Work Song
03.   Motherless Child
04.   Ray’s Foot
05.   Roots
06.   Jimmy’s Lament
07.   Lover Man
08.   Rainbow
09.   Prison Blues
10.   The Drifter
11.   La Petite Mort

Romare Bearden was an artist and musician who chronicled African-American life and culture during the jazz age. Romare is an artist and musician who has adopted Bearden’s collagist approach and uses it to fuse decades of African-American musical styles into a format familiar to modern dancefloors. It’s an album full of warmth: Rainbow pairs a snatch of smoky, soulful vocal with the groove of old garage house; Roots mixes an ecstatic piano hook with African drum loops and a sample of Malcolm X. Romare’s skill and his affection for his sources mean Projections’ component parts all hang together beautifully, but this is more than just an act of curation: it works for the dancefloor, often hitting on grooves that are as timeless as they are difficult to resist. Reminiscent of the early-00s output of Saint Germain, Caribou’s side project Daphni, or even early Basement Jaxx, Perceptions might not feel entirely original, but it is thoroughly winning. 

Paul MacInnes / The Guardian

Romare ‎– Meditations On Afrocentrism (2012)

Style: House, Bass Music
Format: Vinyl
Label: Black Acre

Tracklist:
1.   Freedom (Aspirations Of A Prisoner)
2.   The Blues (It Began In Africa)
3.   Down The Line (It Takes A Number)
4.   I Wanna Go (Turn Back)
5.   Footnotes (Meditations On Afrocentrism)

Credits:
Mastered By – Beau
Written-By, Producer – Romare

Meditations on Afrocentrism. Sounds like some heavy stuff, doesn't it? Somehow it isn't. Londoner-via-Paris Romare succeeds on his Black Acre debut by avoiding both the scratchy collagist aesthetic of crate-diggers like Onra and the submerged, quashed quality of most footwork, for high-intensity percussive music that doesn't sound a whole lot like anything else out there. Opener "Freedom Aspirations of a Prisoner" opens with cinematic strings and hollow rimshots—no bass to be found anywhere—before Romare brings in tiny little clips of orchestral mayhem that serve as an ominously throbbing bassline. "I Wanna Go (Turn Back)" features more traditionally frenetic footwork rhythms, a flurry of cascading hollow drums and decaying synths, but even this incorporation of familiar structures sounds totally unique.  

The other two tracks are much slower, abandoning the footwork mission for their own skewed takes on bass music. The 88 BPM "Down The Line (It Takes a Number)" is a sticky-slow hip-hop jam with a funk guitar more languid than lashing, but the EP peaks with the 122 BPM "The Blues (It Began In Africa)." Splaying a house-friendly flute panned to the extreme peripheries of the stereo spectrum, the undulating bass riff at its centre totally eclipses everything, the kind of eminently physical frequencies that feel like they're enclosing around your entire head rather than just your ears. Though the track might not technically be footwork, it plays around with footwork's dread-inducing dislocated bass clouds, inflating them to a grotesque level. It's an uncanny tune that remains breathtaking from the first play to the tenth, and a little stroke of genius that raises Romare above the level of just another producer jumping on the footwork bandwagon. 

Andrew Ryce / RA

HHY & The Macumbas ‎– Beheaded Totem (2018)

Style: Dub, Tribal
Format: CD, Vinyl, FLAC
Label: House of Mythology

Tracklist:
1.   Wilderness of Glass
2.   A Scar in the Skull
3.   Danbala Propaganda
4.   Deep Sleep Routine
5.   Ergot Glitter
6.   A Scar in the Bone
7.   Swisid Mekanize Rejiman

Credits:
João Pais - Percussion
Filipe Silva - Percussion
Frankão - Percussion
Brendan Hemsworth - Percussion
Álvaro Almeida  - Horns
André Rocha - Horns
Rui Fernandes - Horns

Jonathan Uliel Saldanha chama a este seu projecto “cybernetic voodoo dub”, mas a designação só nos prepara para uma parte do que vem neste “Beheaded Totem”, o segundo título discográfico dos HHY & The Macumbas – aquela em que se enovelam uma electrónica derivada do ambientalismo (a cargo do próprio Saldanha e de Nyko Esterle), uma misteriosa e muito, muito escura dose de ocultismo tribalista, garantida pelos percussionistas Brendon Hemsworth, Filipe Silva, Frankão e João Pais Filipe, e o tipo de manipulações de gravação do reggae que resultou em todo um subgénero. Não nos prepara, por exemplo, para o que permanece nesta música das mundividências que Sun Ra aplicou na sua Arkestra ou de certas incursões pan-africanistas que surgiram nos territórios do free jazz – lembro-me, por exemplo, de “A Message From Mozambique”, dos Juju. 

Nada nos desvenda, igualmente, quanto à dimensão umas vezes de fanfarra bêbada e outras mais parecendo militar ou wagneriana, tal a sua pujança épica, dos sopros (Álvaro Almeida, André Rocha e Rui Fernandes), ou o que nos planos circulares dos temas reunidos há de devedor às estratégias do minimalismo norte-americano dos Sessentas e do rock alemão dos Setentas. Uma coisa é certa: fora dos domínios da música electroacústica “erudita” e da, experimental, que surgiu nas franjas do techno e da media art, este grupo propõe um outro entendimento da psico-acústica, o que quer dizer que é na nossa individual percepção que os temas se trabalham e se “resolvem”. Ou seja: é preciso escutar este disco activa e exclusivamente, não servindo como fundo para fazer a contabilidade doméstica, para viajar pela Internet ou para conversar. Ouvir apenas está hoje em desuso, mas este sincretismo futurista é nisso deliciosamente retro. 

Rui Eduardo Paes / jazz.pt

Lurking somewhere between Sun Ra's Arkestra and the Chemical Brothers is Beheaded Totem's jarring, rocky soundscape. Every turn seems to loop back on itself in a never-ending cycle of music. The wide expanses of the synth and percussion combo create a sense of openness and space. Of a plain of sound where the horizons stretch out in both directions. And the brass, more concentrated and precise, mirror the sunbeams that blister the ground. Their spare riffs colour the sound with flaming hues of orange and yellow.  

The hi-hat groove of "Wilderness Of Glass" puts teeth in its jaws. Broken glass fangs that sharpen the edges. While the hand-drums' circular rhythm is an earthy contrast to that bite. A grounded, tribal beat. That keeps the dirt between the track's toes. Even as the trumpets echo and the synths whirl like the milky way.  

As the industrial-strength beat of closing-track "Swisid Mekasine Rejiman" evokes images of deep mine shafts, the electronics float ghostly atop the rhythm. And the processed trumpet cuts the thicket of sound like a comet through the cosmos. The comic-prophet Bill Hicks said that space "both inner and outer" was humanity's to explore. On records such as this the first reconnaissance teams move into those territories. To map out their mysteries.  

The Kubrick-esque synths of "A Scar In The Skull" are percussion-less. Nebulous and spaced-out. Reminiscent of Wendy Carlos' soundtrack for A Clockwork Orange. But on "A Scar In The Bone" the synthesisers are stormy. Like a flood of radio static. Towards its end their pulsations intensify until they suddenly give way to the aforementioned "Swisid Mekasine Rejiman." A shocking, off-kilter shift. That curves one last bullet before the record moves towards its close.  

Between the album's bookends, "Danbala Propaganda" moves to a fractured rhythm. A single synth-note pulses in the background. That lures in the unwary with its hypnotic, mechanical exactness. Before the higher electronics rise out of the percussion's waters. Dragging the tension up as they ascend to the stratosphere.  

Rhythm is the central idea here. It's the common thread running through the tapestry. In lieu of melodic themes, HHY & The Macumbas have used rhythmic motifs. And those possibilities are explored to their fullest potential on "Ergot Glitter." It moves like Frankenstein's monster on a skewed 3/4 beat. Powerful, slow, menacing. With reaching hands and a synth-growl at the back of its throat.  

This is a unique record. Where technology meets tradition. It moves constantly in a hypnotic loop. But just as the sandman is descending it fires one of those curved bullets. Bullets that never miss their mark. HHY & The Macumbas have dared to meld disparate influences in an increasingly divided planet. As the free world's leaders try to isolate it from its brother-lands, HHY & The Macumbas seek to unite all cultures. So that those spaces, "both inner and outer," can be explored as one, universal race.

James Fleming / All About Jazz

HHY & The Macumbas ‎– Throat Permission Cut (2015)

Style: Experimental, Dub, Space-Age, Tribal
Format: Vinyl, FLAC
Label:  Silo Rumor

Tracklist:
1.   Isaac, The Throat
2.   Barbaron
3.   Gysin
4 .  Lewopa De Kristal
5.   Reanima Eléctrica

Credits:
Producer – Jonathan Uliel Saldanha
Written-By – Jonathan Saldanha
Bass – Rui Leal
Horns – André Rocha, Rui Fernandes, Álvaro Almeida
Percussion – Brendan Hemsworth, Filipe Silva, Frankão, João Pais Filipe

"If you're in to melt yourself down, you're gonna love this" 

— Mary Anne Hobbs | BBC Radio 6  

Hailing from Porto, HHY & The Macumbas is an ensemble comprised of bass, brass, percussion and electronics, written and dubbed by producer Jonathan Uliel Saldanha aka HHY.  

Comprising an ever-mutating ensemble of musicians from the Portuguese underground music scene, The Macumbas range from five to ten players on stage, presenting frantic and enigmatic live shows, between the film works of Kenneth Anger, the dubbing of Sherwood, the Portuguese melancholic marching bands, as well as the raw trance-inducing rhythms of Haiti.  

Their debut album, Throat Permission Cut, is a five track piece that captures the space-age voodoo turbulence of this oblique and one of a kind horde. 

Bancamp