Fantastic Plastic Machine
Beautiful
[Emperor Norton]
Rating: 8.1
This 80's revival is getting out of hand. What concerns me is not so much the
imminent mass hair-feathering, or indie rock's return to new wave, a genre
that hardly seems viable enough to warrant re-visiting. The thing that gets
me is that, in 2001, we're already immersed in the penultimate decade-- I
mean, really, this shit has to last. Because we suffer from culturally
encoded attention spans, our love of the 80's simply won't last the entire
decade. So what then? Will we turn to the 90's for inspiration again in
2006? I don't even want to think about it.
Regardless of the implications of our accelerating retro-pace, it's at least
benefiting Tanaka Shibuya-kei. The man behind Fantastic Plastic Machine comes
off as an innovator on his third album, Beautiful. Because the former
fashion designer and his music have, thus far, proven themselves to be invested
in style above anything else, the flagrant signifying of early 90's Chicago
house on Beautiful could easily be taken as shrewd trend forecasting.
And that's exactly what Beautiful would be examined, portrayed, and
dismissed as in this review, if it weren't the cohesive, engaging, and yes,
often gorgeous album that it is. Instead of assuming the role of
semi-successful musical dilettante for a third time, Shibuya-kei works mainly
with one genre (house), and marries the string-laden aesthetics of pre-disco
era Philly soul with radio-friendly Windy City bumps. Myriad critics have
compared his songwriting on previous efforts to Bacharach, but I've always
thought this an overstatement for a guy who'd never really shown himself as
more than a sound sculptor of Japanese pop.
Beautiful's equal emphasis on melody and production, though, marks a
new level of sophistication that finally makes Shibuya-kei worthy of the
analogy. The practically inspirational "Beautiful Days" is a duet that
benefits from a strong main melody and sashaying keys, which carry the minimal
production. The song evokes the work of the underrated, oft-forgotten Chicago
DJ Steve "Silk" Hurley, right down to the strident string flourishes. "On a
Chair" temporarily eschews the house sound, as Shibuya-kei lays down a hip-hop
beat, a strong funk bassline, and manipulates a sample of people singing "ah"
into an infectious tune.
As with previous efforts, the album's lone cover is also a highlight. This
time around, the Machine offers an incredible, eight-minute remake of Frankie
Knuckles' late-night house classic, "The Whistle Song." The track is reworked
into light samba, with murmur-sized house beats punctuating the Latin sway.
A flute improvs over the percussion, this time only intermittently; a small
chorus sings the wordless melody instead of the "whistle." What makes the
song even more sublime is the breezy female voice that rises out of the track
for wordless improvisations. Like Beautiful's other Brazilian-influenced
house track, the almost-as-gorgeous, 7½-minute "Todos os Desejos," "The
Whistle Song" never strays from its initial groove, and presents only subtle
changes. The song's lengths might be best suited for the dancefloor, but it's
unlikely that the intricacies would be picked up without listening to the
music on headphones.
Still, Fantastic Plastic Machine isn't exactly revising house as an
"intelligent" genre-- however skilled he is, Shibuya-kei could never be
considered a genius, much less a divine producer capable of transubstantiation.
It's even possible that his "hearkening back" to the early 90's could just be
culture lapping him and making him seem relevant again. If that's the case,
and my initial interpretation is indeed faulty, Beautiful is even more
successful. That the archaic should sound this fresh is at least a
mini-miracle.
-Richard M. Juzwiak