Review: LIGHTBULBS from Fujiya & Miyagi
HIGH END NEW RELEASE: You don't get a lot of electronic or beats music on this blog, but it doesn't mean we can't get behind the right stuff. Lightbulbs from Fujiya & Miyagi is the best of it's kind this year.... a solid fusion of strong beats/electronica/ironic song structure and witty mixes. Easily the best since last year's LCD Soundsystem record; "Sound of Silver." (RSL Top 15 Record of 2007)
FUJIYA & MIYAGI are Winners: It's the experimental attitude expressed time and time again on this record and the successful fusion of styles that make it great. We weren't looking for profundity with this record - we just wanted to be entertained and to feel good. (Man, were we ever!) There were a whole lot of good tracks (as we expected,) but we really enjoyed some of the unlikely heroes... Check out "Dishwasher" - a song that starts out with a hand-jive beat, but slowly flutters through a loose beat featuring strummed bass and drumsticks. "Just look inside my encyclopedia," the song asks of us.... You just got schooled.
FUJIYA & MIYAGI are Winners: It's the experimental attitude expressed time and time again on this record and the successful fusion of styles that make it great. We weren't looking for profundity with this record - we just wanted to be entertained and to feel good. (Man, were we ever!) There were a whole lot of good tracks (as we expected,) but we really enjoyed some of the unlikely heroes... Check out "Dishwasher" - a song that starts out with a hand-jive beat, but slowly flutters through a loose beat featuring strummed bass and drumsticks. "Just look inside my encyclopedia," the song asks of us.... You just got schooled.
RSL Record Grade: 3.75 of 5 STARS - Highly Recommended
WHO ARE F&M ?: Formed in 2000 as an electronic duo of David Best (guitars and vocals) and Steve Lewis (synths, beats, programming), they released Electro Karaoke In The Negative Style two years later, a minimal electronic set it hangs eerily on Best’s distinctive whispered vocal. Adding bass player Matt Hainsby in 2004, they released a series of ten inch EPs that took them to the hearts of fanzineland. Gathered together these parables of personal injury, both physical and mental, made up three quarters of the well-received (Pitchfork, NME, MOJO, etc) album Transparent Things in 2006. As for that name? Fujiya & Miyagi are named after a Nabokov brain dump on the relationship between the past and the present. It sums them up.
HEAD OF THE CLASS IN '08: Fujiya & Miyagi are at the head of the class right now. To compare and contrast, let's look at last year's Austin crossover dancehall favorites Ghostland Observatory. That duo trod some very similar soil last year - but while Observatory took a step backwards this year by only getting louder and more repetitive, Fujiya & Miyagi made a number of good decisions on this new record. A well rounded effort! Pick up Lightbulbs and find out for yourself.
VIDEO: KNICKERBOCKER
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