Thursday, September 21, 2017

Logic System -- Domino Dance


I realize that I could have chosen a photo of a synthesizer for the greeting picture above but I couldn't find one so I decided to go with my ancient copy of "Star Trek III: The Search For Spock" since we are going to be entering logic here.


Logic System, ロジック・システムto be exact. Good heavens....all these years thinking that Yellow Magic Orchestra was the only technopop band in town back in the early 1980s. But actually speaking, Hideki Matsutake(松武秀樹), who was seen as the 4th member of YMO as the band programmer (although I think Akiko Yano(矢野顕子)should also get at least honorary band member status), started up his own unit by the name of Logic System in 1981.


For the next year or so, Logic System released 2 singles and 3 albums with the first single being "Domino Dance", a bouncy number that alternately reminds me of the B-52s and surf rock bands. And for another reason, I get images of ska music and Adam West's Batman doing the Batusi. Not cold at all...there's a nice sense of warmth buried in all those circuits.

I'm going to have to listen to some more of Logic System's output to see if Matsutake wanted to make his own techno sound apart from what YMO was doing at the time. With "Domino Dance", it doesn't sound too vastly different from the music of Sakamoto, Hosono and Takahashi.


I didn't realize that Matsutake had been into electronic music for much of the 1970s and was even an apprentice to the late Isao Tomita(冨田勲). Then after helping out on Ryuichi Sakamoto's(坂本龍一) "Thousand Knives" in 1978, he joined the YMO ship.

Logic System took a long hiatus after 1982 but then after Matsutake had been involved in some other projects, he decided to bring back the old band in 1991 for a couple of more years. Three more singles and two more albums came out during that time. Then, in 2003, there was another go at it with one single, "Clash" coming out in 2011 with three albums having been released between those two years. According to J-Wiki, the band is still going on and it even has its own store.


Of course, there was another dance of dominoes done by another technopop band.

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