Testpattern -- Crescent Moon/Watashi no Shonen wa Nihonjin（私の少年は日本人）

 

About six months ago, I found out through one of the commenters about a technopop duo called Testpattern consisting of graphic designers Fumio Ichimura（市村文夫）and Masao Hiruma（比留間雅夫）who had sent the Haruomi Hosono（細野晴臣）a demo tape and ended up getting an album produced called "Après-Midi" in 1982. Mind you, it was just the one and only album, but Ichimura and Himura most likely got further ahead than most other folks trying to break into the music industry. For that first article, I wrote about the track "Techno Age".

Well, today I wanted to write about the first track on the album, "Crescent Moon". Created by Ichimura and Hiruma, the first several seconds sound like nocturnal insects buzzing their wings and stuff to make the usual cacophony, and then in contrast with the traditional historical feeling of "Techno Age", "Crescent Moon" comes across as a cute little technopop ditty evoking French romantic comedies of the 50s and 60s with a little Maurice Chevalier here and some soft-shoe on the Champs-Elysees there. I'd say that the album cover describes that first track right there.

I'm assuming that Testpattern was also behind "Watashi no Shonen wa Nihonjin" (My Boys are Japanese). This one is intriguing because apparently this song was never officially released on vinyl; maybe it was never even officially recorded. However, it did make its appearance on some television show where a young lady and either Ichimura or Hiruma performed the laconic tune in a karaoke fashion. Perhaps the whole video presentation was an art piece unto its own.