Testpattern -- Techno Age

 

Commenting synthpop enthusiast 80sAndYMOLover gave a few intriguing suggestions of other genre bands and artists during a comment exchange underneath the article for Sandii's "Idol Era". And so I decided to execute a little reconnaissance. 

First up, I saw the name Testpattern and opted to look them up. There's not a whole lot of information about this duo consisting of Fumio Ichimura（市村文夫）and Masao Hiruma（比留間雅夫）, but I did find out through a comment by kgd regarding them on Amazon that these two were actually graphic designers and not musicians from the outset when they had sent Yellow Magic Orchestra's Haruomi Hosono（細野晴臣）a demo tape. As a certain pop culture figure would say, "I like the cut of their jib!" and apparently Hosono echoed that and then produced their one and only album "Après-Midi" for release in 1982.

So, may I also say that I like the cut of Testpattern's album cover. That's a pretty smart looking album with the overall iconography which reminds me of either posters or other album covers of European records from the 1950s or 1960s. But inside the album exists some minimalist technopop by Ichimura and Hiruma, armed with their Linn drums and emulators, which compares interestingly with YMO's early material (the stuff that I'm most familiar with) which endeavored to filter existing genres such as exotica and surf rock through the synthesizers and computers.

I've listened to one track so far from "Après-Midi", "Techno Age". The title might broadcast loud and clear about the bright years of technology that the world including Japan was coming up with at the time, but the music by Hiruma actually hints at something much older as if techno-ronin were making their way across the digital landscape via the solid state Tokaido Road. The six minutes of music don't deviate very much from the original pattern, but I still found myself fairly entranced by "Techno Age", and I can sense Hosono's touch on this particular track at least. For that matter, I can even feel a bit of Ryuichi Sakamoto（坂本龍一）, Hosono's YMO bandmate.

Many thanks again to 80sAndYMOLover for introducing Testpattern.