QYPTHONE -- Tension Attention, Please

 

I'm actually beginning my KKP night tonight really late...as in I'm less than 90 minutes away from midnight and then Sunday morning. One reason is that I decided to watch an entire Toronto Maple Leafs game on "Hockey Night in Canada" earlier, and the other reason is that I went into my other hobby of dozing off a few times in the armchair. Happily, the Leafs won tonight over the Buffalo Sabres, but for those of you who may be reading this across Lake Ontario in Buffalo, New York, I hope that all of you are keeping safe from that lallapalooza of a snowstorm that you're getting whacked with.

Earlier this year, I wrote about this uniquely named band, QYPTHONE, and their warp-driven brand of Shibuya-kei. Led by Takeshi Nakatsuka（中塚武）, who has his individual songs covered on the blog, his "Go-Go Girl" is one tasty aural catch that would have Adam West's Batman more than happy to do the Batusi on the dance floor. That particular song was on their 1999 album "Organic Sound Theatre".

Tonight's QYPTHONE keeper originates from his October 2000 3rd album "Modernica in the House", and it's the final track known as "Tension Attention, Please". It's a playful number that displays quite the affinity for Fantastic Plastic Machine with the classy 1960s swing and Shibuya-kei and a lot of the dance DJ tricks of the trade. I was half-expecting that Pizzicato Five narrator to say something about a stereophonic experience somewhere in there.

There were a couple of mysteries that I wanted to solve in "Tension Attention, Please". Well, actually, one had to do with the title of the album. I had been wondering about the word Modernica, and I was able to find out that it is a brand of furniture that strikes me as being quite 60s in appearance, perhaps like something by Eames (or maybe that was a 50s design). The other thing was within the arrangement of the song, because I also heard some growly patter and then some high-pitched cartoonish voice being exchanged in there. 

Well, at first, I had thought that Popeye and Olive Oyl had decided to make their first foray into Shibuya-kei. However, at the Who Sampled website, I discovered that QYPTHONE had sampled a song titled "Here Comes De Kins" by British novelty act The Pipkins in 1970.