Makoto Matsushita -- Chaos & Harmony

 

Sad to say, but it looks like the first Marvel entry for 2023, "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania" isn't exactly creating great buzz, but I figure if someone wants to go see it, I'll catch it with them. However, I think that the new course correction of being a little more reserved about the quantity and rollout of Phases 5 and 6 isn't a bad one. Take some of that sweet time for decent effects and story. 

I figure that if Marvel survives and thrives with these two phases, then maybe there's an opportunity to look further at the even more powerful entities in the Marvel Universe; for those who've seen the movies, we've gotten a little taste via the Eternals and the Celestials. But no, there are folks out there who make even those powerhouses seem like pre-Captain America Steve Rogers. There are those living concepts including The In-Betweener, The Living Tribunal and even Lord Chaos and Master Order.

Not to say that Makoto Matsushita（松下誠）will ever end up scoring an MCEU flick but this recent track that I've found by him sounds as if it could adorn any scene where Chaos and Order might show up. The title though is a tad different: "Chaos & Harmony" from his March 2020 BEST compilation, "Collection". Nope, it definitely has nothing to do with any of his City Pop material from the early 1980s such as "First Light" and frankly I couldn't see Chaos and Order bopping about under a disco ball (although "Collection" also includes the City Pop stuff).

I knew that along with City Pop, Matsushita was also someone who played his fine and steady guitar in the progressive rock realm, and we got some of that from his 1982 album, "The Pressures and the Pleasures". But this previously unreleased "Chaos & Harmony" strikes me as something different from progressive rock as well. Not sure how to describe it: would it be avant-pop or progressive baroque? But that afterlife-sounding melody and Matsushita's whisperings of extra-galactic significance make me feel like I was about to be granted an audience with beings that even Doctor Strange would be hard pressed to get.