Testpattern -- Modern Living

 

In addition to the various music-based YouTube channels, I've also subscribed to a couple of channels having to do with architecture and civil engineering because I have a glancing interest in urban planning and how homes can be designed. Heck, to show you good KKP readers how much of a nerd I was with my lone PlayStation 1, one of the games that I bought was something called "My Home Dream" (if my memory serves me correctly) which involved me designing my own home or apartment from scratch with all of the various rooms, garages, furniture, etc. 

Anyways, the two channels that I have are The B1M and Stewart Hicks. The latter is represented above with his analysis of the famous modular Habitat '67 which was built for Expo '67 in Montreal. The fascinating blocky Lego-like structure was to have been much more ambitious in that it was supposed to have been a new way of looking and living in communities but the usual money issues and red tape prevented that from happening. I remember that there was a similar structure in Shimbashi, Tokyo for decades called the Nakagin Capsule Tower which was finally taken down last year due to the inevitable stresses of aging. But both had been seen at one time as a potential future to modern living.

One reason that I got so into Japan during the summer trip of 1981 was that I felt that the cities around me like Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya were greatly representative of the best of that modern living as it was in that year. All that technology, architecture and convenience all wrapped up in one ball. And I thought that technopop was the ideal melodic medium to show that off.

So, we come across the enterprising graphic designers-turned-technopop musicians Fumio Ichimura（市村文夫）and Masao Hiruma（比留間雅夫）with tutelage from Yellow Magic Orchestra member and producer Haruomi Hosono（細野晴臣）as the unit called Testpattern. It was a little over a year ago that I first wrote about the guys via their 1982 album "Après-Midi" and one of the tracks "Techno Age". This time from "Après-Midi" is the track "Modern Living" which was written by Hiruma and Scott Kajiya and composed by Hiruma. 

However, instead of the shiny idealistic life that I hinted at above, "Modern Living" as sung in English describes a far more humdrum existence for a typical salaryman and his family, especially the aspect of the working guy spending most of his waking hours at the company. As is sung like a mantra, "Work is life, life is work". There's something eerily Orwellian about that. Hiruma's melody though is pretty interesting due to the technopop imbued with traditional Japanese influences though the rhythm humourously matches that humdrum bliss. Gotta have the「和」in there.