Friends of Earth -- Decline of the City

 

Supposedly by the time I become an octogenarian in the year 2045, this mega-project will have opened somewhere in Tokyo Bay. But at the moment, it looks to be a mere fanciful design on an architect's hard drive. This is Sky Mile Tower, 1700 metres of steel, glass and whatever other materials can be thrown in there that will be built somewhere in Tokyo Bay. It even has its own Wikipedia page. I'm not sure if too many people are aware of this though; I asked my Skype student in Tokyo about it and it was definitely breaking news for him.

But that's been kinda my impression of Japan's capital city for decades. Onwards and upwards. Even during a perceived recession in the nation sometime during my many years there, I never had the impression that Tokyo was in some major economic doldrums. There was always some new steel-and-glass tower going up in a particular area at any one time. And look at the last decade when I've been back here in Toronto; Tokyo has been undergoing some further redevelopments.

So it's rather ironic that I'm introducing this particular song titled "Decline of the City" by the short-lived band Friends of Earth（フレンズ・オブ・アース）or FOE, powered by Haruomi Hosono（細野晴臣）. I mentioned about them last month through their "In My Jungle", and with "Decline of the City", created as a technopop instrumental designed by FOE member Masatoshi Nishimura（西村昌敏）, it's got some mighty rumbling rhythms underneath those shiny synthesizers with some DJ dance beats in there. It truthfully sounds more like "Rise of the City". It doesn't strike me as being particularly major chord upbeat but it's intrepid in its path going forward which has buildings going up by the street load. 

"Decline of the City" is the final track on the March 1986 12-inch single "F.O.E#1/DECLINE OF O.T.T.". Since I couldn't leave an unknown set of initials alone, I had to find out what that "O.T.T." meant. Hosono was the one who coined the three letters used to describe the music that he's created with a driving feel using a detailed mechanical beat. They stand for "over the top", according to the J-Wiki article on the group.

Friends of Earth -- In My Jungle

 

It wouldn't be too much of an exaggeration to say that Haruomi Hosono（細野晴臣）has had an influence on a good swath of bands and singers since the late 1960s. Of course, we can and have talked about his direct associations with Happy End（はっぴいえんど）, Tin Pan Alley（ティン・パン・アレー）and Yellow Magic Orchestra. And just recently, I discovered this other group that he was connected with during the mid-1980s called Friends of Earth or FOE.

With my memories not as solid as they once were, I have to say that I'm not sure how I found out about FOE...maybe it was through Scott's "Holly Jolly X'masu" or Rocket Brown's "Come Along Radio" podcasts. Regardless, the group had its start in 1984 centered around Hosono and musician/DJ Eiki Nonaka（野中英紀）of the technopop band Interiors with other members coming in and out such as Miharu Koshi（越美晴）and Sandii. 

FOE released three 12" singles, a 7" single cover of James Brown's famous "Sex Machine" and a couple of albums. The first album was the May 1986 release of "Sex, Energy & Star" and I have here one track titled "In My Jungle", written and composed by Nonaka. The band has been categorized as a hip-hop group and I've yet to listen to the rest of the tracks, but I'm not sure whether I could treat "In My Jungle" as a hip-hop song. In fact, I'd say that this might come under the ethnic music stylings that Hosono's old YMO bandmate Ryuichi Sakamoto（坂本龍一）loved to work with. I get some of that technopop but also those African rumbling rhythms and some doodling jazz on the piano. I know that Nonaka himself has commented underneath the 8-year-old YouTube video with information such as Koshi helping out on the piano and vocals, so if he ever finds out about this KKP article, I'd certainly invite him to give some commentary on this particular song and the rest of "Sex, Energy & Star".

As for FOE, they disbanded in 1987 after apparently Hosono himself had broken his leg in the snow in the tony district of Daikanyama in Tokyo soon after the recording of "Sex, Energy & Star".