Salon Music -- Shadow Behind

 

Hi there! I represent Bernard Sumner. He'd like his music style back please.

Yeah, that was the remark that I was simmering in my head when I listened to the first track of Salon Music's 1990 album "Psychic Ball". Good golly! I even wrote down New Order in the byline by accident before I realized my mistake. 

I knew that Salon Music has had its New Wave stuff and last month, I even posted the duo's "Spike Me Into Space" from 1999 which had that raunchy rock style. Well, apparently, Salon Music also dallied in some British techno dance music stylings around a decade earlier. The first percussion-heavy minute of "Shadow Behind" has that feeling of early 80s Japanese techno pop that doesn't involve Yellow Magic Orchestra but then following that, the New Order influence in sound and vocals is unmistakable. I almost called my old university buddies to see if they wanted to hit the Copa again.

Salon Music -- Spike Me Into Space

 

It was just within the last several months that I've become acquainted with the duo Salon Music and listening to one of their earlier entries, the 1983 "Duet ni Muchuu"（デュエットに夢中）, they started out as this cute New Wave act.

Then, while I was searching for more of their material on YouTube, I came across the music video for "Spike Me Into Space" which was a track on their 1999 album "round5 shaggy bee". Well, it looks like vocalist and bassist Jin Yoshida（吉田仁）and vocalist and keyboardist Hitomi Takenaka（竹中仁見）kinda went Ramones rock with the latter's voice hitting some more depths. I was just mentioning about Martha and the Muffins' "Black Stations/White Stations" and their slightly avant-garde video and here is Salon Music's video which goes even further with the Monty Pythonesque cut-and-paste animation. Perhaps the full title of the song could have been "Spike My Drink and Then Spike Me Into Space".

Salon Music -- Spending Silent Night

 

My brother's family came over last night for dinner and we got into the discussion about the Holidays. So we started laying out the family together for Xmas and then New Year's. Of course, the Kohaku Utagassen showed up a little in the talks, but apparently Jme will be showing reruns of it over the first few days of 2025...if Jme can confirm this with us, that would be most appreciated.

A little over a month ago, I posted the first article for the New Wave duo Salon Music via their "Duet ni Muchuu"（デュエットに夢中）from 1983. But it was because of a Xmas song by them that had been featured on Scott's "Holly Jolly X'masu" podcast several weeks ago that I first got to know vocalist and bassist Jin Yoshida（吉田仁）and vocalist and keyboardist Hitomi Takenaka（竹中仁見）. 

And yet, from what I could understand of the English lyrics (about hotly pining for that guy), I'm not sure whether "Spending Silent Night" could be considered to be a Xmas song outside of the seasonal inference that 66% of the title possesses. Still, with Takenaka's breathy voice and her keyboard work along with the Beatles-friendly strings, there's a lot to it that rings happily nostalgic with me. Originally, it was meant to be a commercial song for a type of Honda and it was placed as a track on Salon Music's 1983 debut album "My Girl Friday".

Salon Music -- Duet ni Muchuu（デュエットに夢中）

 

I heard about this New Wave duo called Salon Music some weeks ago via a "Holly Jolly X'masu" podcast and I've already bookmarked one of their Christmas contributions, so I'll cover that probably in December once KKP gets into its Xmas mode once more.

But for today, I thought that I would introduce Salon Music and one of their conventional tunes first. Consisting of vocalist and bassist Jin Yoshida（吉田仁）and vocalist and keyboardist Hitomi Takenaka（竹中仁見）, Salon Music formed during the rising days of New Wave in 1980. They've never broken up officially and up to 2011, they have released 17 albums and an unknown number of singles according to their J-Wiki profile.

One such single is their July 1983 release "Duet ni Muchuu" (Wrapped Up in Duet). Written and composed by Takenaka, right from the get-go, I can hear and feel the New Waviness and perhaps even see her and Yoshida doing an appropriate dance on the floor. In fact, the dance I'm thinking about is the one that Jane Wiedlin and Ron Mael from the band Sparks did in that music video "Cool Places", also from the same year (coincidentally, Salon Music opened up for Sparks in 2001). "Duet ni Muchuu" is definitely short and sweet at a shade over 2 1/2 minutes.

Not sure whether Takenaka did any solo work outside of Salon Music but Yoshida has gone onto producing the works of other acts including Flipper's Guitar（フリッパーズ・ギター）from 1990.