Testpattern -- Ocean Liner

 

The above is a photo of the exposed Central Park section on the cruise ship Harmony of the Seas. It's a nice area to stroll and one of the restaurants there introduced me to my first Beef on Weck. Ironically, the sandwich is most famous in Buffalo, New York which is across Lake Ontario from where we are here but I actually found out about it on a huge ocean liner in the middle of the Caribbean.

Cruise ships have been called small cities on the ocean or floating buffet restaurants. I see them as both and after engorging myself on a lot of their fare (I think Royal Caribbean still has a WANTED poster out for me), maybe this song is the one I want to hear as I beach myself on the deck chair. This is "Ocean Liner" by the technopop duo Testpattern.

Not that it has been intentional by me, but I've been apparently placing two posts by these guys in 2022, 2023 and now 2026. I'm basically spreading out their 1982 album "Après-Midi" and I guess "Souvenir Glacé" (that I posted about in January) and this one for "Ocean Liner" are going to be my Testpattern contributions for this year. As for "Ocean Liner", it does feel like a thrumming synthesizer version of a really comfortable and snoozy nap on that deck chair with a slow rhythmic deep ocean beat anchoring the mesmerizing feeling of going off to La-La Land before dinner time. Duo Fumio Ichimura（市村文夫）and Masao Hiruma（比留間雅夫）took care of the hypnotic melody.

Yes, indeed I did get that post-Beef on Weck high...after which I helped myself to some soft-serve ice cream. Relaxation on the deck chair was mandatory.

Testpattern -- Souvenir Glacé

 

One of the many amazing things that I learned during my time in Japan was something of a gastronomic nature. I realized that chestnuts could be used for dessert! All this time growing up in Canada, I only knew chestnuts could be roasted and sold in brown paper bags in front of Maple Leaf Gardens here in Toronto to eat as a salty snack. But chestnuts as sweets?! Mon Dieu! 

But the Japanese certainly love their French pastries and so there I learned and enjoyed marron glace (glazed chestnuts) in the higher of the two videos and Mont Blanc in the lower video. It was just like when I discovered the joys of eating my first pumpkin pie.

Well, speaking about marron glace, I've come across "Souvenir Glacé" (Frozen Memories), a track from the 1982 album "Après-Midi" by the technopop duo Testpattern. I first wrote about the musical odyssey that graphic designers Fumio Ichimura（市村文夫）and Masao Hiruma（比留間雅夫）had taken under the tutelage of Haruomi Hosono（細野晴臣）of Yellow Magic Orchestra fame when I wrote about another track from the album, "Techno Age", back in 2022. However, I have to give my apologies and note that it wasn't just Hosono who helped produce "Après-Midi", but also Hosono's YMO drumming and singing bandmate, the late Yukihiro Takahashi（高橋幸宏）. 

As for "Souvenir Glacé", Hiruma was responsible for the melody while someone named Linsui took care of the all-French lyrics which come across as rather avant-garde. In fact, I'd say that the lyrics could be taken apart into separate parts and used as oral signs and countersigns between two spies during a tradeoff somewhere in Berlin. There's something about mint promises and someone named Billetdoux but things don't get much more legible than that. In any case, Hiruma's melody is haunting and classical in a Kraftwerk crystalline way. It really stands out and away from anything that YMO has done which I believe that Hosono and Takahashi would have been proud about.

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.

Testpattern -- Ryuuguu

 

One of the first Japanese folk tales that I learned about was through a picture book which told the story of "Urashima Taro"（浦島太郎）, a stalwart young boy who saves a sea turtle and for his troubles, he is taken to the wondrous undersea Palace of the Dragon King or Ryuuguu-jo（竜宮城）. Well, he loses track of the time and he pays dearly for it at the end.

I'm assuming that is indeed the inspiration behind techno duo Testpattern's "Ryuuguu" which is actually written as "Ryugu". A grand, shiny and inviting number that has me thinking of the palace as depicted through the imaginations of Fumio Ichimura（市村文夫）and Masao Hiruma（比留間雅夫）as a gleaming futuristic undersea city of silicon with tons of advanced technology and activity bursting everywhere. The palace would impress Captain Nemo and the Nautilus, let alone a lone Japanese fisherman.

I've written about Testpattern via two of their songs: "Techno Age" and "Crescent Moon", both from their lone 1982 album "Après-Midi". This time though, "Ryuuguu" was a part of a compilation album of technopop tunes called "Yen Manifesto Vol. 1" which was released in September 1983 under the production of Yellow Magic Orchestra's Haruomi Hosono（細野晴臣）and Yukihiro Takahashi（高橋幸宏）. Testpattern shared track space with Koji Ueno （上野耕路）and the band Interiors.

Testpattern -- Crescent Moon/Watashi no Shonen wa Nihonjin（私の少年は日本人）

 

About six months ago, I found out through one of the commenters about a technopop duo called Testpattern consisting of graphic designers Fumio Ichimura（市村文夫）and Masao Hiruma（比留間雅夫）who had sent the Haruomi Hosono（細野晴臣）a demo tape and ended up getting an album produced called "Après-Midi" in 1982. Mind you, it was just the one and only album, but Ichimura and Himura most likely got further ahead than most other folks trying to break into the music industry. For that first article, I wrote about the track "Techno Age".

Well, today I wanted to write about the first track on the album, "Crescent Moon". Created by Ichimura and Hiruma, the first several seconds sound like nocturnal insects buzzing their wings and stuff to make the usual cacophony, and then in contrast with the traditional historical feeling of "Techno Age", "Crescent Moon" comes across as a cute little technopop ditty evoking French romantic comedies of the 50s and 60s with a little Maurice Chevalier here and some soft-shoe on the Champs-Elysees there. I'd say that the album cover describes that first track right there.

I'm assuming that Testpattern was also behind "Watashi no Shonen wa Nihonjin" (My Boys are Japanese). This one is intriguing because apparently this song was never officially released on vinyl; maybe it was never even officially recorded. However, it did make its appearance on some television show where a young lady and either Ichimura or Hiruma performed the laconic tune in a karaoke fashion. Perhaps the whole video presentation was an art piece unto its own.

Testpattern -- Techno Age

 

Commenting synthpop enthusiast 80sAndYMOLover gave a few intriguing suggestions of other genre bands and artists during a comment exchange underneath the article for Sandii's "Idol Era". And so I decided to execute a little reconnaissance. 

First up, I saw the name Testpattern and opted to look them up. There's not a whole lot of information about this duo consisting of Fumio Ichimura（市村文夫）and Masao Hiruma（比留間雅夫）, but I did find out through a comment by kgd regarding them on Amazon that these two were actually graphic designers and not musicians from the outset when they had sent Yellow Magic Orchestra's Haruomi Hosono（細野晴臣）a demo tape. As a certain pop culture figure would say, "I like the cut of their jib!" and apparently Hosono echoed that and then produced their one and only album "Après-Midi" for release in 1982.

So, may I also say that I like the cut of Testpattern's album cover. That's a pretty smart looking album with the overall iconography which reminds me of either posters or other album covers of European records from the 1950s or 1960s. But inside the album exists some minimalist technopop by Ichimura and Hiruma, armed with their Linn drums and emulators, which compares interestingly with YMO's early material (the stuff that I'm most familiar with) which endeavored to filter existing genres such as exotica and surf rock through the synthesizers and computers.

I've listened to one track so far from "Après-Midi", "Techno Age". The title might broadcast loud and clear about the bright years of technology that the world including Japan was coming up with at the time, but the music by Hiruma actually hints at something much older as if techno-ronin were making their way across the digital landscape via the solid state Tokaido Road. The six minutes of music don't deviate very much from the original pattern, but I still found myself fairly entranced by "Techno Age", and I can sense Hosono's touch on this particular track at least. For that matter, I can even feel a bit of Ryuichi Sakamoto（坂本龍一）, Hosono's YMO bandmate.

Many thanks again to 80sAndYMOLover for introducing Testpattern.