V/A - Soft Selection 84 LP (Soft, 1983)

Side A

clä-sick - Morning in China

La Sellrose Can Can - Aerobicise

Linolium - Unit 25

Picky Picnic - Sume ba Miyako

Pink Label - Good Luck

NAME - N.H.K.

Picky Picnic - Kibo no Asu

ReveR - Performan

Side B

NAME - Do We All Need Love

Classic Pearl - Pearl

La Sellrose Can Can - Happy Morning

clä-sick - Every Night

clä-sick - Black Nile

The rarity of this LP, released on the mysterious Soft label, is matched only by its astounding quality. Each song is a wonderful little nugget of minimal-wave, beginning with clä-sick's lilting Chinoiserie intro "Morning in China". La Sellrose Can Can kicks things up a notch with a bouncy minimal-synth-pop number featuring oddball English lyrics about physical training.

Everyone do a flying saucer

Take the train and say hello.

Linolium's sole contribution is another Chinese-themed minimal-synth jam (what are the odds?), though this time with a sort of Picky Picnic-esque canned-sample technique going on over a snappy drum machine rhythm. The picnickers themselves take up the torch here with a demo version of Ha! Ha! Tarachine's "Sume ba Miyako", featuring all the squiggly, brain-damaged zolo we've all come to expect from these masterminds. The mood shifts for Pink Label's track "Good Luck", a sparsely-produced techno-kayo gem with a lovely chorus. Things take a slightly darker turn with NAME's "N.H.K.", a very weird little track with vocal samples in English and Japanese. The coda "play it backwards again" appears before Picky Picnic show back up with another goofball ballad, this time with a ukelele, syncopated hand claps and more frustrated grunting (I don't think this track was released elsewhere, but I might be wrong). Another very weird minimal song courtesy of ReveR, featuring a lot of wacky, reverb-y voices speaking English(?). Really dumb/great.
Side two kicks off with another NAME track, this time more pop-like with moody vocals about exhaustion with love.

Sometimes I feel so tired

Every time you make me saying 'I love you'

Sometime I feel so sad

Every time you stop me making love with you

Do we all need love?

And do I really know how to love you?

Following "Do We All Need Love?" is "Pearl", by Classic Pearl, which I first heard long ago on a CD compilation. It's very excellent and quite catchy. Then La Sellrose Can Can is back with another super fun English-language pop song whose lyrics I can't quite decipher. Something about candy and mercy and merry-go-rounds? Anyways, album-openers clä-sick return, book-ending Soft Selection 84 with another moody minimal synth tune ("Every Night") and the twinkling, dub-tinged "Black Nile".
The only thing not-great about this LP is how obscure every band besides Picky Picnic is. Does anyone have any info about these groups?

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Picky Picnic - Lovely Water Peaceful 7" flexi (Nagomu, 1986)

Tracklisting

Side A

Lovely Water Peaceful

Side B

Blue Mountain 500 Miles Goes By

More insanity from Picky Picnic, one of the best bands ever.
Like Cynical Hysteria World, this release features the artistic and musical talents of famed animator Kiriko Kubo - a perfect match for Picky Picnic. Her influence seems to temper the group slightly, but they're still unquestionably idiotic here, as evidenced by the completely a cappella Martin Denny parody Blue Mountain 500 Miles Goes By.

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Picky Picnic - Cynical Hysteria World 2x7" (Panic Records, 1986)

Tracklisting

Side A
Fanfare / どんぐり行進曲

Side B
It's a Hysterical Place
Tsuntapunk
びょうき

Side C
トリップ・サンドイッチ

Side D
Go Go Twins
(仮) 放課後

This group is often compared to the Residents, but I find their sonic palette to be idiosyncratically Japanese. The kindergarten-prog thing going on here sets them comfortably beside the avant-naïve stylings of their brethren in Wha-Ha-Ha, yet there's just enough of a punk aesthetic there to attach them to German label-mates Der Plan, Pyrolator, and the rest of the Ata Tak crew.

This double 7" EP (I believe it's their final release) sees the usual duo of Kaoru Todoroki and Yuji Asuka teamed up with famed animator/illustrator Kiriko Kubo, probably known best in the states for doing the album art for John Zorn's Cobra. It's a match made in heaven, really. In fact, a few of Kiriko's works have titles very similar to those of Picky Picnic (Cynical Hysterie Hour, Kuru Kuru Cynical), causing me to wonder just how close their relationship was. Sadly, Picky Picnic would disband shortly after this recording for reasons unknown.

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