{"product_id":"various-nihon-no-wave-2","title":"Various - Nihon No Wave 2","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eEdition of 550 copies, incl. printed inner sleeves, insert, silk-screened and sewn outer sleeve\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLast week it was the K2 reissues, and now this week we've an even more robust overview of underground 80s Japanese synthpop courtesy of Mecanica's second foray into 'Nippon-wave' waters. It's tempting to interpret the sheer volume of this kind of music with anything other than a technologically determinist point of view. Punk provided the ideology, but without the emergence of new technologies that democratised and flattened out the possibilities of home production, would we have seen the creation of so much DIY-spirited innovation? It's all very well having the idea, but if you've not the means... With the cost of entry lowered and the relatively primitive nature of the machinery favouring the autodidactic, the possibilities widened immensely for a particular kind of inquisitive freak. We know all too well how popular and abundant this kind of music was in Europe and North America around the same period, but, as usual, Japan represents another world entirely, which until this century, mostly remained a domestic concern. As we've seen with other compilations of this kind (see, for example, Vol. 1, and the Soft Selection set on Glossy Mistakes), labels such as Vanity, DD Records, Fifth Column and the like were incredibly prolific and distinct, and the 25 tracks selected here provide a fairly broad overview of the sounds being explored - synthpop, cold wave, dark wave, industrial pop and so forth. The distinctions are important, not just for pedantic taxonomical reasons, but what they say about the music's origins. Japanese artists have a way of coming at an idea that allows the known to become reborn and reshaped, where the almost proto-indie stylings of someone like Inpull Caco or the Xymox-like shade of Excentrique Noiz can be simultaneously familiar and mysterious. The language is a big giveaway of course, though there's a quality built into the prevailing sensibility, sometimes eccentric, other times austere, that marks out the music as NOT British, American, or European. I wonder, then, if there might be a Julian Cope-type figure out there with the capacity to assemble a Japanese Synthpop Sampler book? In its absence, this is no bad place to start. \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eNihon No Wave 1 now also back in stock\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFFO: Clan of Xymox, Sympathy Nervous, K2, Human League, Portray Heads, Normal Brain\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Morr","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55774117298553,"sku":null,"price":40.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0051\/1380\/6921\/files\/NihonNoWave2.jpg?v=1757436558","url":"https:\/\/worldofechomusic.com\/products\/various-nihon-no-wave-2","provider":"World Of Echo","version":"1.0","type":"link"}