Various - Soft Selection 84 - A Nippon DIY Wave Compilation

Storied compilation of Japanese synthpop and minimal wave from 1984 back in print for the first time in 40 years courtesy of Spanish imprint, Glossy Mistakes. Given Veronica Vasicka's tireless work in the field, I'd assumed there was little of note still out there to be rediscovered, but perhaps Japan's interior cultural history has made it a last frontier of sorts for this kind of thing? We've certainly seen that with the recent veil-lifting reissue efforts dedicated to the Vanity Records catalogue, locally produced and released sounds that on first release didn't travel too far from their close-knit milieu and still sound entirely unique now. Though there's some obvious crossover, Vanity was a distinctly more alien and outre operation than what Soft, the one-and-done label who originally put this collection together, were aiming for. For the most part, this is the sound of an alternative pop universe, similar to that which was also being imagined into existence in the western world around the same time - in Europe they had Kraftwerk, in Japan Y.M.O., and Soft Selection is where the twain might have met in 13 brief flashes. The two opposing expressions of synthpop - the ebullient and the dystopian - are both captured here to certain degrees, mostly the former in the record's first half, much more of the latter in its second. Personal proclivities accepted, I find myself more obviously drawn towards the B side, particularly Name's Beatles baiting 'Do We All Need Love' and the monochrome romanticism of Classic Pearl's 'Pearl', both of which would have stood tall amongst the cream of the Dutch minimal wave giants. Best of all - and let's be honest, what we all want from compilations of this type - is that you wont find these artists anywhere else, having existed only for the brief amount of time it took to get the record together. More lost gems from the infinite hidden 80s, then. Please let it never end.