This 80's revival is getting out of hand. What concerns me is not so much the imminent mass hair-feathering, or indie rock's return to new wave, a genre that hardly seems viable enough to warrant re-visiting. The thing that gets me is that, in 2001, we're already immersed in the penultimate decade-- I mean, really, this shit has to last. Because we suffer from culturally encoded attention spans, our love of the 80's simply won't last the entire decade. So what then? Will we turn to the 90's for inspiration again in 2006? I don't even want to think about it.
Regardless of the implications of our accelerating retro-pace, it's at least benefiting Tomoyuki Tanaka. The man behind Fantastic Plastic Machine comes off as an innovator on his third album, Beautiful. Because the former fashion designer and his music have, thus far, proven themselves to be invested in style above anything else, the flagrant signifying of early 90's Chicago house on Beautiful could easily be taken as shrewd trend forecasting.
And that's exactly what Beautiful would be examined, portrayed, and dismissed as in this review, if it weren't the cohesive, engaging, and yes, often gorgeous album that it is. Instead of assuming the role of semi-successful musical dilettante for a third time, Tomoyuki Tanaka works mainly with one genre (house), and marries the string-laden aesthetics of pre-disco era Philly soul with radio-friendly Windy City bumps. Myriad critics have compared his songwriting on previous efforts to Bacharach, but I've always thought this an overstatement for a guy who'd never really shown himself as more than a sound sculptor of Japanese pop.
Beautiful's equal emphasis on melody and production, though, marks a new level of sophistication that finally makes Tomoyuki Tanaka worthy of the analogy. The practically inspirational "Beautiful Days" is a duet that benefits from a strong main melody and sashaying keys, which carry the minimal production. The song evokes the work of the underrated, oft-forgotten Chicago DJ Steve "Silk" Hurley, right down to the strident string flourishes. "On a Chair" temporarily eschews the house sound, as Tomoyuki Tanaka lays down a hip-hop beat, a strong funk bassline, and manipulates a sample of people singing "ah" into an infectious tune.
As with previous efforts, the album's lone cover is also a highlight. This time around, the Machine offers an incredible, eight-minute remake of Frankie Knuckles' late-night house classic, "The Whistle Song." The track is reworked into light samba, with murmur-sized house beats punctuating the Latin sway. A flute improvs over the percussion, this time only intermittently; a small chorus sings the wordless melody instead of the "whistle." What makes the song even more sublime is the breezy female voice that rises out of the track for wordless improvisations. Like Beautiful's other Brazilian-influenced house track, the almost-as-gorgeous, 7\xBD-minute "Todos os Desejos," "The Whistle Song" never strays from its initial groove, and presents only subtle changes. The song's lengths might be best suited for the dancefloor, but it's unlikely that the intricacies would be picked up without listening to the music on headphones.
Still, Fantastic Plastic Machine isn't exactly revising house as an "intelligent" genre-- however skilled he is, Tomoyuki Tanaka could never be considered a genius, much less a divine producer capable of transubstantiation. It's even possible that his "hearkening back" to the early 90's could just be culture lapping him and making him seem relevant again. If that's the case, and my initial interpretation is indeed faulty, Beautiful is even more successful. That the archaic should sound this fresh is at least a mini-miracle.
