Asa Chang and Junray - Tsuginepu

  by Benjamin Howarth

published: 22 / 5 / 2003

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Now, I buy a lot of music and I like writing good things about it. Sometimes I think the band are good, even if maybe they don’t have that special connection to my life that makes me love their music, or maybe they are an entertaining listen that doesn’t really last (but I can appreciate that initial moment when they’re records made me feel something good, even if they end up at the bottom of the pile of CDs on myself, eventually they go under the bed and are forgotten). Sometimes, sometimes – that band comes along that just BLOWS me away. I’m hooked, obsessed, in love with the music. It happened when I first heard Lambchop’s 'Nixon' or the Desaparecidos record. Sometimes I play a record more and more and more, and then, bam, I realise that it’s got so much more than I first thought. It happened with the Vines. At first, I played it and I liked it. Then I kind of stopped playing it, but the songs began to naw away in my head, and I played and played it, and when it came round to picking my albums of the year, I realised that – despite the fact that I wanted to be able to say that I was above NME hype, or some such taking myself way to seriously pompous statement to the world – that I was hooked on this band, this record, that they were THE soundtrack to my first term at university. Why did I write all that, you ask? Well. I’m about to slag a CD off in a big big way. I wanted to demonstrate that I’m a typical music fan, a big music fan, who CARES. That I don’t just have an opinion above and unrelated to the quality of the music. That above all, scene politics and trying to promote myself as being some super hip type of dude is no concern of mine. I tried to like this. God I tried. I’d read quotes like these, and thought – what is it about this band that transfixes people so? "Be rendered awestruck...brilliant" (NME) "You'll hear nothing else like this all year" (MIXMAG SINGLE OF THE MONTH) "Breathtaking" (5/5 SEVEN UPDATE) "F***ing Awesome" (5/5 DJ) "Transcendent...a genuinely new musical experience" (JOCKEY SLUT) So I put the record into my stereo, and I’m expecting something a little difficult, maybe. But, more, I’m hoping for something that either sounds exciting, that feeling you get when you hear something new that you hadn’t even imagined could possibly exist (God, I love having that feeling when I buy a new record) or perhaps something with unique beauty, the sort of record that you can just play and play, it’s relaxing qualities ensure you never tire of it. But, I get neither of these. These are just noises, and I can’t get beyond them. There’s nothing, absolutely nothing, to this music. It’s so cold, so calculated – it doesn’t provoke any feelings, doesn’t have any emotion. Some would say that it’s music for music’s sake, but it's not. Music is not just a self-serving exercise. It has to connect with our wider lives. With so many albums available, a good artist has to scream at us to spend some time with them. They have to stand out from the pack, and to do that they have to make us feel something special. Now, I appreciate that Asa Chang’s music is difficult to do, that there is skill involved. But let's be relative, it you only desire music for its technical skills then you may as well listen to classical. Those guys are so much more talented than Asa Chang, and the standards are SO high, that they can’t be off the pulse for a second. I played this album, 45 minutes long, all the way through more than once. And I was BORED OUT OF MY MIND!

Track Listing:-

1 Toremoro
2 Tsuginepu To Ittemita
3 Xylophone
4 Kaikyo
5 Kutsu #3
6 Hidden Track

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