Faceless and nameless, but not without their charms. Library by Exotics is a fantastically twisted album that orbits between the worlds of power pop and electronic mutant funk. You’d think such a one-off would come out of nowhere, but there were seeds of who the Exotics were (and what they aimed to do) elsewhere.
Led by bassist Ken Yoshida, Exotics were originally Japanese Pop giant Kenji Sawada’s live and in-studio band. Kenji Sawada was no stranger to pushing the varied conservative buttons of Japanese mass culture. Somehow, though, his music never quite lived up to his imagery until he caught wind of a group he’d dub the Exotic Politics.
Whether as actor or musician, Kenji had brought androgyny and sexuality upfront as things to explore. For many early years, as a straight-ahead rocker and Pop star, he had attained his fame by releasing albums backed by a group sometimes called The Spiders or the Inoue Takayuki Band. With them, he was able to achieve a milquetoast sound that played well to masses but one a bit divorced from his earlier, trailblazing days as a members of Japanese rock band, The Tigers.
With the dissolution of “The Spiders”, Kenji sought to reinvent himself as a New Wave master, leaving behind his overtly Pop audiences. In this younger group of session musicians, Ken Yoshida, keyboardist Akira Nishihira, and guitarist Kazuhiko Shibayama, he actually had a band that wouldn’t be faceless but front and center with him on-stage and in the studio.
On early ’80s albums like S/T/R/I/P/P/E/R, Wonderful Time, and Mis Cast. it was they that were responsible for Kenji’s turn to subversively larger-than-life electro-pop artiste. It was they, who by 1983’s Library, that commanded enough notoriety to step forward and exist outside Kenji’s world.
Library showed them sprawling into worlds they sometimes touched less profoundly with Kenji. Not beholden to a single songwriter (much less a single vocalist), Exotics, the solo group, shifted styles depending on the group member in focus.
Although Ken Yoshida would kick off the album with a paisley-tinged love letter to the past, it would be his “Anabahebak” that would cap off the first half of the album with a spidery, dark bit of avant funk. The same could be said for Akira Nishihira’s “Be Cool” a shifty Walearic groover that sounds scarcely like his earlier contribution “Trash Can” which wouldn’t seem out of place in an early Moonriders album.
Rhythm guitarist Yasuda Naoya’s own contributions to Library are decidedly spellbinding. One “Nobody Livin’ Here” hits some notes derived from the likes of Talking Head and the ZE Records crew, while his second contribution “You Can Tell Me How” would be something a group like the Flamin Groovies would kill for, hip-swinging power pop for the wiry, nervy crowd.
Would you believe that Pizzicato Five’s Maki Nomiya makes an appearance here, on “Le Calnaval”, predicting her future turn in electro-samba? The album ends on an epic rock ballad written by Kazuhiko Shibayama that recalls all those plaintive, singular, moments myriad of Abbey Road-aping groups try to capture…but fail miserably at sticking the landing.
Fuck it, as varied as this release is, and as final as it was for them (they’d break up just a year later), you could say it’s as close as techno kayo came to creating its own macro view of that Pop promise. The promise of an intriguing listen lies in a huge thumbs up from me and a big desire someone shares a better rip of Library, than mine. I promise it will open up your eyes to something special.