You’d think being in one of the biggest cult Japanese bands of the ’90s would make one of your biggest side projects pretty well known, but Yasuharu Konishi’s Girl Girl Girl must be the exception to that rule.
As founder of shibuya-kei giants Pizzicato Five (P5), Yasuharu has become synonymous with that group, with these act’s fans more likely to join its dots back to 1980s’ Portable Rock, P5 singer Maki Nomiya’s amazing first band prior to joining forces with Konishi.
They’d definitely not likely mention Konishi’s unique Girl Girl Girl radio show, a project that spawned five compilations, one anthology of compilations, even a single and live CD. There are two probable reasons for this; firstly, they date from that mid-90s era when shibuya-kei was about to be forgotten in favour of either hyperactive J-Pop, the more acoustic sounds of someone like Cornelius or (indulge me here) the ’60s facing sounds of Odelay-era Beck and chart-topping Britpop; in other words, the international children of Konishi/P5’s shibuya-kei revolution — again, indulge me here.
The weird thing is, a lot of people on my side of the world will know the Girl Girl Girl (GGG) theme tune, I’m sure of it.
I don’t know how it came to be exported, but the rather cheesy jingle that started off their “show” and each of its related CDs will register in your memories straight away. I am of British upbringing, and I swear I heard this little number in the background of British TV shows and/or commercials while growing up as a ’90s child. I haven’t been able to pinpoint where, but reach out to Mr. Fond/Sound if you know what I’m talking about.
The jingle itself is as cheesy as an Austin Powers interlude number, but (luckily for us) isn’t representative at all of Volume 3 of the GGG series. Unfortunately, though, it’s representative, of the rest of GGG’s albums, which at times come off as self-indulgent jam sessions lacking quality control. Likely, the second reason why this part of Konishi’s oeuvre is probably, largely forgotten.
‘Jam session’ is the key descriptor here; GGG was a radio show presented by dude dude dude, or muso muso muso: Konishi, Haruo Kubota (from the Vibra-Tones) and Cosa Nostra’s Tetsutaro Sakurai, three musicians who on a weekly basis presented new compositions made specially for the show.
While two of the ‘Girls’ trio traded in shibuya-kei sounds originally, each of the Historical Recordings compiled from each show’s season would vary wildly in style, ranging across from bar room cover versions, piano pieces down to weird downtempo grooves.
On each CD you can hear the trio breaking out of their comfort zone; Haruo Kubota for example was best known for his frantic New Wave under the band Pearl Brothers, but on this collection he provides some of its most blissed-out tunes. A track on the next volume meanwhile found Konishi creating a quite out-there vocoder journey worth the admission price alone, and most of his GGG output hits you in the “feels” a lot more than the style-conscious P5 might have (Futurama dog scenes aside).
Historical Recordings Volume 3, though, is the one where the pseudo super-group’s sound reaches a perfect synthesis, probably in no small part down to Tetsutaro Sakurai penning half of the tracks here. Here he seems to have been the star of the show in its third incarnation from 1995, despite not carrying the star power of Mr. Konishi. Certainly his pop group Cosa Nostra never gave P5 a run for its money; like must of the rest of the GGG output, their music wasn’t essential listening by any means.
One can only assume then that being placed in a musical tug of war with his peers would encourage Sakurai to up his game, and his Avec Moi contribution here is not only the album’s best track, but one of the true forgotten classics of the entire shibuya-kei era. When something is only made for radio and then placed on a very indie compilation it’s hardly going to bother the charts, but take one listen to this magical pop number below and don’t tell me it doesn’t sound like falling in love on a swinging ’60s day in Paris, sakura petals falling on your pretty little head? I can never get enough of it.
The rest of GGG Vol. 3 makes it feel like the great lost shibuya-kei, sophisti-pop album of ’90s Japan. And while it’s a male vocal on the highlight I just mentioned, the rest of the album would be nothing without its female contributors — actual Girl Girl “Girls” who despite their talents have become as forgotten as the series itself.
Mikiko Noda’s vocals haunt the swooning slow-pop shuffle of Kubota’s My Weakness, for example, while the spoken word monologue of Fuki Mikawa on About Love interlocks delicately with almost post-rock-style guitar work.
About Love is another wonder, predating both Faye Wong’s ambient curio Fuzao and the short-lived Scottish outfit Life Without Buildings, but I’m confused who to attribute this to; the credits bear Sakurai’s name whilst the liner notes that accompany each track call it a Kubota number. Did Kubota take over Sakurai’s sheet music for this one? It’s a bit of a head-scratcher, as who exactly Fuki Mikawa was. She doesn’t seem to exist outside of this dreamy and discrete confessional.
Some here, there’s another spoken word beauty in Kubota track Haruki-San’s Letter where two other obscure talking heads natter over another ambient soundscape. Winter Promenade, meanwhile, has Satoshi Ishizuka’s spoken word going over Konishi’s gamelan-like lullaby loop, somehow subtly dosing us with turntable-played scratch horns.
Is this trip hop? I really don’t know what genre label to apply to this and other tracks here, so much so that perhaps the shibuya-kei label is pretty redundant. Calling it downtempo meanwhile does it a disservice, even if a Sakurai track later on in the set veers towards this description.
The Girls of GGG lend their magic again on cover versions like Lu, where Chika (whoever she may have been) sings a Laura Nyro number over raw-sounding keys played by Konishi in what’s either a church hall or some spacious yet intimate bar. We then have T.V. Jesus singer Rieko Teramoto (aka Transistor Glamour) purring seductively on Satin Nights, which is best described as Protection-era Massive Attack covering Towa Tei’s German Bold Italic, although predating the latter.
I mention Towa Tei mainly to raise the rather fruitful relationship that seems to exist between Japanese radio and the country’s music scene. Towa Tei for example was discovered by Ryuichi Sakamoto on his Sound Street radio show, a series which yielded its own compilation in 1986’s Demo Tape 1, as profiled by Diego on FOND/SOUND last year. Towa Tei’s most recent LP under his Sweet Robots Against the Machine moniker meanwhile was inspired by a spoken word improv by a radio show host, collaborating live on air with the artist to influence a whole album of chatty monologues set to esoteric dance.
GGG Vol. 3 doesn’t have that scrambled talk radio effect, despite its roots, again showing it’s against the grain kind, of neat categorisation. It’s the rare case of too many cooks somehow producing a well-composed meal: a sensual album that comes under a jokey banner with jokey yet secretive liner notes, in-jokes with their liberal use of secret identities and alter-egos, adding so much mystery to the voices behind the music.
Its tracks somehow encapsulate very ’90s sounds and ’60s moods, referencing acts of the time whilst also predating some. It’s a compilation as much of its time as out of it, and not many records veer into that territory, especially not something which is essentially a compilation drawn from three artists churning out brand new tunes for a radio set. Not just any radio set either, made up not of the same old songs and banter but totally new material.
Again, another move away from the norm, and one that makes me yearn for a reboot of the show in 2019. Imagine if Visible Cloaks, Stereolab and Daniel Lopatin went head to head on a weekly basis. Or how about Foodman, Tentenko and Lauren Halo? Or, if you want to go strictly into the more indie-pop scene which GGG was rooted in, perhaps Beck, Badly Drawn Boy and Jamie Lidell?
I’m getting away from myself, but that’s what happens when you let me indulge myself, and sometimes, as GGG Vol. 3 proves, self-indulgence can be no bad thing.