Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been working on the Tokyo Olympic Games at work. It’s been a fun challenge that brought back visiting Japan, and my facination with the country over the years.
The first Japanese band I really got into were Plus-Tech Squeeze Box. A band who could have only come out of Japan.
Plus-Tech Squeeze Box are musically very hard to define. They wear their influences on their sleeves, often replicating them to perfection. What makes them so different is how scattershot those influences are, and how they’re plastered over their records in such a shotgun blast of frenetic energy that listening to one of their albums sounds close to someone with a low attention span flicking through channels on a television.
It’s an abrasive and frenetic style that could very easily be distracting if it weren’t for their charm. The two albums they have released (fakevox & cartoom!) are done with such an irreverent joy that you can’t help but smile. If I were to expand the fitting analogy of flicking through television channels, all of those channels would be of kids TV; bright vibrant colours of joyful and open innocence.
It’s a shame that they’ve only released two albums. Their last, “cartoom!” was released over fifteen years ago, yet they are so distinctly unique they sound as fresh and exiting now as they did when I first heard their track “Early Riser” all those years ago.
Listening to a full album from Plus-Tech Squeeze Box is where the real joy lies as its their crazed development that makes them so compelling, which isn’t transferred to the listener with a single track. However “☆” from their first album “fakevox” is a great place to start as it captures them at their most rambunctious, with big Simmons drums and brass pad sounds that just bring joy to any listener with a soul.
“☆” also works well as it features the same kind of themes as their track “starship.6” from their second album “cartooom!,” which I have talked about previously in an earlier Track Of The Week post. At that time, Plus-Tech Squeeze Box weren’t available on spotify. Now that they are, I will posthumously add that track below, as well as to my TOTW-playlist for your enjoyment:
☆:
Starship.6:
TOTW Playlist: