Oh my goodness....


I am totally into the 2nd movement of the pillows atm. So after some digging I stumbled upon The Style Council...it is heavenly. I can hear that Kool Spice and everything is influenced by them. Only heard two songs of them so far, but it's great..all the subtleties..the keyboards, the horns, the conga's ...outstanding drumming, cool bass, the vocal harmonies...I can hear a little bit Flash Candy and some tints of Monochrome Lovers out there.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRGnXprimbg (Have you ever had it blue)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fo0lMI7bynE (My ever changing moods)

SUPER AWESOME

Here is how I found them:

Manabe: In those days that he wanted to play in the pillows... I think he was the perfect bassist at the time.

Yamanaka: When we entered the second wave I really liked Paul Weller. It was about when the Jam finally belatedly changed into The Style Council. Like the 23rd or 24th.
At that time, he was playing jazz and funky music on a wood base. He could do that “babbababba”, and he was really good and getting along with people, and he was even good looking! And he was an honest person. It was like I suddenly felt he was familiar and it wasn’t hard at all to have meet him so suddenly.

Satou: He provided a lot of influence to the pillows of that time period.

(viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4889&hilit=super+bad+kashima)

Hot damn! Nice find, Ashinow! I am really digging these guys.

I bought Our Favourite Shop and So far so good I like it. I probably have to give it more listens.

Songs that I liked from the album:
Homebreakers
All Gone Away ( reminds me of Flipper's Guitar's Coffee Milk)
Come to Milton Keynes
Boy Who Cried Wolf
Down in the Seine (sounds like Park~twilight waltz~!)
With Everything to Lose
Walls Come Tumbling Down
Shout to the Top (USA remix)

My only complaints about it is that there is song that contains a stand up comedian rapping about racists topics (it's played for satire, thankfully) and I was like wtf at first but nevertheless not a bad song. And in Boy Who Cried Wolf the drums have been replaced by a drum machine so it feels kinda wonky but still a good song. Oh the Mastering on this CD is done way too loud for my taste, and so i had to turn the volume on my speakers down. I'm not sure about the LP but I bet the LP sounds miles better than it does on CD.

As for the influences I can definitely see where Sawao got the idea to do Jazz aside from Kashima. There's quite a few songs here that definitely reminded me of the pillows 2nd movement era. For a couple of examples "Luck" could've been inspiration for Liberty! And "Our Favoirite Shop" got me thinking of 'Swingers Night Club" (A song written by Manabe, hmm....maybe he was into The Style Council too?) ' But what really amazes to me is those two songs "All Gone Away" and 'Come to Milton Keynes" would have been the starting points to the Shibuya-kei genre and the Tratoria label.

Awesome stuff. Very interesting, turns out Paul Weller was also in the Jam, whose hit song Going Underground is the inspiration for the name of the Japanese band GOING UNDER GROUND.

So interesting

On The Jam's last album "The Gift", you could say that was the start of The Style Council since Mick Talbot was featured on the album.