![]() After the sonic histrionics of KZK, it's surprising to hear such relative austerity on Heisei Fuuzoku. What impacted me most on first listen wasn't the change of flavor, but rather the actual sound of the album. The others are taken directly from past Shiina Ringo albums, and we find them here reworked and rearranged, largely in her (often flirted with) lounge jazz idiom. So, why didn't I like it at first? For one, only 4 of the 13 tracks are new. If KZK was the culmination of that persona, Shiina's creative peak, then Heisei Fuuzoku is the apparent come-down. Coming from a lower-class Japanese family, her rise to fame was somewhat taboo, and her subsequently unreserved persona surely liberated the J-pop fanatic's mindset in one way or another. Almost everything about Shiina Ringo upon the album's release was ambitious, and for a moment, she created a new template for pop starlets. The live drums were huge and distorted, the electronics glitched out, and the instrumentation ever expansive and ambitious. And unlike Heisei Fuuzoku, KZK still had roots in the American underground. ![]() It was one of those rare discs that transcends most notions of its genre, while embracing it all the same. My expectations were high, of course, being a huge fan of Shiina Riingo's last solo album, Karuki Zamen Kuri no Hana ( KZK for short), which merged diverse trends and traditions in jazz, fusion, rock, and pop into a strangely realized album. I'll start with an admission: I didn't like Heisei Fuuzoku at first. ![]()
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