PARTY TONIGHT

While Namba continued to release solo albums through the 80's, he also established the Sense of Wonder act in 1981, so there's a bit of confusion around his personal and band albums, as most of them included the basic core of Sense of Wonder.Like on the 81' second Namba effort ''Party tonight'', where bassist Tanabe Motto and drummers Soru Toru (ex-Crosswind) and Aoyama Jun are involved, all future members of Sense of Wonder.Hamaguchi Motoya, who previously played with Yonin-Bayashi, also appears in the album, which was released on Air Records.

After a very weak debut and with such a misleading, cheerful title, ''Party tonight'' could have been easily another dradeful work in Namba's discography.But this is partly true, because in some tracks of the album Namba shows his skills as an accomplished keyboardist eventually to come up with a keyboard-based style with symphonic tendencies, not far from KEITH EMERSON or RICK WAKEMAN.So, half about of ''Party tonight'' is a decent effort, mostly based on synthesizers and piano, but Namba also uses an organ quite often to deliver strong, instrumental performances with Classical interludes, Electronic touches and quirky moves from technical playing to more melodious themes.I really can't say the same about the vocal tracks, which hurt the level of the album.As with many Japanese works of the 80's, the lyrics come partly in English and partly in Japanese (even during the same track) and the music is syrupy Pop Rock with lots of funky lines and a ballad-like mood.Absolutely hillarious material with an unacceptable value for Namba's quality as a musician.I wish he could have sticked with the style of the opening cuts, moreover the pieces with the electric guitars in evidence have a very bombastic style akin to GERARD, extremely pompous Symphonic Rock with a few Hard Rock touches, well-played and full of passion.

''Party tonight'' sounds like an improvement compared to Namba's debut album, but the extremely uneven offering between symphonic arrangements and poppy tunes does not make it an essential release.Pitty, because the instrumental tracks are pretty nice.Recommended mainly to collectors, too limited decent material to push my recommendation further...2.5 stars.