BONDAGE FRUIT I

Along with the frantic, hyper side of the Japanese Zeuhl scene, some bands were taking the genre and doing something a bit different with it. The music is still faster than the French Zeuhl scene, still seemingly influenced by punk and avant prog, but in comparison with the hyper brain-melting style present on the best albums of Ruins and Koenjihyakkei, Bondage Fruit's debut presents the tribal edge of Zeuhl more fluently. The vocals on this album are mainly female, not as much chanting in a made up language as much as singing wordless vocals. Some of the songs on the album are calmer, while some (for example, the closer) display the chaotic side which they generally keep under control. There is only one track on the album which doesn't impress me to quite the same level as the rest - the short Rigo. The song is only the vocalists along with some very sparse instrumentation, which isn't a bad thing, but it somehow doesn't work as well for me as I had hoped it would. The rest of the album is all very good to great though.

Kido Natsuki and Yuji Katsui are the real standout musicians here for me. Both of them are incredibly talented, and both are in quite a lot of groups I enjoy. If you want something which isn't always ripping into your skull at high speeds, yet want to discover the Japanese Zeuhl style, this album would be a very good choice for you. The music on display is creative and quite a lot of fun, and they manage to effectively mix together the intense and the thoughtful. This one is easily a four star album, and with time I may end up changing it to five.