Track Listing 1. Depression, La - (Japanese, featuring Grand-Prix) 2. Rolls Royce - (Japanese, featuring Ikeda Satoshi) 3. New Song, A - (Japanese, featuring Kato Hisashi) 4. Week-End - (Japanese, featuring Kato Hisashi) 5. Magic Twin Candle Tale - (Japanese, featuring Bread & Butter) 6. Concerto - (Japanese) 7. Such a Beautiful Girl Like You - (Japanese, featuring Suzuki Momoko) 8. Playboy Playgirl - (Japanese) 9. Régle du Jeu, La - (Japanese) 10. I Hear a Symphony - (Japanese) 11. Drinking Wine - (Japanese, featuring Saito Makoto) 12. Great Invitations, The - (Japanese, featuring Arichika Masumi) 13. Stars - (Japanese, featuring Saito Makoto)
| Details | | Playing Time: | 58 min. | | Contributing Artists: | Arichika Masumi, Bread & Butter, Grand-Prix, Ikeda Satoshi, Kato Hisashi, Murata Yoichi, Saito Makoto, Suzuki Momoko | | Producer: | Konishi Yasuharu | | Distributor: | Alternative Dis. Alliance | | Recording Type: | Studio | | Recording Mode: | Stereo | | SPAR Code: | n/a |
Album Notes Pizzicato Five: Konishi Yasuharu, Nomiya Maki. Additional personnel includes: Kawano Shin (electric piano); Saito Makoto, Murata Yoichi, Grand-Prix. Engineers: Hirose Osamu, Takenaka Akihiko. Audio Mixers: Hirose Osamu; Takenaka Akihiko. A group like Japan's Pizzicato Five could only exist in the '90s. They venture so far down the postmodernist pop path that they come out the other side, seeming completely guileless and natural. This is the daunting goal realized on INTERNATIONAL PLAYBOY. Singing in Japanese, the ladies of Pizzicato Five come across with the same unaffected citizen-of-the-world cool that made Astrud Gilberto a star decades earlier. The difference is that the Five are working their magic over a genre-busting sonic "mess-thetic" that incorporates '60s pop, hip-hop beats, funk, classical samples and bossa nova guitar riffs, often all in the same song. The potential for overkill in such circumstances looms large, but the Pizzicato Five's pure pop ambition ultimately wins out, making INTERNATIONAL PLAYBOY engaging and endlessly surprising.
Editorial Reviews ...the recreation of a mythical age of hipness...a perfectly observed pastiche....the abrupt transitions and cranky synth parts of 'Rolls Royce' manage the neat trick of sounding at once carefree and ominous. The Wire (08/01/1999)
5 stars out of 5 - ...Pizzicato Five are back with their best album yet....Paraise comes no higher; music gets no more rich with style and vividly suggestive as this. Essential. Melody Maker (04/17/1999)
3 Stars (out of 5) - ...their exquisitely tailored pop is never merely ironic. A heartfelt love of pop's entire lexicon - bar grunge - informs their work... Q (05/01/1999)
5 stars out of 5 - ...Pizzicato Five are back with their best album yet....Paraise comes no higher; music gets no more rich with style and vividly suggestive as this. Essential. Melody Maker (04/17/1999)
| See an error? Submit a change request |