Apres Midi (reissue) vinyl

After MIDI comes... who knows? With their only album, released in 1982, the Japanese duo Fumio Ichimura and Masao Hiruma - produced all along by Haruomi Hosono (Yellow Magic Orchestra) - speculated just what the next generation of music tech might look and sound like. At a time when many Japanese musicians were taking their cues from the then booming world of video game soundtracks, this Yen Records original is no exception to the chiptuning rule, with wagging neofolk tunes, melodic from-scratch new wave beats, and an all-around hollowed-out, tubed sound, with irreverent and kitsch pop singing flippantly of life's many goodbyes and drudgeries. Released a full 42 years later, it still sounds fresh as ever.