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| LOLITANIMATRONIC wrote:
Dec 16, 2007 10:51 AM
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[this is good] I've been lurking. Can someone bring up an article or do some research on the Japanese band Tipographica? I can't find a damn thing.
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Trigun was my instigation for asking. I found the First and Second Doughnuts soundtracks from YEARS AGO, when I was much younger, and recently redeveloped my appreciation for the composer Tsuneo Imahori- who is also a member of Yohko Kanno's The Seatbelts, if wikipedia does not lie.
I sometime really enjoy reader's assignments (even though I still have over 20 CD to review before the end of the month), so I thought I'd take on Lolitanimatronic's request.
With a little digging, I found out that Tipographica formed early in 1986 at a Japanese music school, between Tsuneo Imahori (who would later serve as guitarist and band leader), Naruyoshi Kikuchi, the saxophone player, and Akira Minakami (keyboards).
Originally their sound was inspired by Fred Frith, noted for his jazz funk and progressive rock, but by the time they had assembled the full band (adding a Trombone player, a drummer, and bassist), it would seem that all their releases practically worships Frank Zappa - as detailed courtesy of allmusic.com.
According to Sean Westergaard, for allmusic, he writes:
By this point, leader Tsuneo Imahori had absorbed so much Frank Zappa that it was practically exuding from his entire body. The liner notes describe a scenario in which someone doesn't speak any Russian, but is constantly drawn to a Russian book in his possession. After months of getting pleasure from examining the book, but not really understanding it, suddenly one day the person has full mastery of Russian. So it appears to be with Imahori and the Book of Zappa.
I want to say that most of the songs I've had a chance to listen to are often very long, such as the nature of improv free style jazz songs. The most interesting title, although they have a pretty interesting and odd selection of title names, is probably "Prostitute Robot (Made by Sony)". This is from their self-titled album and there is a long guitar solo in the middle of the piece.
TSUNEO IMAHORI
You can tell a lot about the band's history looking at their discography. For instance, I can tell that they probably broke up around 1997. By 1998, the man responsible for driving Tipographica, Tsuneo Imahori, have moved onto The Seatbelts, the group responsible for the blues/jazz fushion soundtrack of Cowboy Beebop. Edit: a fictional group based around Yoko Kanno's work for Cowboy Beebop.
With the success of Cowboy Beebop, Imahori finds himself as the main composer of other popular anime series, such as Trigun (late 90s) and Final Round (2001+).
I find that these songs written for Anime are a little easier to swallow, obviously because it's more commercial and mainstream. I am including "Blue Funk" for you to listen to, the song sounds like it's a Japanimation Western... which pretty much describes Trigun.
According to discogs, his latest work appears on Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, the television show based on Masamune Shirow's popular animated movie that inspired The Matrix. I have been a big Shirow fan since Eclipse's US comics, Appleseed, so I found out that I actually have a few of these Stand Alone Complex soundtracks (because they came with Bandai's deluxe edition DVD).
The weird thing is that the CD pulls up Yoko Kanno as the composer (Kanno is also a member of The Seatbelts). A closer look at the liner notes revealed that Imahori is primary used as the guitarist and bass player.
It would also seem that Kanno have pretty much used Imahori as a session guitarist for her other projects (including Wolf's Rain and Be Human).
12/17/2007 02:16:00 vu my♥posts 
allmusic
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roxfan wrote:
Dec 17, 2007 3:07 AM
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[this is good] A few notes.
1. Yoko Kanno is a woman.
2. Seatbelts is not a "real" group but a group existing in the universe of Cowboy Bebop (there's even a fictional discography of their work in the booklet of "Tank! The! Best!" CD). It basically includes everyone who worked for Kanno on Bebop soundtracks.
3. Imahori is the main guitarist on pretty much all of the recent Kanno's works, including Maaya Sakamoto's solo albums until 2005.
4. Recently he worked several times with Taku Iwasaki - another notable anime composer. Iwasaki's soundtracks of note include Read or Die (2001)/R.O.D. the TV(2003)(without Imahori), Black Cat(2006), Angel Heart(2005), Oban Star Racers(2006), Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann (2007).
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