Search - Keiichi Suzuki & Moonriders :: Hinotama Boy

The Moonriders' solid debut

David Goodwin | Westchester, NY United States | 12/16/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"As a group, the Moonriders haven't as yet made a dent in the burgeoning, American cultural trend towards Japanophilia. Despite existing as a stable unit for over 25 years and releasing a number of excellent albums, they've managed to develop a mere cult following at home and are almost totally unknown abroad (this despite having some high-profile admirers, amoung them Andy Partridge of XTC). While some of the groups' innumerable side-projects have made a dent in the American consciousness--Keiichi Suzuki's scores for the Mother/Earthbound series of Nintendo games and his excellent work on Zatoichi/Tokyo Godfathers have gained some recognition, while Ryomei Shirai proteges The Pillows have become J-pop import darlings--their extensive, rewarding back catalogue remains essentially unknown, and largely unavailable outside of Japan.



This is a shame, because the Moonriders are a fantastic band, one which compares favorably with any Western equivalent. The 1970s were a period in which Japanese rock/pop finally began to gain a voice of its own, separating from the pre-fab, good-but-awfully-derivative mould of 1960s "Group Sounds" to form something refreshingly independant. The Moonriders--leader Keiichi Suzuki, bassist brother Hirobumi Suzuki, drummer Tetsuro Kashibuchi, violinist Masahiro Takekawa, lead guitarist Ryomei Shirai, and keyboardist Tohru Okada--formed from the ashes of a group called "Honey Pie," which had ties to the seminal "Happy End," recently of the Lost in Translation soundtrack (this is if I have my history right...unsurprisingly, it's somewhat difficult to pick these things out of Japanese language pages at times).



"Hinotama (Cannonball) Boy" was released in 1976, and sounds distinctly of-the-era. In fact, given the band's later embrace of technopop, sampling, and gazetry, this album is almost off-puttingly organic; none of the instruments are sampled, and while there're some synthesizer trickery going on, it never grabs center stage. In fact, if I had to levy one criticism against the album, it would be that it's almost *too* normal; in other words, this isn't Roxy Music's out-of-the-gate "we're here, we're different, let's rock" template the band is following.



Hinotama Boy is a solid, mid-70s rock album, featuring some excellent songwriting and playing; some of these tracks ("Yoidore Dance Music") would later become concert staples. Better yet, this CD is an excellent reissue of the album, largely fixing some of the egregious clipping errors of the earlier, stock disc (the out-take bonus tracks are a particular delight). Neophytes would be advised to start later on in the catalogue, as the band began to experiment with world music and especially technopop; to that end, Istanbul Mambo, Camera Egal Stylo, Modern Music, and the actually-available-in-the-states-Amateur Academy might be better starting points."