Music
Fujiya & Miyagi (10 Year Anniversary of Transparent Things)
About Fujiya & Miyagi (10 Year Anniversary of Transparent Things)
Imagine that Fujiya & Miyagi are mask-wearing technicians dissecting music, keen to magnify particles of sound to create a pulsing antidote to the ordinary. They speak in tongues, using language as a rhythm, picking words that sound good, rhyming ‘jigsaws’ with ‘carnivores’. Their songs are incisive snapshots of real lives that make household appliances sound threatening. They are steeped in vintage music from evocative krautrock to deep soul, with wafts of early Human League synth, Floydian Englishness and the throbbing groove of Tom Tom Club, all filtered for modern times.
In total, Fujiya & Miyagi don’t really sound like anything. Instead, they sound like everything condensed into perfectly arranged three minute chunks of infectious pop music, a strange hybrid of James Brown on Valium and Wire gone pop. Or maybe Serge Gainsbourg with a PhD in electronics backed by David Byrne’s Eno-produced scratchy guitar mixed by MF Doom. It’s Darwinism gone mad.
Formed in 2000 as an electronic duo of David Best (guitars and vocals) and Steve Lewis (synths, beats, programming), they released Electro Karaoke In The Negative Style two years later, a minimal electronic set it hangs eerily on Best’s distinctive whispered vocal. Adding bass player Matt Hainsby in 2004, they released a series of ten inch EPs that took them to the hearts of fanzineland. Gathered together these parables of personal injury, both physical and mental, made up three quarters of the well-received (Pitchfork, NME, MOJO, etc) album Transparent Things in 2006. Named after a Nabokov brain dump on the relationship between the past and the present. It sums them up.
Fujiya & Miyagi stay away from lyrical themes that have been done to death. Using old synths to punctuate their beautifully-observed anecdotes on romantic triumphs and disasters, heroes and villains and the world at large, their rhythms palpitate to produce modern symphonies like no-one else. Light Bulbs is a journey littered with fragmented images, anecdotes from the sublime to the ridiculous, blurry stories that you feel you shouldn’t have overheard. Each track an aural contamination set to itch your inner ear every waking moment.
Comments
Explore Nearby
-
1
99 Hudson Street Restaurant and Lounge
Restaurants -
2
Jacks Pizza and Deli
Restaurants -
3
WNYC Transmitter Park
Attractions -
4
Grand Ferry Park
Attractions -
5
B Hotel & Hostel
Hotels
-
1
99 Hudson Street Restaurant and Lounge
268 Norman Ave -
2
Jacks Pizza and Deli
5627 58th St -
3
Lucky Luna
167 Nassau Ave -
4
Lucky Luna
167 Nassau -
5
Eden 166 Ilc
166 N 7th St -
6
The Whisk & Ladle Supperclub
secret (Bedford L stop) -
7
The Habitat
988 Manhattan Ave -
8
Warsaw
261 Driggs Ave. -
9
Coco 66
66 Greenpoint Ave. -
10
Suzume
545 Lorimer St -
11
Custom Wine Bar
644 Driggs Ave -
12
Kabob Shack
182 Havemeyer St -
13
Red Star NY
37 Greenpoint Ave -
14
Greenpoint Fish & Lobster Co.
114 Nassau Ave -
15
The Well
272 Meserole Street -
16
Trophy Bar
351 Broadway -
17
Cameo Gallery
93 N. 6th St. -
18
Giando on the Water
400 Kent Ave -
19
Cadaqués Tapas Bar
188 Grand St
-
1
WNYC Transmitter Park
Greenpoint Ave -
2
Grand Ferry Park
50 River St. -
3
WNYC Transmitter Park
2 Greenpoint Ave -
4
McCarren Park
776 Lorimer St -
5
East River State Park
90 Kent Ave -
6
Monsignor McGolrick Park
Driggs Ave -
7
McCarren Park
780 Lorimer St -
8
DOC Wine Shop
147 Broadway -
9
Williamsburg Waterfront
93 Kent Ave -
10
Brooklyn Oenology
209 Wythe Ave -
11
D.O.C. Wine Bar
83 N 7th St -
12
Brooklyn Winery
213 N 8th St
-
1
B Hotel & Hostel
341 Broadway -
2
Best Western City View Inn
3317 Greenpoint Ave -
3
Green Point YMCA
99 Meserole Avenue -
4
Henry Norman Hotel
251 North Henry Street -
5
Habitat 101
101 Sutton Street
© 2024 NYNY.com: A City Guide by Boulevards. All Rights Reserved. Advertise with us | Contact us | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use | Site Map