Cat No: WRWTFWW063 Label: WRWTFWW Records Genre: ELECTRONIC

Interior

Genre: ELECTRONIC

LP (Black Vinyl)

Boomkat Product Review:

40th anniversary pressing of the Haruomi Hosono (YMO)-produced debut by new age ambient jazz unit Interior, who later appeared on Windham Hill beside their 2nd and final LP.

A soothing and surprising relic of Japan’s economic boom times in the ‘80s, Interior’s eponymous debut is beautifully symptomatic of the era’s thirst for new age ambient soundtracks that reflected changes in the urban-social environment and coloured the listening lives of its sophisticate residents. Revolving Daisuke Hinata, Eiki Nonaka, Mitsuru Sawamura, and Tsukasa Betto, Interiors patently benefited from production by Haruomi Hosono, by this point a noted pioneer of synth-pop with Yellow Magic Orchestra, who was unfolding his wings internationally across numerous electronic spheres. ‘Interior’ stands as an exquisite example of their shared thrust toward a nostalgic sort of futurism, melding instrumentalist flourishes with precisely layered and fine-tuned electronics in a breezy distillation of baroque elegance, American contemporary minimalism, and jazz-fusion freedom, all puckered with new wave synth-pop finesse.

Greased with the slipperiest fretless bass, glistening pads, and threaded thru with a gently optimistic spirit, the album shimmers with an uncanny familiarity, conuring a not-quite-smug glow of elegance and intimacy in 10 parts of airy tactility, with Hosono’s signature drum programming rustling under dream keys and soft-touch, modernist ambient environmental architecture. There’s one vocal standout in the anglophilic synth-pop of ’N.F.G.’, which perhaps best recalls the work of Hosono’s YMO bandmate Ryuichi Sakamoto with David Sylvian, yet the rest is given to an instrumental narration, eddying from the Reichian sashay of ‘Technobase’ thru church-like organ bliss of ‘Park’ via introspective chamber flutes on ‘Reply’, and surprising pieces of soft jazz-rock-fusion experimentalism on ‘Cold Beach’ and ‘Luft’ that evoke comparison with Peter Gabriel and clearly the roster of Windham Hill, who picked it up for a 1985 reissue, and followed up with Interior’s 2nd album ‘Design’ in 1987.

LP (Black Vinyl) (10)

First official vinyl re-issue. Comes in a heavy 350gsm sleeve.

Play All LP (Black Vinyl) (10)

Boomkat Product Review:

40th anniversary pressing of the Haruomi Hosono (YMO)-produced debut by new age ambient jazz unit Interior, who later appeared on Windham Hill beside their 2nd and final LP.