Dumb Type Theater

Plan For Sleep

Genre: MODERN CLASSICAL / AMBIENT

LP (Black Vinyl)

Boomkat Product Review:

Created at the same time as 'Every Dog Has His Day' by Dumb Type co-founder Teiji Furuhashi and DJ/producer Teiji Furuhashi, 'Plan For Sleep' is even odder and even more innovative, experimenting with wonked sound collage, exotica and Reich-ian minimalism.

If you've never come across Dumb Type before, then 'Plan For Sleep', alongside 'Every Dog Has His Day', will provide you with the perfect place to start. The notorious Kyoto-based art collective emerged in the mid-'80s, formed by Teiji Furuhashi and a group of his university classmates. And they weren't restricted to musical endeavors; still active today, Dumb Type is best known for its installations and theatrical performances, and of course its radical politics. 'Plan For Sleep' was recorded and released in 1986, a year after 'Every Dog Has His Day', and both were performed on stage in Kyoto in 1986. Here, Furuhashi and Yamanaka are even bolder with their choices - the disarmingly pretty piano themes that rooted its predecessor have vanished, and the duo's chaotic, theatrical response to cinema, American minimalism and nascent electronic modalities is thrust into the spotlight.

They decorate wheezing organ sounds and clattery foley junk with repetitive marimba and piano cycles on 'Organ-Automatik', never letting the seriousness of the formula overwhelm the message by chasing the melody with cheap, synthesized synth honks and chattering vocals. Similarly, on 'Tipografica', Furuhashi and Yamanaka's use of artificial orchestral instruments and rickety industrial rhythms makes the composition sound like a 'Mario 64' cue being played in a typewriter workshop. But these dramatic moments are mollified, at least a little, by Dumb Type's more explorative interludes, like the sublime 'Lesson#3', a moving synth lament, and 'Nasca', that offsets dramatic, reverberating calls and perforating percussive hits with bare synth motifs, bells and haunting brass swells.

They were inspired by "secular jazz" on this one, and that influence bubbles up to the surface on 'S.F.(Dedicated To Verne)~A Song Of Escalators(Love And Sex)', with its familiar walking bassline and sultry fanfares. But their use of samples again shuttles the material into alien territory: what starts as a sardonic skewering of American soundtrack slush, is drowned out by stuttering trapped grooves, airplane engines and ratcheting machine noise. Even this doesn't last for long - about mid way through, Furuhashi and Yamanaka quiet their orchestra of automatons, leaving reversed piano notes and barely-audible voices to shepherd us towards the end credits.

LP (Black Vinyl) (8)