Brighton-based Fujiya & Miyagi have been plying their unique take on electronic music for the best part of twenty years.
Slight Variations is about their tenth album and the fourth on their own label, and it is an intriguing mix of ’80s electronica crossed with funk, while taking on the kind of body music with which Mute were familiar years ago, but always with an eye on the dancefloor. It is tantalising and also gives the listener no opportunity for complacency.
I could hear a touch of Nitzer Ebb in the opening title track, but with its clipped guitar and funk undertow and a decidedly louche vocal delivery, it becomes a whole other thing, with a simple, repetitive bounce that that jostles with a shimmering sliver of guitar. The Mute direction is tempered by a lovely Motown swing on “Non-essential Worker”, while they really bring the funk on “Sweat”, the chilled vocals giving it great separation.
The funk-influenced choppy guitars are a lovely touch dotted throughout the album and there is always an eye on the dancefloor. It would certainly make people move with a touch of body music and a chuckling synth that is all shiny and blemish-free. Final track “Feeling The Effects” is a patchwork with little sections dropped in and shuffled around, the jaded lyrics adding a real sense of ennui as the album draws to a bleary, early morning end, that pleasurable fatigue that denotes a great evening.
That sense of physicality is what Slight Variations is about; but it also gives plenty to enjoy in a more cerebral way, the music jumping around between styles and textures. After twenty years, Fujiya & Miyagi still have plenty to show us and that is a really good thing.-Mr Olivetti-
