Tujiko Noriko — Hard Ni Sasete

There is good music, bad music, excellent music and there is something else. Tujiko Noriko belongs to the latter category, and her latest album Hard ni sasete (make me hard) is quite certainly one of the best thing to have come up from that very category.

So what is "something else"? Well, first and foremost it is excellent music... But while excellent music is just excellent music, something else is more, it can be: an excellent therapy if your life is a mess, the strawberries you’re craving for if you’re a pregnant woman, a pint of Newcastle Brown Ale if you’re a northern England sonuvabitch drunkard, a good shag if you desperately need one, a huge spaghetti carbonara if you’re an Italian lost among the Eskimos, the coke you need if you’re a Keith Richards wanna-be... well I guess I should stop now... my point is made, Hard ni sasete is all this and more!

Born in Osaka (a city which seems to be the cradle of a very lively alternative/experimental artistic scene), young Noriko started singing aged 3 in 1979 and probably got some musical education. It wasn’t before 1999 that she seriously started composing music, resulting in her first, Japan only (though some tracks are to be found on this year Mego ep I forgot the title), album, Keshou to heitai (make up and soldiers). Tujiko Noriko is also involved in the launch of a magazine, OK Fred. Following Shojo Toshi, Hard ni sasete is her second Mego full length.

So what’s the (musical) deal? Well, well, well, many people compare Noriko to Björk... and I have to say I disagree. True they are both women, true they both sing and are graced with a frail-sounding voice, true they both make (mostly) electronic music, true they both have something experimental going on in their work but this can be said about many people in modern music. Anyway, to speak in a trivial way, Noriko is nicer looking, she doesn’t rely as much on producers as Björk does, she is less famous, less hyped (thank the Lord...) and she makes better music (well, ermm, some might say I’m over enthusiastic...). Others compare her to Phew, the Japanese Nina Hagen... What? Hagen – Tujiko Noriko? You can’t be serious... Nah, Noriko is unique, so let’s forget comparisons...let’s listen to her music...

Strange but I can’t help linking Hard ni sasete to J-Pop, you know, this very peculiar kind of pop, only appreciated in Japan, a sort of very cheesy, corny music? A bastardized, weird music to us western people. Tujiko Noriko is by no means corny or cheesy, quite the contrary, yet she has the ability to write extremely catchy melodies and her music breaths the kind of  naivety (I do not mean naivety in a bad way, the music is not naive, the feeling is... and it’s a very nice feeling) one is likely to hear in J-Pop.

The album starts with a pleasant eerie track which consists of Noriko singing “lalalalala’s” over a music background sounding like fast-forwarded music. The first “real” song is Give face (all the other song titles are in Japanese characters so all you’ll get from me is “track 4, 6...”), featuring some bloke called Moyunijumo who contributes by screaming (softly) with his weird voice while Tujiko Noriko’s gentle vocals are combined with a melody on keyboards and soft beats. Track 3 is one of the best songs of the album, a bit of piano, soft beats (should stop saying that, beats are soft on the entire album...), vocals giving an impression of frailty, such a piece of music could only have come up from an Asian artist, the melody reminding me of old, 50’s Japanese music. Anytime I hear track 4, I feel my heart being torn in two (sounds ridiculous, but who cares...), this is just beautiful, listen to it, don’t know what to say.... The tracks following this particularly moving song have less obvious melodies (and it doesn't undermine the qualities of the tunes), with a bit of electronic flavour à la Boards of Canada or Vladislav Delay and of course still that beautiful voice. When you think you’ve heard it all, when you think you’ve listened to one hell of an album, one which will probably feature in your top ten of the year, when you’ve set your mind about all those things, it’s time for track 9, the last one, the absolute gem of Hard ni sasete. A bit of guitar and a drummer repeating the same very soft, "sweet" beat for 10 minutes, keyboards sounds lighter than a dove’s feather and this oh ever so soft, cute, tender, sweet, gentle, peaceful voice, that’s all it takes Tujiko Noriko to send the listener into oblivion, gliding 100 feet above everybody, above everyday life, making everything else look insignificant and leaving you speechless.

This album is going to do something to you. I don’t know what, but it’s going to leave something in your mind. When the album ends, I’m left with goose-bumps and melancholy dancing in my mind, I feel sleepy and dreamy, but most of all, because I relish my own melancholy, I feel better. By now, you should know how many kudos I’m going to give to Hard ni sasete, and more importantly you know what you have to do.... Long live Tujiko Noriko!