LINGUA FRANCA EP by EP-4

The third installment in the Brutal 500 series. After an EP of personal favourites from Dom Thomas and a splatter of new productions from DJ Cherrystones here's a set of Japanese New Wave movements from the obscure band EP-4 !This essential Japanese mutant funk crew emerged in 1980 out of Club Modern in Kyoto, mainly as a collaboration between Kaoru Sato and keyboardist/tape manipulator Banana Kawashima. Sato was the driving force behind the group, having just recorded an album under the name RNA Organism for Osaka's Vanity Records. EP-4 offer a seamless mix of polyrhythmic arrangements that varyingly nods in the direction of the 80's downtown NY via concise Liquid Liquid grooves or the elaborately funky arrangements of Talking Heads. Building on a cool, nosweat-funk danceability, the group explores areas of sonically drenched experimentation. Skeletal grooves take on swelling layers of compressed and distorted guitar, synth, and vocoder. The vocals are distinctly post-Can and desolate in a P.I.L-damaged sense. Included here are two post-punk clangers from their Lingua- Franca X album (1983), together with tracks from their impossibly rare vanity press 7” from 1985.