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View Poll Results: What is your fav album by SR/TJ?
Muzai Moratorium 15 9.26%
Shouso Strip 24 14.81%
Kalk Samen Kuri no Hana 75 46.30%
Utaite Myouri ~Sono Ichi~ 2 1.23%
Heisei Fuuzoku 11 6.79%
Kyouiku 8 4.94%
Adult 16 9.88%
Variety 8 4.94%
Sanmon Gossip 2 1.23%
Sports 0 0%
Dai-hakken 0 0%
Reimport 0 0%
Sunny 0 0%
Reimport vol.2 1 0.62%
Voters: 162. You may not vote on this poll

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Old 2010.04.17, 12:32 PM   #91
so_cold
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Favourites: The first three album era was always going to have the most longevity for me, but I finally know which is my favourite: Shouso Strip. Sakana, Yokushitsu, Honnou make an idiosyncratic, exciting pop album you can get lost in. Karuki Zamen Kuri no Hana is still an intricate patchwork of amazing - maybe unusually I like the feminine, jazzy tracks on the second half of the album right now, they opened up new ways for music to move me... Muzai Moritorium sweeps you away with a first-rate, addictive set of songs. Each ends in her scat singing, which is awesome. At other times I would have voted for one of those, but Shouso Strip feels right.

Electric Mole is my favourite DVD.

I also really like: Utaite Myori is good to own and as TeslaGuy says upthread, songs like Autumn Leaves and I Won't Last A Day Without You get very sonically pleasing pop reworkings that you can play all through with a nice vibe. Always recommended to hear artists' influences. Tokyo Jihen broke the spell somehow but most of Kyoiku grew on me as a sexy mix of jazz and rock (I think people understand you, chii!) Maybe another band will pick up Phase 1's ball and run with it.

More mixed feelings: Adult. I want to hear this wonderful SR lounge-pop album people blog about, that would be my kind of thing! Parts of Adult sound like that (Himitsu, Kabuki) but other parts (Yukiguni, Superstar) sound a little plain. I prefer the Shuraba single, it's like a perfect mini-album in itself. Sanmon Gossip has its excellent moments mixed in with a bit too much of what Kuronekodow disarmingly calls "bold orchestration", at least for my tastes. SR + orchestra can sound a little too much like theme music, but then I really enjoyed YouTubing Baishou Ecstasy, so ~ I'll go figure. Heisei Fuuzoku has a personality of its own despite being mainly rearrangements, but Hatsukoi aside it was just always at the bottom of my listening pile, or becomes "enough" after a track or two.

Not a fan of: Sports or Variety. There are one or two undeniably likeable tracks on Sports, but otherwise TJ have lost me.
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Old 2010.09.17, 07:54 AM   #92
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KZK > MM > UM > HF > SS > SG

I love all her albums, though. Even at her "worst" I she's still miles ahead of most artists. I mean, if SG were her only album I would still listen to the shit out of it and think she's a genius. Going through her discography for the first time was thrilling, like I had strolled into El Dorado on accident.

I've only recently started getting into TJ so I don't have a good enough grasp of their albums to make a jugement, although I'm loving Adult right now.
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Old 2010.11.14, 07:24 AM   #93
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I dunno, people. Seeing how SG doesn't seem to get all the love it deserves here, I'm itching to give it its first vote in this poll... But wait, I can explain.

You see, after discovering Ringo, I sought out the only couple of music sites in my remote country that even mentioned her work -- and they all made a huge deal of how totally crazy and revolutionary KSK was, so my expectations were SO high. After hearing the album as a whole I realized it was "only" excellent art-pop/rock but not exactly mindblowing for anybody who has been listening to avantgarde noise all their life. (Even within the pop field, I find Cornelius' Point album from the previous year even more adventurous than KSK.)

SS, then, with all those übercatchy rock anthems took over as my fave Ringo album - but soon a couple of the lesser hits brought the overall level down a notch. Whereas SG has gone from strength to strength with all those totally un-rock orchestrations and other refreshing changes of pace.

To be honest, the three of them all constantly switch places at the top spot for me -- but I feel somebody has to make a sacrifice to underline just how good SG is too.
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Old 2010.11.14, 10:39 AM   #94
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Hank, I agree.

I don't think SG is the "best" SR album, but I played it a few weeks ago, after not hearing it for about a year, and it seemed much more digestible than it did originally. When it came out, it seemed pretty disjointed and jarring. But some time & space made a world of difference. It's a very good album.
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Old 2011.02.02, 05:32 PM   #95
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I think if I had to put the albums into tiers, this is how I'd do it:

Favorites: Heisei Fuuzoku, Kalk Samen Kuri no Hana
Amazing: Sanmon Gossip and Shouso Strip
Great: Muzai Moratorium
Erm... Jihen (aka: stuff that I don't really listen to): Well, self explanatory. I'm not a huge Jihen fan, but I haven't really taken the opportunity to listen closely.

And I haven't listened to Utaite Myouri. As for my choices: I knew I could really have four favorites, so I relegated SS and SG to "just" being amazing. I really can't help it, though. Like everybody here has already said, KSK is just a masterwork of an album. There's not much else to be said that hasn't already been said. As for HF, it was my first Ringo album, and it holds a place deep in my heart. The emotion she put in Gamble, the production of Hatsukoi Shoujo, the all around amazingness of Oiran, the astounding mash-up of Yokushitsu and la salle de bain; it just all adds up to a great album, even if it only is a sort of "best" album. So I voted for HF.
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Old 2011.02.14, 05:36 AM   #96
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Shouso Strip is my No.1
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Old 2011.03.03, 03:52 PM   #97
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It's kind of sad to think it'll never get better than KSK, but I am eternally grateful for this once in a lifetime gem.
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Old 2011.07.04, 01:57 PM   #98
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Adult > SS > MM > SG > KZK = HF > Kyoiku > Utaite Myori > Sports ≥ Daihakken > Variety ≥ ZCS

I don't underestimate the genius of KZK, I just find it to be one of the less accessible albums in her discography. Sure it has some of her hands-down best work, but I gotta be in the right mood to digest it. And I'm not insinuating that HF is nearly as good as KZK in a production sense, just that I find it to be about as listenable. It's not as powerful, but it is more accessible.
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Old 2011.07.04, 07:13 PM   #99
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Originally Posted by karateexplosion View Post
Variety ≥ ZCS
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Adult over KZK is one thing, but some things cross a line.
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Old 2011.07.05, 01:38 AM   #100
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I can't remember if I had ever commented on this thread, but right now, without a doubt, I'd say that my favourite Ringo solo album is MM, and my favourite TJ album is SPORTS. If I had to do an overall ranking kinda thing, it'd probably look something like this:

MM > SS = KZK > Sports > SG > Daihakken = Adult > Kyouiku = HF> Variety = ZCS

I don't think that the allegations of KZK being inaccessible is particularly accurate (this is, of course, my opinion) - I think the hooks are still solid and catchy for the most part, and the arrangements though dense in some songs, do not go to the extent of obscuring the "listenability" of the song. I think it's a fantastically balanced album. Some people have compared it to Radiohead's "OK Computer" - I love both albums to death but I don't get the comparison; I think KZK is probably better than OK Computer.

MM as my favourite goes without saying. The emotional significance of Tadashii machi and Marusadi is still something I cannot let go of. Keikoku and Morphine are probably some of my all time favourite songs penned by her.

I am partly surprised myself at how low Kyouiku ranks on the list, because on an instinctive level, I certainly wouldn't consider it one of my "least favourite" albums. Sounan is probably my favourite TJ song, ever, and there's a lot of mindblowing stuff here. But as an entity, I can never find myself having the motivation or stamina to sit through the entirety of the album. Maybe it's something about the production, or the jarringness of songs like CRAWL which I simply cannot listen to every day.
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