Fujiya & Miyagi

I know I've been buried under the radar for a while now. Part of it is lack of inspiration, part of it is lack of time. But I've been thinking that I want to do some long form posts on the careers of certain musicians: I'd like to consider the entire corpus of work of a particular musician or band and add commentary to it, post some videos, and maybe mp3s of unreleased tracks. The first one on my list is Joni Mitchell, an idea (partly) suggested by an anonymous reader of this blog. Joni Mitchell has 19 original studio albums and two live albums, all worth perusing for one reason or another so it's gonna be a long haul.

In the meantime, I post here a song by a British band called Fujiya & Miyagi. I discovered them during a trip to New Orleans in 2009 when someone was playing their album Transparent Things in the car. They're supposedly influenced by kraut rock (who isn't these days? it's like saying you were influenced by guitars or drums). They take their name from a vintage record player (Fujiya) and Pat Morita's character in The Karate Kid (Miyagi). They have released a new album this year called Ventriloquizzing, which I have not heard. But it's definitely worth digging up a copy of Transparent Things (2006). Every track on that album is good. Every track, I kid you not. An old review here.

Here is the video for "Ankle Injuries," the first song off Transparent Things.



And the video for "Collarbone," the second track off the album.