Staff Reviews

Fujiya & Miyagi - Artificial Sweeteners

Review by Neil Ashman

A competently executed album that keeps your feet tapping and head nodding for as long as it lasts, but one that takes too few risks and bares too little soul to linger in the listener’s thoughts and emotions once it’s over.»

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Initial copies of the CD and LP come with bonus three track CD featuring 'Caucasian Sweat', 'World On A Wire' and 'Artificial Sweetners' (Alternative Mix). Few have offered such a bittersweet taste of pop through their career as Fujiya and Miyagi; underneath the sticky wrappers that have packaged their sugary synth lines and rich hooks since the turn of the Millennium, there's always been a grittier aftertaste. Ladies and gentlemen, get ready to rot your teeth on 'Artificial Sweeteners'. Coming off their more live band-orientated fourth album, 'Ventriloquizzing', here they return to their roots, with an album that is their most overtly electronic since their mighty second release, 2006's 'Transparent Things',or even debut 'Electro Karaoke In The Negative Style'. Reaching back to the influences that got them into dance music in the first place, beach parties, warehouse raves in their native Brighton, early Warp Records and Carl Craig, the group wrote at an unchartered prolificacy, revelling in digging out their old samplers and synths and sizing them up against the digital technology they continue to explore the limits of.
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