Fujiya & Miyagi – EP1 (Impossible Objects of Desire)

The fact that, 16 years after their formation, the ever wonderful Fujiya & Miyagi continue to languish in commercial and critical obscurity is one of modern music’s great mysteries. Whilst inferior peers/copyists like Hot Chip and Metronomy have had their days in the sun, the Brighton indie/electro/funk/Krautrock combo remain virtual unknowns, despite a back catalogue brimming with brilliance, wit, charm and tunes.

EP1, the first of a series of three vinyl-only releases would, in an ideal world, address this issue and see the band hailed as national treasures. This world being far from ideal, it won’t, and few people outside we small band of F&M obsessives will hear it. A damn shame, as EP1 ranks amongst the best things they’ve ever done.

Throbbing electro-funk is the dish of the day here. If you were sent all giddy by the double whammy of ‘Tutti Frutti’ and ‘People On the High Line’ from the last New Order album, EP1 will push all your buttons. ‘Serotonin Rushes’ is F&M’s ‘I Feel Love’ or ‘Blue Monday’, a positively tumescent slab of electro-disco with a bassline for which Nile Rodgers would give his left nut, whilst ‘Freudian Slips’ brings psychoanalysis onto the dancefloor, mixing Freud (“Do you believe in psychoanalysis? I think it does more damage than it fixes”) with Funkadelic (“If you can’t get over it, or under it, or through it, then you’ve got to move it”) to booty-shaking effect.

But the real highlight of EP1 is one of those ultra-rare moments when F&M stop singing about psychiatrists, office equipment or chess, and briefly bare their souls. ‘To the Last Beat of My Heart‘ is a dreamy, impossibly romantic love song (“I will love you from Jupiter to Mars…”) set to yearning electro noir a la XX or Junior Boys. It makes me want to get married again so I can play it at my wedding – and then jump around to the rest of the EP at the reception.