4 Bonjour Parties - Pigments Drift Down to the Brook (Mush Records)

4 Bonjour Parties - Pigments Drift Down to the Brook (Mush Records)

4 Bonjour Parties are a really quite wonderful discovery. As i find myself becoming more and more convinced that Japan is the saviour of music as we know it, the distraction to take our minds off the awful hype that is constantly thrown in our faces, 4 Bonjour Parties are just one of many wonders i've discovered from Japan. Although the majority of my favourite Japanese music is minimal and extrasperimental 4 Bonjour Parties are quite certainly pop, if not quite the pop we're so used to. Lovely textured songs that build up over the 4, 5 minute mark and even longer at times, delicious and folktronic in approach, occasionally calling to mind the lush arrangements of the Delgados.
Its not often i make it all the way to the end of an album but i'm glad i did with Pigments Drift Down to the Brook, the closer, beautifully entitled Crimson After The Sunset, slow building pop gently melts into a glorious trumpet or horn section coda. Of equal loveliness is Satellite with flutes this time building playfully like kittens with a new ball of wool before the slow horn soaked breakdown. Ruins twinkles along just dreamily. Amalthea and Nostalgic Was Broken to Pieces are also worth a mention.
This is like Maher Shalal Hash Baz had they been brought up in shirts and ties, lovely, lovely stuff.

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4 Bonjour Parties - Il Cortile Grigio (track to stream on last.fm)