♫ My Top 5 #lastfm artists: Visionist (17), Janet Jackson (7), Bert Jansch (6), Micachu (6) & EVM128 (6) via @tweeklyfm #music
— russell davies (@undermanager) October 18, 2015
Through the magic of not-scrobbling, these things aren't actually what I listened to most this week. It was actually 芸能山城組 (Geinoh Yamashirogumi).
I thought I first heard about the Geinoh Yamashirogumi: Ecophony Gaia album from @sfj, though now, of course, I can't find the tweet.
It stuck in my head as something to investigate because:
a: I couldn't find any evidence of it on Spotify and therefore got no instant gratification
b: As I remember he said something about it sounding like deranged Enya and the phrase Crazy Enya popped into my head (because the phrase Crazy Ivan is always rattling around in there due to repeated watchings of The Hunt For Red October)
c: This opening paragraph on their wikipedia entry:
"Geinō Yamashirogumi) is a Japanese musical collective founded on January 19, 1974 by Tsutomu Ōhashi, consisting of hundreds of people from all walks of life: journalists, doctors, engineers, students, businessmen, etc."
So I hunted around on Amazon and ordered the CD and it's brilliant.
Crazy Enya isn't a bad description actually. The CD sleeve notes call it techno-gamelan-rock which isn't bad either. Sometimes you're listening to a massed Balkan choir, sometimes it's an echoey rain forest and sometimes it could easily be a Then Jericho remix.
They did the soundtrack for Akira too, if that helps.