Album reviews

T-Square

`Time Travel’

(Sony Music Korea)

Japan’s biggest names in jazz fusion, the three-decade-old T-Square, returns with their latest incarnation of smooth ballad-like melodies and quirky electronics.

Starting strong with the dramatic, video game-like ``Fantastic Story’’ the quartet ― still with two original members Masahiro Andoh and Takeshi Ito ― lifts moods with scaling EWIs and guitar solos. The release escalates with the quick-paced, if not explosive, ``Ocean Express’’ before winding its way down into the conclusive ``MJ.’’

The group stays true to their original sound, including some slower tracks that ring with (what we’d now call) Kenny G-esque antiquity. Yet, with all that in mind, T-square still manages to pull off an endearing quality in their 36th (count ‘em) album.

― Ines Min

The Hiatus

`Anomaly’

The solo project of Takeshi Hosomi ― of Japanese rock group Ellegarden fame ― saw its new album released simultaneously with the debut record here earlier this month, in time for the band’s upcoming performance at the 2010 Incheon Pentaport Rock Festival.

Hosomi is able to boast his vocal talents on tracks like ``The Ivy,’’ distinctive in its lightly nasally tone (seemingly characteristic of such emo-rock hybrids), though his voice woos listeners nonetheless. Luckily, the former engineer’s lyrics (``Just like untamed monkeys/Cut loose from everything obtained/Shut down the primary cortex’’) save the often formulaic melodies reminiscent of States-side peers. Hiatus’ sound is passionate, but can’t help but teeter on that edge of boyish, anemic rockers.