Search - Far East Family Band :: Nipponjin

The Far East Meets Pink Floyd

Adam Palermo | Newport Beach, CA USA | 04/23/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"If you've heard of the Far East Family band you already know about them; and if you've stumbled onto them out of the blue, get ready for a treat. If you like Pink Floyd, this band is for you. One of the early Japanese progressive bands, the Far East band played major outdoor concerts at the foot of Mt. Fuji and were heavily influenced by Pink Floyd, and attracted sizable european attention. This particular album was produced by Klaus Schulze of Tangerine Dream fame and is actually a remake of an earlier album, "The Cave Down to the Earth." Although the rythem section is only adequate, the guitars and keyborad work is superb. Lead guitarist Hirohito Fukushima has gotten his Gilmour chops down expertly. "Nipponjin" and "Timeless" have some excellant leads and Fukushima utilizes his pedal effects throughout. Fumio Miyashta, the keybord player, duels beautifully with Fukushima on "The Cave" and his Hammond work even has a touch of all things The Ventures. A great intro to the beginnings of Japanese progressive and a great progressive gem in itself."

Mainly an English language version of The Cave

BENJAMIN MILER | Veneta, Oregon | 07/21/2003

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Far East Family Band was a prog rock band that later gave us the careers of three New Age musicians: Fumio Miyash'ta, Akira Ito, and Masanori Takahashi, who we all know better as Kitaro. The other two are basically known just to New Age music aficianados and of course prog rock junkies who are aware of Far East Family Band. Apparently Far East Family Band wanted to do what PFM did and that was to record a (largely) English language version of an album they already did, in this case The Cave: Down to the Earth, which was their debut. The LP to Nipponjin came with an insert showing all the musicians and their equipment (apparently taken from The Cave: Down to the Earth album). It's pretty safe to say Nipponjin was to Far East Family Band what Photos of Ghosts was to PFM. That meant the band was trying to break in to the international market, which they did by having the album released on Vertigo in Germany. The Cave: Down to the Earth was sung entirely in Japanese. For Nipponjin, they decided to use Klaus Schulze to produce and mix the album and re-record most of it in English. Absent this time around are "Four Minds" and "Transformation". Those two songs were replaced by the title track, which was basically "Nihonjin" from the Far Out album from 1973, Fumio's pre-Far East Family Band band, this time with added synth effects and Mellotron. The songs for the most part are still pretty much the same, except for the language they're sung in. There's the occasional song where they kept part of it in Japanese, such as "The Cave". There are some atmospheric pieces that go between cuts that sound like an Oriental version of Klaus Schulze (complete with bamboo flute aka shakuhachi). In my opinon, I feel their following album, Parallel World was the better album (and their best, by the way), but this is still a recommended album."