- Every so often there comes a producer who transcends the codified nature of dance music. Shokuhin Matsuri, better known as 食品まつり a.k.a foodman, is one of these artists. Part of a loose and adventurous Japanese scene, Matsuri's material is nominally based on footwork, but the genre is more of a vague influence than a foundation. Made of chintzy MIDI instrumentation, bizarre samples and a relentlessly wonky sense of rhythm, his collagist music is deviant and hard to even imagine dancing to. Ez Minzoku, the latest foodman album, underlines those qualities, using synth horns and an emphasis on negative space to unsettle and delight at the same time.
Horn sounds stick out the most on Ez Minzoku—they're trebly, artificial and often sound queasy. On early highlight "Uoxtu," Matsuri plays them like a child banging on a Casio keyboard. Such tracks are sparsely arranged but never simple, and their rhythms can be hard to place, shaking off classification. They vary in speed, too, from 90 BPM (like the warbly, harpsichord-driven "Yami Nabe") to 160 BPM (the jittery "Waterfall," where pleasant mallet percussion is jacked up to drill & bass levels).
There's a deranged edge to Ez Minzoku, which contrasts the cutesy with the abrasive. On "Jazz," regal horns pair with guttural screams, all at a frenetic 160 BPM—sure, you might call it footwork, but unpacking the rhythm is easier said than done. It mostly just sounds like chaos. On "Rock," Matsuri uses distorted guitar synths to swing a sweet melody, and on barnstorming opener "Beybey," which features the singer of noise rock band Bo Ningen, jazzy instrumentation is offset by unstable vocals and shredding noise in the second half.
Though it's short and moves quickly from idea to idea, Ez Minzoku isn't an easy listen. At its most obtuse, like the intensely polyrhythmic "Ddddance," it can verge on annoying, while tracks like "Otonorabi" can seem totally devoid of structure. But the way the album keeps you on your toes is exciting, and it never settles into a comfort zone. The lusher synths in the back half ("Ure Pii," "Mid Summer Night") might feel like a reward, but even these tracks are as haphazard as paint splattered on canvas.
In a distant way, Ez Minzoku evokes the stranger corners of PC Music. Like Felicita, Matsura uses bright, naive sounds to inventive, sometimes confrontational ends—ideas that might be considered highbrow were the aesthetics not so bright and cartoonish. But as jarring as its horns might be, Ez Minzoku is still a commanding, original piece of music. In a 2014 interview with Japan Times, Matsuri said that he wanted to explore footwork's "potential to be something other than dance music." With Ez Minzoku, he's succeeded, using the music's DNA to grow something strange in his little petri dish.
Tracklist01. Beybey feat. Taigen Kawabe from Bo Ningen
02. Uoxtu
03. Nagaremasu
04. Dddance
05. Hikari
06. Jazz
07. Otonarabi
08. Mild Summer Night feat. Diskomargaux
09. Ure Pill
10. Yami Nabe
11. Waterfall
12. Minzoku
13. Rock