While Steve Lang, aka Slang, can cover a lot of sonic ground with his music, even within the space of one album, there is often a thematic glue that binds everything together. With a solid platform and ideological through-road to slightly tether the songs, he is free to wander across the musical landscape at will. For Rise n’ Shine, his 14th album to date, that focal point is Japan, the country, its culture, its people and landscape, and across his usual deft blends of hard rock moves and bluesy grooves, funky rhythms and pop-infectiousness, metal weight and, in this instance, Japanese ambience, he creates a suite of celebratory songs in its honour.
As always, with the exception of Aoi’s spoken word on a couple of the songs, and even then with her vocals affected and altered into less standard voice patterns, the album is purely instrumental, though those familiar with his work would have expected nothing less.
The first single from the album, Mount Fuji Rock, leads us in and perfectly hints at what’s to follow – an array of guitar-infused soundscapes that reminds us of just how broad a term like rock is and, thus, how misleading or at least biased it can be. Those not listening properly might assume that this is just another rock-scape, and in some ways, that is the dominant sound, but the other sounds and styles that Slang cleverly threads through these turn the songs into more expansive and eclectic, more genre-hopping and broad-minded pieces.
And so for every foot-on-the-monitor, rock and roll workout, such as Cherry Blossom Bliss, albeit one running on pop accessibility and with jazz-infused complexities built in, there are ambient drifting, keyboard-led interludes such as the first movement of Kyotokyo. And for every delicate taste of the East, as we find throughout Geisha’s Kiss, songs like Salaryman Blues have their feet planted in more recognisably Western forms. Then, you have songs such as Bullet Train, which entwines both cultures in one musical meeting of minds.
The result is a gorgeous mix of Oriental spice and Occidental familiarity, of rock structures being balanced by other Western and world music forms, eastern traditions and esoteric sonics. And it is the inclusion of musicians from that part of the world who have grown up with such a cultural background that help him realise his vision. Musicians such as Jun Abe, whose keyboard sounds add shimmering beauty to Dotonbori Bop and Kanae Nozawa’s Erhu (a traditional, two-stringed violin) that provides a sense of place and tradition to Geisha’s Kiss and even the more contemporary inclusions of Miki and Nono Haruhi’s drums and bass, respectively.
No matter how he gets there, Slang has created an album of sensation and sensibility, potency and poignancy, depth and dexterity. Then again, we shouldn’t be surprised, it’s what he does.
