And for those who are unfamilliar with the weird and wonderful world of Kudou Tori and Maher Shalal Hash Baz here is "From A Summer To Another Summer". Kudou Tori has been a highly prolific writer and composer since the late 70's but has also managed to remain impressively elusive. His ensemble band Maher Shalal... is a troop of amateur musicians he hires to perform his music with the lineup often changing from performance to performance and with very few consistant members. The band have never released a proper studio album. Instead releasing various compilatons and collections of rehearsal and live recordings. This can make diving into the world of Maher Shalal... rather daunting and confusing for newcomers. "From A Summer..." makes for an excellent starting point though.
Fans of Belle and Sebastion should immediatley find themselves in familliar territory as Tori composes similarly upbeat and quirky ensemble pop music. The key to Tori's unique style though lies in its naivety. As despite being an accomplished and classically trained musician deliberately infuses his music with a clumsy amateurish style that gives his music an amusingly charming "my first highschool band" feel. Imagine a Belle and Sebastion rehearsal session if all the members were drunk, sleep deprived and missing their score sheets and you're not far off. "From A Summer..." is a compilation recordings collected from 1985 to 1999 and selected by Tori Kudou and the Pastels own Stephen Pastel who discovered Tori while he was living in London in the late 90`s.
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