Individual Beauty vinyl

For a brief period in the early 1980s, Colored Music - the duo of Atsuo Fujimoto and Ichiko Hashimoto - burned brightly. They released one critically acclaimed album on Japanese avant-pop label Better Days before vanishing into obscurity. Individual Beauty draws together previously unheard of alternate versions of the duo's eponymous 1981 EP, unreleased tracks and a handful of archival solo productions. It's an eclectic and hugely enjoyable affair, with the Japanese duo flitting between experimental ambient soundscapes, heavy no-wave proto-techno ("Heartbeat (Unreleased Version)"), mutant funk ("We Are Only Dancing"), head-in-the-clouds hypnotism ("Ambient Discotheque") and more raucous, post-punk disco insanity (the decidedly crunchy "De To Ri Mi").