Pizzicato Five Overview

With an oddly prodigious appetite, Pizzicato Five consumes musical genres: dance, trance, jungle, James Bond soundtrack, bossa nova, lounge, pop, musique concrete, classical. Since 1985, P5 has seen various members come and go. It now exists as the condensed duo of... [more]

With an oddly prodigious appetite, Pizzicato Five consumes musical genres: dance, trance, jungle, James Bond soundtrack, bossa nova, lounge, pop, musique concrete, classical. Since 1985, P5 has seen various members come and go. It now exists as the condensed duo of singer Maki Nomiya and composer/mixer/sampler Yasuharu Konishi. And yet while references stream through their work, they use samples not simply as nods of the head to various influences, but as constitutive of their own music. Which is to say, P5 composes elaborate, complex songs punctuated with relentless changes: it does not make background music. Nomiya and Konishi force you to listen, to acknowledge their decisions and their restless imaginations. A song may groove along, get your head rocking, your feet tapping, only to shift tempo mid-stride. To dance to P5 one must enjoy a schizophrenic body. And joy is the operative term. The multiplicity of P5 is born of a great health, of a will to life. This creative force can be seen in all aspects of the P5 machine: certainly in the music, but just as clearly in the CD packaging which comes with things like a P5 Club membership card that bares a striking resemblance to a credit card. This same productive urge is witnessed in Maki Nomiya's design of her own indubitably chic clothing. It's as if the world's means of production are not enough, and P5's unique and superbly cool taste perpetually needs to forge new outlets of expression. Created in 1985, Pizzicato Five has been and remains a sensation in Japan; with over 20 albums, they have repeated put songs on the Japanese Top 40. Although P5's US reception has been slow and less sure, it is certainly rising. Now recorded on the Matador label, P5 albums can, for the most part, be bought in your local music store. [show less]