A (Ace)

Denki Groove’s A, pronounced Ace, places its best-known song near the end rather than using it as an opening advertisement. Shangri-La is track nine of eleven. Long electronic pieces and playful titles surround it, so an entrance through the hit leads to a much broader set of proportions.

Takkyu Ishino, Pierre Taki and Yoshinori Sunahara made up the group at this point. Sunahara later recalled playing Spring Rain in the studio and hearing Ishino respond to its potential as sampling material. Shared listening became a compositional resource. Yet Shangri-La does not impose a single pop-song format on the rest of A. Across roughly sixty-six minutes, shorter selections coexist with pieces lasting eight or nine minutes. The record makes room for both memorable singing and the extended scale of electronic tracks, without organising them into separate albums.

A source becomes another song

Silvetti’s Spring Rain supplies a recognisable disco foundation for Shangri-La. Japanese vocals and a new rhythmic setting turn that source into another song. In a later radio interview, Ishino said he had not specifically regarded the piece as techno while making it. The participant accounts suggest an idea developing from a shared record rather than a predetermined genre exercise.

Playful names, substantial tracks

Titles such as Kakkoii Jumper, Garigari Kun and Nekonatsu give the programme an eccentric vocabulary. Their lightness does not determine their duration. The opener exceeds seven minutes, while Parachute runs for about eight and a half. A title can offer a quick joke while the track behind it occupies a much larger span.

The hit has two sides

The longest selection, Asunaro Sunshine, immediately precedes Shangri-La. Smoky Bubbles then extends the programme again before Loop Zombie closes it. The hit is neither the finale nor a bonus appended to another kind of record. Its neighbours make its place in the album especially revealing. The later recycled A is a separate remix project, offering another treatment of this original eleven-track sequence.