FRUITS CLiPPER

FRUITS CLiPPER has entrances and changes of scale rather than ten equally sized songs.

The seventh album by Yasutaka Nakata and vocalist Toshiko Koshijima arrived in 2006. Its treatment of jelly already signals an album-level decision: a previously released track appears here as an album edit. Yamaha’s contemporary description emphasized a stronger club-music direction. That need not turn the record into a total rejection of everything the duo had done before. A more useful question is how melody survives alongside a more prominent rhythmic and electronic surface.

A voice inside the construction

The label’s single description highlights jelly’s melody and vocoder. A processed vocal need not mean that the singer has become irrelevant. Consider whether a phrase remains memorable through its contour, the rhythm of its syllables, or both. There is no need to identify a specific machine or setting from that impression. Remembering the vocal partnership also prevents the producer’s reputation from turning a duo album into an imaginary one-person instrumental project. Song and production can be parts of the same event.

Small pieces change the scale

CS Entrance6 lasts approximately 1:39 before the title track and jelly arrive. CrazEEE Skyhopper then exceeds six minutes. After 5iVE STAR, Endor occupies only about thirty-one seconds. Keep that brief entry instead of treating it as an error or an unfinished song. It offers a boundary before Robot Disco. These durations do not establish tempo, but their distribution changes how much space each section claims within the record.

The ending is still a full piece

Robot Disco leads into super speeder Judy Jedy, megalopolis and dreamin dreamin. The names suggest possible images without establishing a literal robot-and-city narrative. The closer lasts roughly 4:37, giving the ending a complete track rather than a short farewell. A listener arriving through jelly can therefore find a differently proportioned later stretch by continuing through the programme. Listening in order and selecting individual favourites reveal different aspects of the same construction; neither needs to invalidate the other.