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school food punishment – school food is good food
Tracklist:
01. close, down, back to
02. pool [audition version]
03. snap
04. set low, fine
05. Ukabi Agaru [audition version]
06. Tooku Kou no Naka

school food punishment is a super-indies band that hardly anyone is familiar with. Even in Japan, their popularity is very limited. Their style heavily relies on electronica and its many genres, a la, spacemusic, with a bit of pop sprinkled over for good measure. I recently discovered them because of my eternal love with electronic music, and I love their style. The lead vocalist has a really mesmerising voice with its own certain quality.

school food is good food is their first ever indies mini-album released on 4th April, 2007, even though they’d been active since 2004. Anywho, now onto the review!

The album starts out with an amazingly cool and absolutely epic track that never fails to please my ears each time I listen to it. close, down, back to might not be so heavy in the start, but as soon as the vocals sound up, it becomes ten times more awesome. It has strangely prominent drums in the background, and even a bit of piano (which is work of the keyboard, I’m guessing?) that all-the-more compliment the reminiscent mood of the track. The ending of the song is strangely quite breath-taking as Yumi ’sings’ a wordless and ethereal finale. Overall, quite a feast, this song is! A perfect introduction to a magnificent band.

pool could be described as really, very futuristic, or really, very retro. Either way, it sounds great just the way it is! The chorus is a major highlight in this track, though there’s one small detail that bothers me. The vocals in this track have been ‘echo-ed’, so they can sound a bit muffled at times. Incidentally, this also happens to be the first school food punishment song to get a PV. Beware though, their PVs are totally made of wtf.

I don’t really like the third track snap. It sounds much too clattery and abrupt, and none of the musical instruments have any harmony together. Everything stands out too much making for a grating sound that’s more irritating than interesting. By the end, it does pick up a bit though, but for the most part, it remains as irritating as ever.

Note: Wikipedia says that this type of music is usually known as Breakbeat. Hmmm, interesting… although clearly I’m not a huge fan of it lol.

Quickly followed is set low, fine, an ethereal, soft-rock ballad that I absolutely love (though rock isn’t an adequate term here). I feared that the band’s sound would end up in an absolute same-sounding, humdrum, but I love how they keep experimenting with different sounds. There’s even a bit of acoustic guitar in this track, if I’m not mistaken, and back-up vocals that haven’t surfaced up in any of the tracks so far. Yumi is at her very best in this track, she sounds really lovely overall.

Following a long prelude, Ukabi Agaru goes more down the ‘j-pop’ route than electronica, and I like that because it’s just another example of their versatility. I don’t like bridge in the song so much, the keyboard/piano is too much. A bit of pattern I’ve noticed in all of school food songs so far that their music tends to get more emotional and energetic as the song progresses, and culminates in an impressive manner in the end. Ukabi Agaru is no exception, and in fact, I think this might have the most energetic finale so far in this album.

Tooku Kou no Naka is by far the most unexpected track on this album. I could never have expected such a sad and tepid ballad to come from a band such as this! Even after you get over the initial surprise, it’s still a strange song in composition. It’s sort of divided into two parts. The first half is more serene and mellow, whereas the second half is a smich more rockier with less vocals. It’s an amazing song that I’ll pop out from time to time and will have on repeat. An excellent song to end an excellent album with.

school food punishment is awesome. Period. I love everything about them, their style, their attire, their music, they’re almost near-perfect in every way. This album is a very strong release that unfortunately didn’t go major, but that’s really unfair because it has all the elements to make it a hit! As the band gradually progresses to make itself popular, I hope they make their first major debut soon because they really deserve some more spotlight, and this album is where my argument comes from. If someone like Salyu can make herself relatively popular in the Japan, I’m sure school food punishment won’t have much of a problem.

Overall grade: A+