Album Review: Fujiya & Miyagi by Fujiya & Miyagi

With a highly anticipated Royal Blood album in the pipeline and a football team that's become the newest members of the Premiership Club, there's plenty to keep people looking in the direction of the vibrant city of Brighton, despite recent tours announced by the likes of Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark and Johnny Marr strangely choosing to visit the retirement haven of Bexhill-On-Sea instead. Electronic quartet Fujiya & Miyagi are another at the heart of the city's current success rate - if on a less heralded scale - with the release of their self-titled sixth studio collection. It's fair to say collection is an accurate word too, regardless of what the band themselves may say, because Fujiya & Miyagi collates the band's three EPs dating back to last year.

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"Fujiya & Miyagi are a European group formed in Brighton in 2000…" Wikipedia isn't the most honourable place to start any review but in the case of David Best and Steve Lewis, the biog is telling - been around for nearly two decades, proudly European in difficult times and from a city known to like a party. Now mixing their krautrock pulse with Moroder disco and 80s synth pop, Fujiya & Miyagi is the sound of a band no longer press darlings (see 2006's Transparent Things), but not old enough for local festivals just yet. And it's that tension that gives us the band's most confident LP for ages.

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Fujiya & Miyagi is the self-titled sixth LP from the band still led by founders and Krautrock/post-punk aficionados David Best and Steve Lewis. In a slow reveal, the album's tracks were released piecemeal as three EPs (titled EP1, EP2, and EP3), with the first two arriving in the spring and fall of 2016 and the final installment sharing its release day with the full, completely resequenced album. Best and Lewis are joined on the full set by the rhythm section of Ben Adamo and Ed Chivers, marking their debut as members of the group.

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In 2016, Fujiya & Miyagi released two four-song, limited run 12-inch EPs that found the Brighton, England quartet exploring some of their most inspired and well-conceived songs since their breakthrough sophomore LP, Transparent Things, a decade earlier. For their new self-titled LP, Fujiya & Miyagi have combined both EPs, along with songs from a third 12-inch that was, puzzlingly, put out the exact same day. But no matter which format you choose to consume these 11 tracks, it's clear that the quartet have crafted a clear and uniform vision for their new(ish) material.

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