Fishmans-Long Season Pitchfork 9.3乐评翻译
By Joshua Minsoo Kim
GENRE: Rock
LABEL: Polydor
REVIEWED: May 12, 2024
Each Sunday, Pitchfork takes an in-depth look at a significant album from the past, and any record not in our archives is eligible. Today, we revisit Fishmans’ 1996 masterpiece, a landmark of Japanese rock that fits a lifetime of aspirations and daydreams into a single 35-minute composition.
作者：Joshua Minsoo Kim
类型：摇滚
唱片公司：Polydor
乐评日期： 2024年5月12日
每个周日，Pitchfork 都会对过去的一张重要专辑进行深入探讨，任何不在我们档案中的唱片都有资格参与。今天，我们将重温Fishmans 1996 年的代表作，这张35分钟的日本摇滚里程碑作品浓缩了生命的愿景和幻想。
The prospect of making an album with only one gargantuan song was one of those tossed-off comments that seemed like a joke. But when Shinji Sato put forth the idea, he was following a trajectory that defined his life: dream big, and see it through to completion. Long Season, the 1996 magnum opus of Japanese rock band Fishmans, was a radical proposition: take an existing track—the group’s six-minute single “Season”—and turn it into a dreamlike suite that elevates their gentle psych-pop to symphonic proportions. “When we made [Something in the Air], I hated having each song separated from the next,” Sato said of their previous full-length. “Why not just make it one song?”
要制作一张只有一首超长歌曲的专辑，是一个看似玩笑的想法。但当佐藤伸治提出这个想法时，他所遵循的正是他的人生轨迹：要有远大的梦想，并坚持到底。日本摇滚乐队Fishmans 1996年的代表作《Long Season》阐述了一个激进的主张：将一首现有的曲目——乐队的六分钟单曲《Season》——变成梦幻般的组曲，将他们温和的迷幻流行扩建至交响乐的规模。“当我们制作《Something in the Air》时，我讨厌把每首歌和下一首歌分开”，佐藤谈到他们之前的全长歌曲时说，“为什么不把它做成一首歌呢？”
No longer bound by single-digit runtimes, the band crafted a record that was massive in scope but suffused with everyday warmth. A mesmerizing piano motif and rocksteady bassline set the foundation while Sato’s bright and guileless voice floats above. He sounds friendly, like an affectionate drunk filling a room with positive energy, playfully stretching syllables and delivering them with easygoing charm. When he doesn’t sing, the rest of the instrumentation gets to breathe, expand, and sometimes go haywire. Crucially, Long Season does not sound like a jam session; each passage is a self-contained world of sound that serves the drifting, daydream logic of the overall piece.
乐队不再拘泥于碎片的运转时间，而是精心制作了一张规模宏大但又充满日常温情的唱片。令人着迷的钢琴旋律和慢摇贝斯线奠定了这张唱片的基调，而佐藤明亮无邪的嗓音则飘荡在音乐上空。他的声音听起来很亲切，就像一个多情的醉汉正在给整个房间灌输欢乐的能量，他俏皮地拉长音节，再用轻松随和的魔力表达出来。当他停止歌唱时，其他乐器就会呼吸、膨胀，有时还会失控。最重要的是，《Long Season》听起来并不像即兴演奏会；每个段落都是一个自成一体的声音世界，为整首乐曲如白日梦般飘浮着的逻辑服务。
Sato, Fishmans’ vocalist, guitarist, and charismatic leader, showed signs of the sort of ambition and tenacity needed to pull off a grand-scale project like Long Season from a young age. He was already a known presence at Meiji Gakuin University’s Song Writes Club when drummer Kin-ichi Motegi attended an event for new students. Motegi was stunned: “From the moment he started singing, [Sato] had an aura on another level.” Soon, the two started jamming together, and in 1987 they started a band, joined eventually by guitarist Kensuke Ojima, keyboardist Hakase-Sun, and bassist Yuzuru Kashiwabara.
佐藤是Fishmans的主唱、吉他手和魅力四射的队长，他从小就表现出了完成像 《Long Season 》这样大型项目所需的雄心和坚韧的毅力。当鼓手茂木欣一参加明治学院大学的新生活动时，他已经在大学的歌曲创作俱乐部（Song Writing Club）小有名气。茂木惊呆了：“从他开始唱歌的那一刻起，（佐藤）就散发着另一种气质”。不久，两人开始一起演奏，并于 1987 年组建了乐队，吉他手小嶋谦介、键盘手Hakase和贝司手柏原让也加入了乐队。
Considering the sweeping art-pop of their greatest album, Fishmans had something of an inauspicious beginning: They were a reggae band. Japanese artists had been exploring reggae for more than a decade by the early 1990s, but their vocalists had a more professional style than Sato’s scrappy and childlike delivery. Fishmans’ debut, 1991’s Chappie, Don’t Cry, flopped commercially and critically, and a follow-up single, which doubled as the theme for a short-lived television show, didn’t fare much better. One journalist accused the band of having “no reggae soul.”
讲起他们最伟大专辑中透露的艺术流行风格，Fishmans有个并不顺利的开端：他们是一支雷鬼乐队。到 20 世纪 90 年代初，日本艺术家对雷鬼音乐的探索已有十多年的历史，相比佐藤激进又天真无邪的唱法，一些歌手有着更专业的唱功。Fishmans 的首张专辑，即 1991 年发行的《Chappie, Don't Cry》，在商业上和评论界均告失败。一位记者指责乐队称 “没有雷鬼灵魂”。
Early in his career, Sato had written down his goals, many of which involved success in the music business and his social life. He wanted money, he wanted people to hear his songs, he wanted popularity with girls. After their debut LP and early singles failed to make them stars, Sato and the rest of the band began to lose their faith in the industry. Fishmans had to make a decision: Would they focus on more TV tie-ins to help with sales, or pursue artistic freedom? They agreed on the latter. Suddenly, Sato had a new direction in life. “I don’t want to make it big,” he wrote in his journal. “Media interferes with creative activities. There’s a lot we should be doing in the Japanese music scene.”
早在职业生涯初期，佐藤就写下了自己的目标，其中许多涉及成功的音乐事业和社交生活。他想要钱，想要人们听到他的歌，想要受到女孩们的欢迎。但在首张专辑和早期单曲未能让他们成名之后，佐藤和乐队的其他成员开始对音乐行业失去信心。Fishmans不得不做出决定： 是专注于更多的电视合作以帮助销售专辑，还是追求艺术自由？乐队成员一致同意后者。突然之间，佐藤有了新的人生方向。“我不想大红大紫，”他在日记中写道，“媒体干扰了我们的创作活动。我们应该在日本音乐界做更多事情。”
Over their next several albums, Fishmans came into their own, balancing pop appeal with daring studio experiments, and eventually arriving at the wide-ranging approach to genre—dub, psychedelia, lounge, funk, jangle—that defined the Tokyo scene now known as Shibuya-kei. As Fishmans became more musically ambitious, Sato became a more demanding leader. The band, which still wasn’t making much money, began losing members. Ojima departed after 1993’s Neo Yankees’ Holiday, and Hakase after the following year’s Orange, both feeling overwhelmed by Sato’s exacting style. Things began to turn in 1995 when they signed to Polydor, which agreed to finance a private studio for the band in exchange for three new albums in two years, a much faster pace than the band was used to. The combination of pressure and space to work was a fruitful one: The three studio albums Fishmans released on Polydor, including Long Season, were the best of their career.
在接下来的几张专辑中，Fishmans逐渐形成了自己的风格，他们在流行与大胆的录音室实验之间取得了平衡，并最终形成了广泛的音乐风格——混录、迷幻、沙发音乐、放克、叮当流行——也就是现在被称为涩谷系的定义。随着 Fishmans 在音乐上的野心越来越大，佐藤也成为了一个要求更高的领导者，但是乐队仍然没有赚到多少钱，成员也开始流失。小嶋谦介在 1993 年的《Neo Yankees' Holiday》之后离开，Hakase在第二年的《Orange》之后离开，两人都觉得佐藤的严苛风格让他们不堪重负。1995 年，当他们与Polydor 公司签约后，情况开始出现转机。Polydor 公司同意出资为乐队建立一个私人录音室，以换取乐队在两年内发行三张新专辑，这比乐队以往的节奏要快得多。压力与新工作空间的结合让他们收获颇丰： Fishmans 在 Polydor 推出的三张录音室专辑（包括《Long Season》）是他们职业生涯中最好的作品。
“That album was a work that expressed one world with eight songs,” drummer Motegi once said of 1996’s Something in the Air, the first of Fishmans’ Polydor albums. “So we thought that we could express the world of eight songs with just one.” Sato suggested expanding upon “Season,” a 1996 single already filled with ideas: There’s a lush string arrangement from new member Honzi, record scratching, homey organ chords, and two passages where Sato coos like a baby bird. Sato had only recently gotten his driver’s license, and was taking lyrical inspiration from riding around town. He sings about traveling from one end of Tokyo to the other, feeling happy but lonely, being in a dream state but also dazed by cold medication. He paints these images in relatable terms, highlighting the richness and peculiarities of simply existing. It was the perfect song to transform into an album-length composition.
“那张专辑用八首歌表达了一个世界”鼓手茂木曾这样评价 1996 年发行的《Something in the Air》，这是 Fishmans 在 Polydor 推出的第一张专辑，“所以我们认为，我们可以只用一首歌来表达八个世界”。佐藤建议对 1996 年的单曲《Season》进行扩充，这首歌已经充满了各种奇思妙想：在这首歌中，有新成员Honzi的弦乐编曲、唱片刮擦、温馨的管风琴和弦，还有两段佐藤像小鸟一样 "咕咕 "叫的旋律。佐藤刚拿到驾照不久，他的歌词灵感来自在城市中骑行。他歌唱着从东京的一端旅行到另一端，快乐与孤独并存，沉浸在梦境中却又被感冒药弄得晕头转向。他用贴近生活的语言描绘了这些画面，突出了仅仅存在着的丰富性和奇特性。这首歌非常适合改编成长篇专辑。
Long Season begins with what sounds like a stone plunging into water, a familiar noise that anticipates the record’s immersive atmosphere. The song’s first section is built on a slowly grooving bassline and repeating piano arpeggios, a hypnotic swell with intermittent flourishes: music box, violin, moody synthesizer. After four minutes—and the brief but thrilling fakeout of a drum fill—the backbeat and vocals finally arrive. There are melodic yelps and wails, soft moments of storytelling and inquisitive questioning. “What is that song you’re humming?” he asks in a disarming moment of genuine interest. To hear it in a song whose world so gently opens up to you feels like the precursor to a heart-to-heart.
《Long Season》的开头听起来像石头掉进水里，这种熟悉的声音预示着这张唱片将营造出一种身临其境的氛围。歌曲的第一段由缓慢的贝斯和重复的钢琴琶音构成，像是一种催眠式的膨胀，间或有一些华丽的装饰：音乐盒、小提琴、情绪丰富的合成器。四分钟后，在短暂而令人激动的鼓声中，反拍和人声终于出现。其中既有旋律优美的呐喊和哀嚎，也有用轻柔的口吻讲述故事情节并好奇地发问。“你哼的是什么歌？”他真诚地问道。听着这首歌，你的世界如此温柔地向你敞开，就感觉像是心灵交流的前奏。
Sato wanted to capture the “flow of time in our mind” and how, for example, we may “suddenly [remember] something from 15 years ago.” Take the unexpected introduction of harmonized vocals eight minutes in. It sounds like a children’s choir singing in the distance, and as it slowly fades away, a music box starts twinkling to transport us further into the past. The album continually evolves in this way, gliding from one scene to the next. At one point, Sato keeps singing “driving…” as Motegi plays a drum roll. It has the quietly cinematic energy of a road trip. The repetition serves both as a conduit for fond remembrance and a reminder to keep moving.
佐藤希望捕捉“我们脑海中的时间流”，以及例如，我们如何“突然（想起）15 年前的事情”。就拿意想不到的在八分钟后引入的和声来说吧。听起来像是远处儿童合唱团的歌声，随着歌声慢慢消失，一个音乐盒开始闪烁，把我们带入了更久远的过去。专辑以这种方式不断发展，从一个场景滑向下一个场景。有一个场景，佐藤不停地唱着“驾驶......”，而茂木则在一旁打鼓，就像公路旅行，充满了如电影般静谧的能量。这种重复既是美好回忆的通道，也提醒我们应该继续前进。
Sato wrote most of Fishmans’ songs and the rest of the band actualized his ideas. He had high standards, but didn’t want to give specific instructions for what the other members should do. This dynamic was especially significant for Long Season, which features numerous guest musicians: singers like UA and MariMari, guitarist Taiji Sato, and percussionist Asa-Chang. The latter contributes a long passage of improvised tabla played alongside other percussive noises, including Motegi’s drums; the two instruments are meant to sound like they’re fighting one another. Long Season was composed with these kinds of abstract directions; for example, Sato wrote that he wanted the song to have a “sunset scene.”
佐藤创作了 Fishmans 的大部分歌曲，乐队的其他成员也出色地完成了这些音乐。他有很高的标准，但并不想对其他成员的工作做出具体的指示。这种方式在《Long Season》中尤为重要，因为有许多特邀音乐家加入：比如UA 和 MariMari 等歌手、吉他手 Taiji Sato和打击乐手 Asa-Chang。打击乐手 Asa-Chang 演奏了一长段即兴塔布拉鼓，同时还伴有其他打击乐，包括 茂木的鼓声；这两种乐器听起来就像是在互相对抗。《Long Season》就是在这种抽象的方向上创作出的，佐藤写道，他希望这首歌有一个“日落场景”。
The guests who recorded their contributions didn’t quite know how their parts would fit into the larger composition, which was stitched together from four different sections. Sound engineer ZAK was especially dedicated to ensuring the final product was unimpeachable. He was the one who suggested the water sounds, which dot the album during its improvisatory percussion sequence. His presence is also there in the track’s coherency. Around 21 minutes in, the familiar strains of guitar strums provide slow preparation for the intro’s reprise. Reverse tape effects symbolize this return, and when Kashiwabara’s bassline swoops in, it sounds like we’ve snapped back to reality.
录制歌曲的音乐家并不十分清楚他们的部分将如何融入由四个不同部分拼接而成的大作品中。录音师 ZAK 特别用心，以确保最终产品无可挑剔，是他建议在专辑的即兴打击乐序列中加入水声。他的建议还体现在曲目的连贯性上，大约21分钟后，熟悉的吉他弹奏声为前奏的重现做了缓慢的铺垫。反向磁带的音效象征着这一回归，当柏原让的贝斯猛然响起时，我们仿佛又回到了现实中。
Sato wanted each live performance of Long Season to be unique. During Fishmans’ December 1996 concert at Akasaka Blitz, the band members sound like they’re trading off solos during Long Season, from guitar to drums to steelpan. The piece is more stripped-down than the studio version, and its minimalist bent allows for a deeper appreciation for each individual instrument. Two years later, Fishmans performed an affecting rendition of the track at the same venue. Two-thirds of the way in, vocalists start happily chanting “Get round in the season!” as if encouraging the audience to cherish this moment. Shortly after, everyone drops out of the song except for Sato. He strums his guitar and sings in a moment of intimacy: “The two of us driving at dusk… halfway dreaming.”When the band enters again, everything feels a little more magical.
佐藤希望《Long Season》的每一场现场演出都是独一无二的。在 1996 年 12 月于赤坂Blitz举办的 Fishmans 演唱会上，听起来就像乐队成员在《Long Season》中交换着独奏，从吉他到鼓再到钢片琴。与录音室版本相比，这首曲子更为简洁，极简的曲风让人对每件乐器都有了更深的理解。两年后， Fishmans在同一地点演绎了这首曲子。音乐进行到三分之二时，主唱们开始欢快地高唱 “Get round in the season!”，似乎在鼓励观众珍惜这一刻。不久之后，除了佐藤，所有人都退出了歌曲。他一边弹着吉他，一边唱出亲密情节的歌词： “我们两人在黄昏开车......半梦半醒之间”。当乐队再次进入时，一切都变得更加神奇。
That 1998 concert was Sato’s last. He had escalating respiratory problems, and used oxygen sprays throughout the tour. Less than three months after this show, he passed away at the age of 33. “You don’t have to make compromises in your work, but it is important to be grateful and humble,” he said in his final months. Sato never got to witness the growing popularity of his band—their songs have millions of plays on streaming services, and last year, the surviving members of Fishmans staged the Long Season 2023 tour. In the ’90s, Sato didn’t believe that people would understand his music, and knew some would be turned off by Long Season’s length. Still, he pressed forward. “I believe I’m making music that can change somebody’s life,” he once said. “I’ll keep doing my best so it reaches that someone.”
1998 年的那场音乐会是佐藤的最后一场音乐会。他的呼吸系统问题日益严重，整个巡演期间都在使用氧气喷雾剂。演出结束后不到三个月，他去世了，享年 33 岁。他在弥留之际说：“你不必在工作中做出妥协，但重要的是要学会感恩和谦卑。”佐藤没能亲眼目睹他的乐队越来越受欢迎——他们的歌曲在流媒体服务上有数百万的播放量，去年，Fishmans的剩余成员还举行了“Long Season 2023”巡演。上世纪 90 年代，佐藤不相信人们会理解他的音乐，也知道有些人会因《Long Season》的时长而反感。尽管如此，他还是坚持了下来。他曾说过：“我相信我做的音乐能改变别人的生活。我会继续尽我所能，让它传递给那个人”。
Ultimately, Sato saw himself as an ordinary person and amateur musician. “I’m not a good guitar player,” he confessed, “but Fishmans’ songs need my guitar, so I play.” His singing made that devotion even clearer. Throughout Long Season, his voice is filled with a whimsical curiosity, and a freedom to intone in whatever manner he finds appropriate. At its best, his singing sounds like the natural overflow of being swept up by the music. This intuitive quality is imperative to how, despite its demanding length, Long Season is a comforting listen—it is never too academic or outré, and its pleasures are always within reach. It mirrors the way that Sato understood life: as a dream you can create and get lost inside.
到底，佐藤认为自己只是一个普通人和业余音乐家。他坦言:“我不是一个好的吉他手，但Fishmans的歌曲需要我的吉他，所以我弹。”他的歌声让这种虔诚更加清晰。在整首《Long Season》中，他的声音充满了异想天开的好奇感，并能以他所认为的合适的方式自由高歌。在最佳状态下，他的歌声听起来就像是在被音乐清洗后的自然流露。尽管《Long Season》篇幅很长，但清晰的特质却让人听起来很舒适——它永远不会过于学术化或离经叛道，它的有趣之处显而易见，反映了佐藤对生活的理解：这是一个你可以创造并迷失其中的梦。
