''Scuba'' is an album by the Japanese new wave band

P-Model P-Model (also typeset as P-MODEL and P. Model) was a Japanese electronic rock band started in 1979 by members of the defunct progressive rock band Mandrake. The band has experienced many lineup revisions over the years but frontman Susumu Hira ...

. It is different from other P-Model albums in that it was made almost entirely made by guitarist Susumu Hirasawa alone and for its original issue in the format: the album was packaged with an 84-page booklet that contained techniques to induce

rapid eye movement sleep Rapid eye movement sleep (REM sleep or REMS) is a unique phase of sleep in mammals and birds, characterized by random rapid movement of the eyes, accompanied by low muscle tone throughout the body, and the propensity of the sleeper to dream viv ...

and

hypnosis Hypnosis is a human condition involving focused attention (the selective attention/selective inattention hypothesis, SASI), reduced peripheral awareness, and an enhanced capacity to respond to suggestion.In 2015, the American Psychologica ...

, the lyric story expanded ''Scuba

Monogatari is a literary form in traditional Japanese literature – an extended prose narrative tale comparable to the epic novel. ''Monogatari'' is closely tied to aspects of the oral tradition, and almost always relates a fictional or fictionalized st ...

'', photos of the involved band members in a coastal area that illustrated the stories, and an interview with

The Stalin were a Japanese punk rock band formed in June 1980, by leader and vocalist Michiro Endo. After numerous member changes, he disbanded the group in February 1985. In May 1987 Michiro formed a group called Video Stalin, which mostly made vid ...

vocalist Michiro Endo.

Overview

After the release of P-Model's album '' Another Game'', a process protracted primarily by their then-current label

Tokuma Shoten is a publisher in Japan, headquartered in Shinagawa, Tokyo. The company was established in 1954 by Yasuyoshi Tokuma in Minato, Tokyo. The company’s product portfolio includes music publishing, video game publishing, movies, anime, magazines, m ...

, leader Susumu Hirasawa was exhausted of dealing with major labels, so chose to have the band be independent for some time. In an apartment occupied by friend and former co-worker film production company AC-Unit, he and a group of friends turned a room into a home studio, and there he and others in various lineups recorded music. Around the time Hirasawa planned to make something more "proper", he was approached by the JICC Publishing Bureau, makers of , a subculture-focused magazine that had covered P-Model a number of times beforehand. They asked for the group to make the second entry in their burgeoning line, which would allow them total freedom from

Recording Industry Association of Japan The is an industry trade group composed of Japanese corporations involved in the music industry. It was founded in 1942 as the Japan Phonogram Record Cultural Association, and adopted its current name in 1969. The RIAJ's activities include pr ...

censorship. Bass and drum parts were handled by Hirasawa with a

Korg Polysix The Korg Polysix (PS-6) is a six-voice programmable polyphonic analog synthesizer released by Korg in 1981. Features The synthesizer's main features are six-voice polyphony (with unison and chord memory voice assignment modes), 32 memory slo ...

and a Korg KPR-77. P-Model's rhythm section was in a state of flux at the time. Manager sought to draw talented personnel to the band. By summer 1984 it had already been decided that Tainaka, who felt he was "at the limit of isstrength", would leave. Hirose at some point called / After Dinner member to be the band's new bassist,. then went to current bassist Tatsuya Kikuchi's house to tell him "you are already fired". Tainaka had written one song for the album and Kikuchi recorded basslines for one or two tracks, materials that went unused. The tour for the album featured Tainaka on drums and Yokogawa on bass and other instruments. The promotional photoshoot for ''Scuba'' had been done before Kikuchi's dismissal from P-Model, and as such, he was part of the ad campaign for an album he does not appear in, by a band he hadn't been part of for months.

Track listing

Endo's segment on "Looping Opposition" is not present on the CD mix of the track, shortening it by 23 seconds. The cassette book version contains

sheet music Sheet music is a handwritten or printed form of musical notation that uses List of musical symbols, musical symbols to indicate the pitches, rhythms, or chord (music), chords of a song or instrumental Musical composition, musical piece. Like ...

for a , credited to and sequenced between "Seven Joint Man" and "Ohayo II". No recording of this composition by Hirasawa or anyone involved with the album exists.

Personnel

;P-Model –

Production Production may refer to: Economics and business * Production (economics) * Production, the act of manufacturing goods * Production, in the outline of industrial organization, the act of making products (goods and services) * Production as a stati ...

Arrangement In music, an arrangement is a musical adaptation of an existing composition. Differences from the original composition may include reharmonization, melodic paraphrasing, orchestration, or formal development. Arranging differs from orches ...

s * Susumu Hirasawa –

Vocals Singing is the act of creating musical sounds with the voice. A person who sings is called a singer, artist or vocalist (in jazz and/or popular music). Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung with or without ...

Guitar The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected stri ...

Synthesizer A synthesizer (also spelled synthesiser) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis and ...

, Drum machine, Sampler, Programming, book text *Shunichi Miura – Synthesizers ;Additional personnel *Akemi Tsujitani (AC Unit) – Clothes Construction and Leg,

Backing Vocals A backing vocalist is a singer who provides vocal harmony with the lead vocalist or other backing vocalists. A backing vocalist may also sing alone as a lead-in to the main vocalist's entry or to sing a counter-melody. Backing vocalists are use ...

on "Boat" * Michiro Endo (

) - Voice on "Looping Opposition" (cassette book version only) *Akiro "Kamio" Arishima (AC Unit) - Synthesizer on "Fish Song" *Mugen Kanzaki (Eco) – Hard Cover Design *Yumiko Onozawa – Red Clothes Making *Yasuhiro Ichikawa (Pool) –

Photography Photography is the art, application, and practice of creating durable images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is employed ...

*Yūichi Hirasawa (credited as "Yuhichi Hirasawa") –

Art director Art director is the title for a variety of similar job functions in theater, advertising, marketing, publishing, fashion, film industry, film and television, the Internet, and video games. It is the charge of a sole art director to supervise and ...

*Model House – Editorial Coordination *Mitsuru Hirose – Artist Management *Special thanks: Kuniharu Kawasaki, , Yoshikazu Takahashi, Yuji Matsuda, Kayo Muto

References

;Citations ;Bibliography * .

External links

* {{Authority control 1984 albums P-Model albums Japanese-language albums