Great season

The prospect of making an album with just one giant song was one of those throwaway comments that felt like a joke. But when Shinji Sato came up with the idea, he was following a life-defining trajectory: dream big and see it through to completion. Great season, Japanese rock band Fishmans' 1996 magnum opus, was a radical proposition: take an existing track—the group's six-minute single “Season”—and turn it into a dreamy suite that elevates their gentle psych-pop to symphonic proportions. “When we made [Something in the Air], I hated that they separated each song from the next,” Sato said of their previous full-length. “Why not just make it a song?”

No longer bound by single-digit run times, the band created a record that was vast in scope, yet brimming with everyday warmth. A mesmerizing piano pattern and rock solid bass line set the foundation while Sato's bright and goofy voice soars above. He sounds friendly, like a loving drunk who fills a room with positive energy, playfully stretching out syllables and delivering them with relaxed charm. When he is not singing, the rest of the instruments are breathing, expanding and sometimes stirring. critical, Great season it doesn't sound like a jam. each fragment is a self-contained sound world that serves the drifting, dreamlike logic of the overall piece.

Sato, vocalist, guitarist and charismatic leader of the Fishmans, has shown signs of the kind of ambition and tenacity needed to pull off a large-scale project like Great season from an early age. She was already well-known in Meiji Gakuin University's Song Writes Club when drummer Kin-ichi Motegi attended an event for new students. Motegi was amazed: “From the moment he started singing, [Sato] he had an aura on another level.” Soon, the two began jamming together, and in 1987 they started a band, eventually joined by guitarist Kensuke Ojima, keyboardist Hakase-Sun, and bassist Yuzuru Kashiwabara.

Considering the sweeping art-pop of their longest album, the Fishmans had something of an inauspicious beginning: They were a reggae band. Japanese artists had been exploring reggae for more than a decade in the early 1990s, but their singers had a more professional style than Sato's sleazy and childish delivery. The Fishmans debut, 1991 Chappie, don't cry it failed commercially and critically, and a follow-up single, which doubled as the theme for a short-lived television show, did not fare much better. One journalist accused the band of having “no reggae soul”.

Early in his career, Sato had written down his goals, many of which related to 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 faith in the industry. The Fishmans had a decision to make: Would they focus on more television packages to help sales, or would they pursue artistic freedom? They finally agreed. Suddenly, Sato had a new direction in life. “I don't want to make a big deal out of it,” he wrote in his diary. “The media interferes with creative activities. There's a lot to do in the Japanese music scene.”