Osamu Shoji: 1932-2018

Last month, the music world lost a genius you’ve most likely never heard of, Osamu Shoji. He was 85 years old.

Osamu Shoji was born in 1932, and he started out as a songwriter for Japanese pop artists in the late-60s, but his solo career didn’t take off in any substantial way until the late-70s, when he embraced the then relatively-new world of synthesizers and sequencers. In 1978, he released two albums of original synthesizer music: Welcome To The SF World, and Jataka, two absolutely wonderful records that feature ambient, new age and experimental tracks that showcase everything a synthesizer could accomplish in the late 70s. 

The same year he also released his version of the Star Wars soundtrack. Of course he wasn’t alone, in the wake of Star Wars‘ success, many artists tried to re-imagine the film’s score for the pop charts, especially after Meco scored a top ten hit with his disco remake, but Shoji’s stands out. While many were just trying to “dance up” the main theme up with some disco beats, Shoji wasn’t afraid to make it sound bizarre. Weird laser effects pepper his rendition, and it has a groovy backbeat and synthesized guitar riff that give it more of an electronic-funk vibe than a disco one. It’s certainly aged better than Meco’s disco take, that’s for sure. Of course, Osamu wasn’t above disco, he also released a collection of synthesizer covers of Bee Gee tracks in 1978 as well.

Just a year later, Shoji would follow those records up with another album of original material, 1979’s stellar Night Flight. Far more playful and upbeat than his previous work, Night Flight is an absolutely delightful collection of 70s electronic music, with a hint of funk and disco that, again, makes it stand out among the likes of Kintaro or Tomita. Shoji, at his best, had a playful goofiness to much of his work that always made it a bit more fun to listen to than the serious-minded work of other purely electronic composers of the era.

Shoji went big time in the early 80s, composing the scores to the anime films Adieu Galaxy Express 999 and Cobra. This is also when he began working on the Digital Trip series, LPs that re-worked anime and manga themes into purely synthesizer pieces. Many fantastic artists worked on this series throughout the decade, but Osamu was the most prolific, pumping out 19 of them between 1982 and 1986. And many of his albums are the best in the series, with standouts including his Lupin The 3rd, Ultra Q and God Mars albums. During this time he also released three albums as Osamu Shoji And Progressive Party, which include some more poppy numbers as well as his usual forays into ambient territory. He also released Luna Sea – Nine Moon Shore Stories, in 1986, a fantastic example of sample-based electronic music ala The Art Of Noise.

In 1987 he released what is probably his best known work, the soundtrack to the OAV Wicked City, but after that he seemingly retired for a decade, not releasing another album until 1997. From there, he kept up a pretty steady clip of releases from 2000 until 2014, when he put out one more compilation of movie themes on synthesizer. During this time he also worked as a conductor and live performer, working with some benefits for victims of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake.  

Unfortunately, almost the entirety of Shoji’s discography is out-of-print. The latest pressing any of his work had was in 2015, when Tiger Lab Vinyl re-released his score to Wicked City. That’s out-of-print, but it’s still pretty cheap on most auction sites. Very few of Shoji’s albums were released on CD. As far as I can tell, none of his prime 70s material was, and CD copies of his 80s output are exceedingly rare and can go for a mint in the rare instances that they do show up online. Still, if you stick to vinyl, you can find a lot of his best work for somewhat reasonable prices. I recommend Jataka, Nite Flight, as well as any of his Digital Trip releases.

Hopefully one day these albums will get a proper re-release so more people can discover what a groundbreaking pioneer he really was.

Rest in peace Osamu, you’ll be missed.