Down Upbeat
A Casiopea album from their first era.
It is one of more than a dozen albums the band issued before Sakurai and Jimbo left in 1990 amid disputes over concurrent band memberships.
Quick Facts
- Artist
- Casiopea
- Label
- Alfa Records
Facts from the source article.
History
In 1974, guitarist Issei Noro, then a high school junior, met bassist Tetsuo Sakurai through a friend, and they started jamming in a Tokyo studio. Their early sound was hard rock and funk, inspired by Beck, Bogert & Appice. The duo kept things loose, occasionally adding a singer, but gradually moved toward instrumental jazz. Noro and Sakurai were the only steady members, so they changed the band’s name for every show. That changed when a magazine refused to run an interview without an official name. Noro asked his mother for ideas; she suggested a constellation. He flipped through a book, picked Cassiopeia, but the band’s English spelling ended up as Casiopea. Keyboardist Hidehiko Koike and drummer Tohru "Rika" Suzuki joined. In 1976, they entered Yamaha’s EastWest contest. Noro won Best Guitarist, and the band made the finals, but Koike and Suzuki left afterward. Noro brought in Minoru Mukaiya, a student at Nemun Music Academy, and drummer Takashi Sasaki came from auditions. The next year, they returned to EastWest, winning Best Group, with Noro again taking Best Guitarist. A judge, Yoshihiro Naruse, even called for an encore. Their demo tape impressed Alfa Records, and Casiopea debuted in 1979.
Musical style and influence
After their first album came out, Casiopea picked up the tagline "thrills, speed, super technique," which stuck as a description of their sound. Over time, Noro shifted focus toward musicality and played down technical flash, a change helped by the arrival of accurate computer music programs. The band skips demos entirely: Noro writes the charts, the group rehearses for a few weeks, and final touches come together on recording day. In Indonesia, Casiopea’s influence triggered a short-lived jazz fusion wave that produced groups like Krakatau, Karimata, and Emerald Band. Krakatau and Casiopea once shared a stage at the 21st Economics Jazz event at Gadjah Mada University.
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