"Fantastic Plastic Machine":http://www.fpmnet.com/ is Japanese music maker Tomoyuki Tanaka. He's the missing "Shibuya-Kei":http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=1&url=http%3A%2F%2Fhome.wanadoo.nl%2Fcmgs%2Fshibuyalink.html&ei=IIa6RovmPJqeiwGEkrDJDw&usg=AFQjCNFMWocOlS0QurBatEBs8GXKhMzeSw&sig2=PGWDYcIIAhvZekLC0X_hNw link between Pizzicato Five and Towa Tei. I read once that Towa Tei heard him DJing and told him that he should really start producing his own music. He's worked with Towa and P5 as well as other contemporaries like The Gentle People, Laila France, Easy Tune collective, Yoshinori Sunahara, and Yukihiro Fukutomi. His style encompasses many genre's from French Ye-Ye, lounge, bossa nova, samba, English girl group, breakbeat, drum and bass, house, downtempo, hip hop, to whatever laid back rhythms or obscure samples he can get his hands on. As of late he has retired from music production and has regressed back to being a DJ. The difference now is that he is touring the world and is playing one of his first loves which is House music. I find that rather sad as I think he's so much more than a DJ. His albums prove it. His first three albums are a revelation in downbeat and high powered Shibuya style. He wasn't producing anything new per se but he took the medium to a whole different level. Each album stands as it's own product and reflects the theme of the title. The first album (self titled) was a revolution that stood to show the world who FPM was and what they stood for. The songs were upbeat but in a way completely different from Pizzicato Five in that he had a sound that possibly the the rest of us could get into rather than Tokyo. The next album _Luxury_ was very luxurious indeed and had you feeling like you were traveling around the world on a jet having the time of your life. The third album _Beautiful_ was more artful and thoughtful and you get a sense of the artist coming into his craft. His last album _Too_ threw away most of the sample sets of his previous albums and focused more on straight house music with a slight influence of big beat. Over the last 4 years he's only put out remix albums. Most of these were through his _Sound Concierge_ series which take rather obscure but cool tunes and housifies them in a long club mix. Maybe one day he'll come to his senses and stop partying but maybe he is right where he was meant to be all along. If anything I'm glad he found the time to put out 4 albums along the way. I'm posting a song off of each album for you to hear. It's not indicative of each album as his albums are fairly diverse but since this is a primer it should give you a good idea as to where Tomoyuki Tanaka is coming from.
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