PARADIGM SHIFT – The Rain Child And The River King [Japan remaster HQCD / first time on CD]

Here we have a special request here, something different to listen to: the out of print Japanese remastered reissue on HQCD of PARADIGM SHIFT‘s second album “The Rain Child And The River” from 1986.
While the band’s name makes you think about progressive metal, in fact PARADIGM SHIFT’s music is a collage of styles ranging from rock&pop and lite AOR to prog rock, art rock and more in between.
Led by Makoto Matsushita, creator famous Japanese act City Pop’s, and British lyricist Chris Mosdell (Eric Clapton, Michael Jackson) PARADIGM SHIFT delivers a captivating album in “The Rain Child And The River”, for the first time on CD.

While different and hard to classify musically, “The Rain Child And The River” is a pure product form the the mid-’80s. There’s a lot of effects, synths, etc, but all is crafted with an ‘artsy’ approach.
Matsushita sings in perfect English with his warm voice, while the sometimes elaborated instrumentation embellish the songs.

There’s some lovely ’80s Yamaha FM7 electric piano coursing through “Bringing Home The Singing Fire”, an instrument rarely used nowadays but for me it actually sits far more modern than most of our contemporaries trying to ride nostalgic waves and missing that arc of a diver.
It could be because Makoto Matsushita graces us with his wonderfully earnest vocals or because the others in the group know when to come in to back him up, but count me as a fan. These pure moods, for wise adults, should always be appreciated.

For those tracks that don’t skirt the adult contemporary line, a song line “Catechism”, for example, presents all sorts of interesting ideas, in the course of a four minute song. Snakey, and fiery, here Paradigm Shift turn up the intensity and appear to create by collage, cycling through tribal noise, funk, and art rock like they were meant to all flow together.

And flow together it does, as ”The Rain Child And The Summer King’ concise 8-track length lets you easily power through an intense amount of ideas that really could have been stretched out far further, but are (thankfully) compacted into very concise, easy listening bits. The ambition here lies powerful in its use of subtlety.
Highly Recommended

Nippon Columbia Co., Ltd. 【COCB～54154】
ＰＡＲＡＤＩＧＭ　ＳＨＩＦＴ レイン・チャイルド

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8.　ＴＨＥ　ＧＲＥＡＴＥＳＴ　ＷＯＮＤＥＲ

Makoto MATSUSHITA – vocals, Strato guitar, synthesizer
Masato MATSUDA – acoustic piano, synthesizer
Yasuo TOMIKURA – bass, synthesizer
Masahiro MIYAZAKI – Sonor drums, Simmons

Out Of Print
www.cdjapan.co.jp/product/COCB-54154