S.M.B. PRESS RELEASE
ALBUM REVIEW of "HOT! MENU"

SADISTIC MIKA BAND - "HOT! MENU"-
New Album Released 3rd October, on Harvest! Records

"HOT! MENU" is the third album from the Sadistic Mika Band, Japan's top rock group. It's released on Harvest Records - SHSP 4049 on 3rd October, to concide with the band's first british tour (with Roxy Music). Like the band's second album "Black Ship", "HOT! MENU" was produced in Tokyo by Chris Thomas (Producer of Procul Harum and Roxy Music). "Black Ship" took British critics by surprise when released at the start of the year and received rave reviews. "HOT! MENU", perversely, is totally different from "Black Ship". On critic considered "Black Ship"......"1975's most essential record". Maybe there are two most essential records this year. Or it could be that "HOT! MENU" is just ahead of its time, the album of 1976. Whatever, its different from the second album, more direct, more immediate - and equally excellent. And for those who don't speak Japanese, a good many of the lyrics are in English, like the album title. There are several possible explanations for the album title. Perhaps it was recording the album in the sweltering humidity of a Japanese July. Perhaps it's the prevalance of "HOT! MENU" flashing in neon outside Tokyo nightspots, mostly not advertising food. (It's worth noting that, due to Japanese English having either more semantic precision or less grammatical accuracy - or both - than real English, the explamation mark always comes after "hot" and not "menu")

And certainly it's the album itself: an invigorating experience, like the steaming bath by which the band is slumped on the sleeve photo, tired and enervated prior to immersion. Immerse yourself in this album and revive the jaded brain. Soul food. Time to noodle for starters, through to the tequila haze of dawn; and in between the Sadistic MIka Band reveal themselves as a masterful group - versatitle, witty and imaginative. Both musically and lyrically they display an originality and power which proves them once and for all a match for any Western band. "HOT! MENU" - a hot platter, a veritable! vindaloo on vinyl. The Sadistic Mika Band's new album is released on Harvest! Records on 3rd October 1975.

NOTES:- Track 3 - "Aquablue": a song in which an Aquarian girl (prone to change, to water) wakes at dawn, musing on the night before and what might have been. Track 6 - "Okinawa": a small, supposedly paradisical, island a hundred miles off the southernmost tip of Japan, characterised by a unique traditional culture and an excess of deserted American military bases. A place one talks of and hears of constantly, but never gets to. Track 4 - "Mada Mada Samba": a samba, but in Japanese there is a play on "samba" meaning "midwife": "mada" means "not yet". The other titles are self-explanatory.

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