15.02.2013 Views

The Lolita Complex: - Scholarly Commons Home

The Lolita Complex: - Scholarly Commons Home

The Lolita Complex: - Scholarly Commons Home

SHOW MORE
SHOW LESS

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.

It was, though, with the Yellow Magic Orchestra that Sakamoto first<br />

made an impact on the contemporary music scene, particularly in Britain<br />

and Japan. This band was one of the very earliest to introduce an electro-<br />

synthesised sound to the industry that would become pivotal in pioneering<br />

the post-Punk, New-wave and New-romantic genres. David Sylvian, too,<br />

even prior to his days with Sakamoto, was a major inspiration and has been<br />

popularly referred to as the godfather of New Romanticism. Although he,<br />

personally, has always maintained a reluctance to accept this association,<br />

seeing his and his band’s work as distinguishable from this type of<br />

categorisation, there is no doubt that Japan’s Oriental soundscape can be<br />

heard throughout the early-eighties period, especially in Tears for Fears’ track<br />

<strong>The</strong> Sound of the Breakdown (1982), as just one of a multitude of examples.<br />

In terms of the New-romantic look, Sylvian’s predecessors Marc<br />

Bolan of T-Rex, Brian Ferry of Roxy Music and his idol Bowie had set the bar<br />

for his dandified aristocratic persona which became a staple image for many<br />

subsequent Romantics. Also responsible for establishing some of the<br />

movement’s major styles were Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren.<br />

According to Gorman:<br />

Deeply under the influence of early Bowie in terms of look… they [the<br />

Romantics] were originally known as the “cult with no name”…. <strong>The</strong> scene was<br />

eventually dubbed New Romantic, not least because Westwood and McLaren<br />

had turned to notions of pirates and eighteenth-century [models]…. 30<br />

Page | 104

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!