Biography
Active in the Japanese underground rock scene, Kaoru Satou (voices, drums, percussion; also known as a member of タコ/Taco) was a regular customer at Club Modern, a discotheque in Kyoto. Intending to create 'cool, no-sweat funk' he formed techno/psychedelic outfit EP-4 with some friends - Banana Kawashima (keyboards), Tatsuo Kouki (guitars), Kiyoshi 'Sanjoh-Dohri' Isogawa (drums), Yung Tsubota (percussion), and Kou Sakuma (bass) - at Club Modern around June in 1980. They wanted to represent rock music in a 'extremely processed' manner, with voice effects, mechanical sound generation, etc. typical to the Japanese Club Music scene of the period. In early 1980s, EP-4 played gigs at Urban Synchronicity in Kyoto (1981), and an 'Emergency Landing' tour in some metropolises in Japan (1982). In 1983, their reputation as a seminal Japanese underground rock outfit was established at an event at the Scanning Pool.
In the same year, EP-4 intended to release an album 'Lingua Franca-1 昭和崩御 (Shouwa Hougyo),' through remarkably impressive (and eccentric) promotion … they pasted dozens of stickers with only 'EP-4 5.21' written on them at random all around Japan (there's rumors that on a TV program, a renowned singer wore a T-shirt with the sticker on). This phrase "EP-4 5.21," meant that EP-4's debut album would be released on May 21st, 1983. However, the initial release was postponed under pressure from the Japanese government because of the album's subtitle - 'Shouwa Hougyo' means 'Death for Emperor Shouwa.' The album was finally released with the replacement subtitle "昭和大赦" ('Shouwa Taisha' - Amnesty for Emperor Shouwa) later that year.
EP-4 gigged around Japan and released some cassette EPs but were disbanded in 1988. Tatsuo and Kiyoshi have sadly passed away.
Artist descriptions on Last.fm are editable by everyone. Feel free to contribute!
All user-contributed text on this page is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply.
