Fujiya & Miyagi - Artificial Sweeteners (2014)

Few have offered such a bittersweet taste of pop through their career as Fujiya & Miyagi; underneath the sticky wrappers that have packaged their sugary synth lines and rich hooks since the turn of the Millennium, there s always been a grittier aftertaste. Ladies and gentlemen, get ready to rot your teeth on Artificial Sweeteners. Coming off their more live band-orientated fourth album, Ventriloquizzing, here they return to their roots, with an album that is their most overtly electronic since their mighty second release, 2006 s Transparent Things,or even debut Electro Karaoke In The Negative Style. Reaching back to the influences that got them into dance music in the first place, beach parties, warehouse raves in their native Brighton, early Warp Records and Carl Craig, the group wrote at an unchartered prolificacy, revelling in digging out their old samplers and synths and sizing them up against the digital technology they continue to explore the limits of.