World's End Girlfriend: "Heartbreak Wonderland"

Sunday, July 3, 2022

I haven’t the foggiest idea why I picked this CD up in Tokyo. I think I was intrigued by the cover, which is a beautiful drawing. Often with Japanese products, it’s usually the design that pulls in the customer. I was born to be suckered or “marketed” for this retail technique. In the case of the World’s End Girlfriend album released in 2007, Heartbreak Wonderland is a beautiful listening experience. An instrumental album, it reminds me a bit of Penguin’s Cafe mixed with Portishead, but more orchestral and focusing on something overly romantic. There is nothing ‘noir’ about this sound.

I love the mixture of electronics, glitches, and natural acoustic and electric instrumentation. If I’m reading Discogs correctly, World’s End Girlfriend is musician Katsuhiko Maeda, whom I know nothing about, except that he was born in Japan in the Gotō Islands, Nagasaki Prefecture. Additional musicians on this album make the sound a dreamy aural experience. Not ambient, each piece or song has a series of solid melodies running throughout the disc.

When one reads their discography, Maeda has made recordings with the experimental Japanese band Mono and Vamillia. It took me fifteen years to catch up on Heartbreak Wonderland, but now that I’m here, I’m pleased to be in their presence.