Koji Ueno was in Guernica, the duo/band with Jun Togawa that brought the 1930 aesthetics of Japan to the late 1980s. Here on his solo album, from 1985, he makes music to go with early Surrealist/DADA silent films from the 1920s. The pieces are "Retour a Raison," "Le Etoile Mer," and "Emak Bakia" by Man Ray, "Anémic Cinema" by Marcel Duchamp, "Ballet Mécanique" by painter Fernand Léger & Dudley Murphy and Rene Clair's "Entr'acte." So, in a sense we have an album of Modernism, but 1920's modernism written and recorded in 1985.
All six music pieces do match well with the original silent films. I know, because I have seen these short movies many times. "Ballet Mécanique" is very electronic and reminds me a bit of the French Musique Concrete pieces from the 1950s, but most of the album is done on real instruments, and the talent of Ueno's scoring, arranging, and composing becomes in focus. "Entr'acte" has traces of Erik Satie's original score for the film, and Ueno is very respectful of each film's aesthetic and purpose. Perhaps a man born in the wrong time, still, he makes up with his obsession for the pre-war era of Japan, and it's acceptance or at the very least, a curiosity of the avant-garde world of Europe at that time.
