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WICKED BEAT
Review by Dave
Rating: ***

Wicked Beat is a dance remix album released in the early summer of 1990. It was also the second album to include songs with English lyrics, and the only album to be completely in English. All of the songs on the album were released previously, with new guitar tracksadded by Tak.

I Wanna Dance -Wicked Beat Style- Starting out the album, this song is a translation of "Odoritai Kimi no Dakade" off of the frist album "B'z". It is completely remixed with some blistering guitar work on the solo by Tak. You can tell that Kohshi was having trouble with the word "heart" in this song, but the translation work was done completely by himself. The arrangement is pretty good, and the beat keeps you moving.

Komachi Angel -Red Hot Style- This song was released as a single a little more than a week before this album was released. The Japanese version sounds exactly the same as this English version except for some "crafty" remixing. The structure is basically the same, and the translation, once again done totally by Kohshi, is near perfect to the original.

Bad Communication -English Style- This song was originally released on the Mini Album "Bad Communication" in 1989 in Japanese. This song, unlike Komachi Angel, isn't a direct translation of the Japanese, but is still very well done. There is little changed from the original track, and is worth a listen.

Lady Go Round -"W-40" Style- This song was completely reworked from the original song released on Breakthrough. It does retain some Japanese lyrics from the original song, mainly because of phonetic differences in the translation. The translation was also done completely by Kohshi, and it is very well done.

All in all, this album is very well done, but I have to say that it gets less of a rating because of my bias to electronic music. I feel that it takes much more talent to play an instrument than screw around with a mixing board (There are certain exceptions to this rule......). But with the new tracks added by Tak, and some superb translation work and arranging by Kohshi, it is still worth the import fees. Also if you have always been curious about what Kohshi sings during the original version of "I Wanna Dance", this is definitely worth it.