Fetch

Fetch was Melt-Banana's first studio album in six years, after Bambi's Dilemma in 2007. During that time, the band toured extensively, including a U.S. tour with Tool, and playing at the Sydney Opera House with Lou Reed's Metal Machine Trio. Band members Yasuko Onuki and Ichirou Agata also performed shows as "Melt-Banana Lite", an alternate configuration of the band that uses synthesizers instead of guitars and drums, and released a live album, Melt-Banana Lite Live Ver 0.0, in 2009. By mid-2012, Melt-Banana was performing exclusively as a duo of Onuki and Agata, using synthesizers in place of live bass and drums. Writing for Fetch began in late 2010, and the demos were "almost done" by March 2011. However, production was postponed after the Tohoku earthquake and the aftermath of the subsequent meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, for both practical and personal reasons. Although both members said that their everyday lives were not majorly impacted, Onuki "felt something had been changed in mind", while Agata "could not concentrate writing music in the same manner used to". An American tour had been planned to promote a then-upcoming album, but because of the delay, it was instead done without an accompanying album. Agata credited the two-month tour to helping him get his mind off of Japan. Melt-Banana returned to the studio in the winter of 2012 and finished the album by May 2013. Agata employed a different guitar style on Fetch, using fewer effects and pedals and more tracks. He recorded short bits of guitar and used them as loops. The album has two instances of field recordings, both captured by Agata. The waves that open the album were included because he felt the bubble sounds were similar to the guitar loops he recorded. The frogs on " Zero+" were recorded in Tokushima. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.