The Globe

In 1996, this debut album by the Tetsuya Komuro-created group was a guaranteed hit before it even appeared on the shelves of the Asian market — with five Top Ten singles paving the way, Globe's album feels like a greatest-hits package of the years 1995-96, so omnipresent were these songs at the time. Of the hits themselves, they are spit-shined, clear, empty calorie examples of Japanese techno-pop, with melodramatic arrangements and catchy melodies, the best of them being "Departures"; grand eloquence set to a pounding beat, but goofy enough to throw in rock guitars and sub-Sakamoto piano noodlings (Komuro's idol, so not a surprising). "Sweet Pain" comes a close second, which grabs you and shakes the sense out of you ("but...but what about Marc Panther's cheesy, quasi-English rapping?" Don't worry). The album tracks are nothing to write home about, but are spaced throughout so that they just keep the album consistent in tone. A pleasant enough debut, but more was to come.