Ongaku Cafe (The ’90s): trf – EZ DO DANCE (July 1993)

“EZ DO DANCE” will continue to be an album that I can never foresee myself letting go.  This album was my first fore into the music of trf and what turned me on to the group. This album is definitely a J-POP classic!

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GROUP: trf

ALBUM TITLE: EZ DO DANCE

CATALOG #: AVCD-11128

DURATION: 40:36

RELEASED on July 21, 1993

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1. EZ DO DANCE
2. ROCK IT ON!!
3. ISLAND ON YOUR MIND
4. ON MY WAY
5. ONE MORE NIGHT
6. RAVING ZONE
7. EZ DO DANCE (UK DANCER VERSION)
8. ONE MORE NIGHT (UK DANCE VERSION)

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Reviewed in 1993 and re-reviewed in 2011

During the early 90’s, pop music was primarily dominated by idol pop.

May it be WINK or Hikaru Genji, the scene was dominated by rock music.

But I always kept my eyes for groups that featured great music and great choreography and there was ZOO (which featured dancer Higashi Hiroyuki who went on to create and become leader of the R&B group EXILE) and there was trf.

The group which stood for “tetsuya komuro’s rave factory” featured vocalist YU-KI, DJ KOO and dancers and background vocalists SAM,
CHIHARU and ETSU.

When the group first began, as seen on the cover of the “EZ DO DANCE”, there were more members of the group who were dancers and thus may have been seen as a large R&B/dance troupe like ZOO.

At the time, avex trax was promoting a lot of their acts with the Juliana’s Tokyo nightclub which would bring popular DJ’s from UK and at
the time techno rave was quite popular.

Mega producer and musician Komuro Tetsuya wanted to bring together the music of the night club scene together with a music group and trf
was born.

In February 1993, trf released their first CD single “GOING 2 DANCE, OPEN YOUR MIND” (AVDD-20036) but their second CD single “EZ DO DANCE” (AVDD-20042, rel. June 21, 2003) was the song that would turn many listeners attention to the new group.

Used as a CM song for “Sea Breeze”, the CD single broke the Oricon top 20 debuting at #16 and when the album “EZ DO DANCE” came out, their second album would reach #4 on the Oricon charts.

What made this album even more special was that the album continued to sell well two years later and still on the Oricon Album Charts top 100 (at #62) in Jan. 1995.

I can easily recall the music video for “EZ DO DANCE” turning heads as the women would dance wearing daisy duke shorts and the guys jamming with awesome choreography.

At this time in Japanese music, nothing was close to what trf was doing.

The top 20 would be dominated by B’z, Lindberg, ZARD, DEEN and other rock bands in 1993 but there would be one dance group that
would stick out that I had to discover what this group was all about.

The group’s music would be entirely synth based which was no surprise since the songs were written and composed by Komuro
Tetsuya.

Although not complete techno rave in the sense of what people in the US and UK were listening to at the time, the music was definitely inspired by it.

Playing the album for the first time, the song would start off with the group’s hit song “EZ DO DANCE” which was just irresistibly catchy.

Featuring TK’s music, DJ Koo’s rapping and YU-KI’s agile and warm vocals, the group had struck a unique balance.

The second track “ROCK IT ON!!” seemed like a dance-inducing song as the group would repeat three phrases over and over again but feature more of Koo’s hipster banter (which all rap parts were not included in the lyrics booklet).

The third track “ISLAND ON YOUR MIND” was simply an innocent pop song featuring everyone singing the chorus. I found the song so addicting that even to this day, I can never get enough of it.

The fourth track “ON MY WAY” would be a TK song that had a certain sound that would be recognized in future TK songs.

It’s also a song that would feature YU-KI and KOO rapping together and hear a lot of Komuro’s background vocals which was prevalent
throughout this track.

The fifth and sixth track “ONE MORE NIGHT” (used on Fuji TV’s “RAVE’N ROUGE”) and “RAVING ZONE” would be the groups English songs in an effort to help cross-promote a Japanese rave group in different countries.

The final two tracks “EZ DO DANCE (UK DANCE VERSION)” and “ONE MORE NIGHT (UK DANCE VERSION)” would feature YU-KI and KOO performing in English.

The group’s music (in English) would be featured in several European techno/rave dance compilations (sold in Europe and the US) and trf would be on the sole group from Japan promoted on this compilations.

“EZ DO DANCE” will continue to be an album that I can never foresee myself letting go.  This album was my first fore into the music of trf and what turned me on to the group. This album is definitely a J-POP classic!

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