Long Season

The prospect of making an album with only one gargantuan song was one of those tossed-off comments that seemed like a joke. But when Shinji Sato put forth the idea, he was following a trajectory that defined his life: dream big, and see it through to completion. Long Season, the 1996 magnum opus of Japanese rock band Fishmans, was a radical proposition: take an existing track—the group’s six-minute single “Season”—and turn it into a dreamlike suite that elevates their gentle psych-pop to symphonic proportions. “When we made [Something in the Air], I hated having each song separated from the next,” Sato said of their previous full-length. “Why not just make it one song?”

No longer bound by single-digit runtimes, the band crafted a record that was massive in scope but suffused with everyday warmth. A mesmerizing piano motif and rocksteady bassline set the foundation while Sato’s bright and guileless voice floats above. He sounds friendly, like an affectionate drunk filling a room with positive energy, playfully stretching syllables and delivering them with easygoing charm. When he doesn’t sing, the rest of the instrumentation gets to breathe, expand, and sometimes go haywire. Crucially, Long Season does not sound like a jam session; each passage is a self-contained world of sound that serves the drifting, daydream logic of the overall piece.

Sato, Fishmans’ vocalist, guitarist, and charismatic leader, showed signs of the sort of ambition and tenacity needed to pull off a grand-scale project like Long Season from a young age. He was already a known presence at Meiji Gakuin University’s Song Writes Club when drummer Kin-ichi Motegi attended an event for new students. Motegi was stunned: “From the moment he started singing, [Sato] had an aura on another level.” Soon, the two started jamming together, and in 1987 they started a band, joined eventually by guitarist Kensuke Ojima, keyboardist Hakase-Sun, and bassist Yuzuru Kashiwabara.

Considering the sweeping art-pop of their greatest album, Fishmans had something of an inauspicious beginning: They were a reggae band. Japanese artists had been exploring reggae for more than a decade by the early 1990s, but their vocalists had a more professional style than Sato’s scrappy and childlike delivery. Fishmans’ debut, 1991’s Chappie, Don’t Cry, flopped commercially and critically, and a follow-up single, which doubled as the theme for a short-lived television show, didn’t fare much better. One journalist accused the band of having “no reggae soul.”

Early in his career, Sato had written down his goals, many of which involved success in the music business and his social life. He wanted money, he wanted people to hear his songs, he wanted popularity with girls. After their debut LP and early singles failed to make them stars, Sato and the rest of the band began to lose their faith in the industry. Fishmans had to make a decision: Would they focus on more TV tie-ins to help with sales, or pursue artistic freedom? They agreed on the latter. Suddenly, Sato had a new direction in life. “I don’t want to make it big,” he wrote in his journal. “Media interferes with creative activities. There’s a lot we should be doing in the Japanese music scene.”

Over their next several albums, Fishmans came into their own, balancing pop appeal with daring studio experiments, and eventually arriving at the wide-ranging approach to genre—dub, psychedelia, lounge, funk, jangle—that defined the Tokyo scene now known as Shibuya-kei. As Fishmans became more musically ambitious, Sato became a more demanding leader. The band, which still wasn’t making much money, began losing members. Ojima departed after 1993’s Neo Yankees’ Holiday, and Hakase after the following year’s Orange, both feeling overwhelmed by Sato’s exacting style. Things began to turn in 1995 when they signed to Polydor, which agreed to finance a private studio for the band in exchange for three new albums in two years, a much faster pace than the band was used to. The combination of pressure and space to work was a fruitful one: The three studio albums Fishmans released on Polydor, including Long Season, were the best of their career.

“That album was a work that expressed one world with eight songs,” drummer Motegi once said of 1996’s Something in the Air, the first of Fishmans’ Polydor albums. “So we thought that we could express the world of eight songs with just one.” Sato suggested expanding upon “Season,” a 1996 single already filled with ideas: There’s a lush string arrangement from new member Honzi, record scratching, homey organ chords, and two passages where Sato coos like a baby bird. Sato had only recently gotten his driver’s license, and was taking lyrical inspiration from riding around town. He sings about traveling from one end of Tokyo to the other, feeling happy but lonely, being in a dream state but also dazed by cold medication. He paints these images in relatable terms, highlighting the richness and peculiarities of simply existing. It was the perfect song to transform into an album-length composition.

Long Season begins with what sounds like a stone plunging into water, a familiar noise that anticipates the record’s immersive atmosphere. The song’s first section is built on a slowly grooving bassline and repeating piano arpeggios, a hypnotic swell with intermittent flourishes: music box, violin, moody synthesizer. After four minutes—and the brief but thrilling fakeout of a drum fill—the backbeat and vocals finally arrive. There are melodic yelps and wails, soft moments of storytelling and inquisitive questioning. “What is that song you’re humming?” he asks in a disarming moment of genuine interest. To hear it in a song whose world so gently opens up to you feels like the precursor to a heart-to-heart.

Sato wanted to capture the “flow of time in our mind” and how, for example, we may “suddenly [remember] something from 15 years ago.” Take the unexpected introduction of harmonized vocals eight minutes in. It sounds like a children’s choir singing in the distance, and as it slowly fades away, a music box starts twinkling to transport us further into the past. The album continually evolves in this way, gliding from one scene to the next. At one point, Sato keeps singing “driving…” as Motegi plays a drum roll. It has the quietly cinematic energy of a road trip. The repetition serves both as a conduit for fond remembrance and a reminder to keep moving.

Sato wrote most of Fishmans’ songs and the rest of the band actualized his ideas. He had high standards, but didn’t want to give specific instructions for what the other members should do. This dynamic was especially significant for Long Season, which features numerous guest musicians: singers like UA and MariMari, guitarist Taiji Sato, and percussionist Asa-Chang. The latter contributes a long passage of improvised tabla played alongside other percussive noises, including Motegi’s drums; the two instruments are meant to sound like they’re fighting one another. Long Season was composed with these kinds of abstract directions; for example, Sato wrote that he wanted the song to have a “sunset scene.”

The guests who recorded their contributions didn’t quite know how their parts would fit into the larger composition, which was stitched together from four different sections. Sound engineer ZAK was especially dedicated to ensuring the final product was unimpeachable. He was the one who suggested the water sounds, which dot the album during its improvisatory percussion sequence. His presence is also there in the track’s coherency. Around 21 minutes in, the familiar strains of guitar strums provide slow preparation for the intro’s reprise. Reverse tape effects symbolize this return, and when Kashiwabara’s bassline swoops in, it sounds like we’ve snapped back to reality.

Sato wanted each live performance of Long Season to be unique. During Fishmans’ December 1996 concert at Akasaka Blitz, the band members sound like they’re trading off solos during Long Season, from guitar to drums to steelpan. The piece is more stripped-down than the studio version, and its minimalist bent allows for a deeper appreciation for each individual instrument. Two years later, Fishmans performed an affecting rendition of the track at the same venue. Two-thirds of the way in, vocalists start happily chanting “Get round in the season!” as if encouraging the audience to cherish this moment. Shortly after, everyone drops out of the song except for Sato. He strums his guitar and sings in a moment of intimacy: “The two of us driving at dusk… halfway dreaming.” When the band enters again, everything feels a little more magical.

That 1998 concert was Sato’s last. He had escalating respiratory problems, and used oxygen sprays throughout the tour. Less than three months after this show, he passed away at the age of 33. “You don’t have to make compromises in your work, but it is important to be grateful and humble,” he said in his final months. Sato never got to witness the growing popularity of his band—their songs have millions of plays on streaming services, and last year, the surviving members of Fishmans staged the Long Season 2023 tour. In the ’90s, Sato didn’t believe that people would understand his music, and knew some would be turned off by Long Season’s length. Still, he pressed forward. “I believe I’m making music that can change somebody’s life,” he once said. “I’ll keep doing my best so it reaches that someone.”

Ultimately, Sato saw himself as an ordinary person and amateur musician. “I’m not a good guitar player,” he confessed, “but Fishmans’ songs need my guitar, so I play.” His singing made that devotion even clearer. Throughout Long Season, his voice is filled with a whimsical curiosity, and a freedom to intone in whatever manner he finds appropriate. At its best, his singing sounds like the natural overflow of being swept up by the music. This intuitive quality is imperative to how, despite its demanding length, Long Season is a comforting listen—it is never too academic or outré, and its pleasures are always within reach. It mirrors the way that Sato understood life: as a dream you can create and get lost inside.