a better bowie? maybe not, but i loved these guys growing up. maybe because no one else did? life in tokyo was recorded in march 1979 in los angeles by david sylvian and none-other-than giorgio moroder. japan originally wanted to record “european son” with the producer but moroder preferred to work on a backing track he had already prepared. he gave sylvian four demo songs, and then went for a long lunch. while out to lunch, sylvian had fitted some lyric ideas he had gathered on the plane to one of moroder’s pieces and re-arranged the chosen track. later on the same week, the rest of japan arrived and recorded the entire piece. at this time, two distinct full length versions were prepared. one was timed at 6min 18sec and was not released until 1982 when it came out on the UK special edition cassette of “assemblage” and on the japanese vinyl LP.