Casiopea - Mint Jams - Vinyl LP

2025 release

Already out of print

Japanese import

As Alfa Records expanded into Europe, it was planned to produce an album for Europe by one of its artists, Casiopea. Initially, it was planned to be a compilation of best songs from existing albums, but was later turned into a live album.

Live sound recordings from a two-day performance at Tokyo Kaikan were used, and subsequently remixed at Alfa Studio 'A' by Shunsuke Miyazami, Satoshi Nakao, Norio Yoshizawa and Atsushi Saito. The songs were arranged in advance with studio work in mind. To achieve the likeness of a studio quality sound, the audience noise from the Chuo Kaikan live performances were cut from the mix, except for during the bass guitar and drum solos in 'Domino Line', and the latter-half part of 'Swear' which include the drum and rag piano solo.

Besides the title of the album being an arrangement of the band members' first and last initials, it derives the word 'mint' to imply 'a mint condition' and 'high performance'. The word 'jams' describe their live performance of which the source material was taken from.

This album is widely considered to be Casiopea's best, as it combines their live dynamism and precision with careful studio work.

Mint Jams was also Casiopea's first album to mainly feature the Yamaha GS-1 FM synthesizer, operated by Minoru Mukaiya. This synthesizer was subsequently used in many of their live-performances.