The second album by the English group Japan began as a demand, not a dream. Their debut, Adolescent Sex, had missed the British charts entirely, and the label wanted something built for American and European rock audiences. On October 27, 1978, the band delivered Obscure Alternatives on Hansa Records, a record made in just ten days that would quietly change their future. The album is a compact document of a band working at speed.
Japan had formed as a glam-influenced act, but by the summer of 1978 the pressure was on. Singer and songwriter David Sylvian was fighting for more control over the recording, and the label's demand for commercial rock sat awkwardly with a group already drifting toward something stranger. The result was a rushed, tense album that mixed rock with post-punk and new wave, and it came only seven months after the debut that had failed to chart.
The track order was no accident. The first half recycled material from their live set, while the second half held the newer songs, including the instrumental The Tenant. That piece, built around piano, was a first step toward the band's later style, and it marked the first time bassist Mick Karn played saxophone on a recording. In The Tenant and elsewhere, Sylvian began using a lower vocal register, a move away from the glam shriek toward something colder. On "Deviation" and "Suburban Berlin" he first explored that lower range, a shift that would define his later singing.
Not everything on the album pointed forward. Some songs leaned into pop, and the opening material echoed the band's concert repertoire. "Love Is Infectious" had been written before the debut album, and it plunges the group into dissonant post-punk art-house territory. But the title track showed a different energy: Sylvian screams with anger, a raw reflection of his position within a band being pushed and pulled by outside expectations. Critics at the time were unimpressed, with Trouser Press calling the songs unmelodic and the production flat. The album also carried traces of the band's live future. "...Rhodesia" had a reggae groove and stayed in the set as late as 1981, while the title track was performed until that same year, its arrangement growing more abstract each time. These songs were not just filler; they were seeds the band kept watering.
Commercially, Obscure Alternatives followed the pattern of the debut. It made no impact in the UK, but in Japan it reached number 21 on the Oricon chart, and in the Netherlands it climbed to number 41, a hint that the band's name carried weight far from London. Sylvian later said the album would have made a better debut than Adolescent Sex, and listening back, the claim makes sense: the album is a bridge between two phases, caught between glam rock and the atmospheric art-pop that would soon arrive.
The ten-day recording session forced decisions that might otherwise have taken months. The band had to trust instinct, and Sylvian's growing control meant the songs leaned toward mood and texture rather than radio-friendly hooks. The Tenant, with its piano and saxophone, pointed directly at the direction Japan would take on their next album, Quiet Life, released in 1979. Some of the material had a longer afterlife than anyone expected. "Sometimes I Feel So Low" and the re-recorded "Adolescent Sex" were later mixed into a track called "I Can't Wait," which became a club hit for L'il Devious in 2003. It was an odd second life for songs born in a ten-day rush.
Obscure Alternatives is not remembered as a hit record, and it was never meant to be a masterpiece. It is the sound of a band under pressure discovering what they actually wanted to be. 48 years after its release, the album stands as the moment Japan stopped chasing a market and started chasing a sound. The 2004 remaster brought it back with bonus live tracks and video, a reminder that even a rushed record can outlast the pressures that shaped it.