The easy parallel to draw with this release of oddball pop is to Tatsuya Yoshida's Zubi Zuva, another Japanese avant a capella group that bears the Tzadik imprint. But where Yoshida assembles bands of prog punk monks to do his maniacally precise bidding, Adachi Tomomi's Royal Chorus is a sextet of mad madrigals. The pieces are clever, diverse and heavily arranged, using percussive effects, harmonies, chatter and even moments of jazz stylings to create a range of vocal environments. Each of the 16 songs has a different concept behind it; that is, they are individual songs, and if anything the disc is a little too diverse, consistently surprising but a little at the expense of the flow. It almost reads like a resume, like they're putting everything they've got into 50 minutes (which would certainly be a strategic move for a release that will give them international distribution at a price lower than Japanese cds).

Tzadik has called attention to many unusual Japanese bands, if only momentarily, and the Royal Chorus are another group worth at least a moment's notice.