Credits

I would like to give credit where credit is due. Videos are from YouTube and other sources such as NicoNico while Oricon rankings and other information are translated from the Japanese Wikipedia unless noted.

Saturday, February 10, 2018

Lamp -- A Toshi no Aki(A都市の秋)


It's been nice discovering some of these literally groovy bands recently such as microstar and Blue Peppers. And thanks to commenter Matt Gallais for that latter band, I was informed of another such group.


Formed in 2000, the J-Wiki article about the band Lamp is that they are known for some "...complex yet refined sounds" ultimately based on bossa nova. Taiyo Someya(染谷大陽), Yusuke Nagai(永井祐介)and Kaori Sakakibara(榊原香保里)all have a hand in the creation of the songs and are multi-instrumentalists.

Matt was kind enough to introduce this Lamp tune called "A Toshi no Aki". Not sure whether the translation is "The Autumn of City A" or, taking into consideration that the first letter may indeed be acting as an indefinite article, it is actually "A City's Autumn". In any case, it's a fascinating song since I get that flavour of Ringo Shiina(椎名林檎)especially in the opening/ending and Sakakibara's vocals, while the overall arrangement reminds me of some of the work of Misia and Bird. There may be that bossa nova as the foundation but there's much more overlaying it whether it be smooth jazz or R&B.

"A Toshi no Aki" is the second track of Lamp's 7th album "Yume"(ゆめ...Dreams)from February 2014. So far, the band has come up with 8 albums.

5 comments:

  1. I'm glad you enjoyed that band's music! And I didn't see it but now i totally do, there's definitely a Ringo Shiina influence or at least a kinship between the two.
    Since I finally found someone to share all this with, let me continue with another one of those contemporary artists I found on SoundCloud, who tap into a more retro kind of music, Kitasono Minami: https://youtu.be/--2ha7BEueE
    Cheers! :)

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    Replies
    1. Thanks kindly, Matt. I will check Kitasono out as well.

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    2. I hope you'll enjoy! And thanks again for your amazing work on this blog. I'm surprised there aren't more people commenting, as I'm sure we're many to come here daily. :)

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    3. You're very welcome, Matt. Actually I'm glad that I am not getting all that many comments since I don't think I would have the time to answer all of them. A few once every few days is just my type of pace.:)

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  2. Oh, and the title seems to be sang as アルファ都市の秋. Not sure why they decided to use a capital A in place of the greek letter nor if that means anything in particular.

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