Kidorikko -- Momoiro Kingyo（桃色金魚）

Happy Saturday! And I hope everyone in the States is enjoying the start of their Memorial Day long weekend.

I remember when Yellow Magic Orchestra became a phenomenon, it seemed like the synthesizer and any other instrument associated with technopop music started seeping into the production of a whole lot of other pop songs in Japan for several years going far into the 1980s. And of course, even bands and individual artists with that computer music vibe started popping up during that time, inspired by the teamwork of Ryuichi Sakamoto, Haruomi Hosono, Yukihiro Takahashi（坂本龍一・細野晴臣・高橋幸宏）.

However, I've realized that a lot of those technopop bands never entered my radar until very recently, thanks to the presence of YouTube. It's like my discovery of City Pop with a lot of people in the genre figuratively taking up residency in the 9/10ths of the music iceberg under the water...there may be a number of those technopop bands underneath the surface as well.

One such band which I found out about in the last few months was called Kidorikko（きどりっこ）. I couldn't find anything about this particular band itself on J-Wiki, but one of the members has his own bio there. Keyboardist/composer Kimitaka Matsumae（松前公高）got together with Ryuichi Sato（佐藤隆一）, another keyboardist and composer, and vocalist/lyricist Chiyumi Ten（てんちゆみ） (who, at least from the image above, looks a lot like actress Yumi Adachi!) to form the band around the mid-1980s.

From another blog's (Wakarimi/後悔日和) page devoted to the band, Sato apparently went for "...a progressive pop sound with a children's song-like quality", fitted with Ten's happy-go-lucky high-pitched vocals. In 1986, Kidorikko's debut mini-album, "C'est L'elegance na Tanoshimi" (セレレガンスな愉しみ...Enjoyment of This Elegance), was released with one of the tracks being "Momoiro Kingyo" (Peach-Coloured Goldfish). The song was also their debut single from April 1985.

I gotta say that those particular synths caught my attention immediately. That adorably chirpy sound really reminded me of some of the techno beats that Ryuichi Sakamoto put forth for Taeko Ohnuki（大貫妙子）in the early 1980s. Plus, Ten's voice would probably have certain seiyuu listening in envy today. Although Kidorikko has also been pegged as a New Wave band according to this English-language description of them, I'm not quite sure if "Momoiro Kingyo" would apply as a New Wave song but I will leave that decision to you once you listen to it.

Wakarami also mentioned something interesting, stating that the entirety of "Momoiro Kingyo" brought back memories of the old Bubble Era. I think that there is another brand of keyboard work in City Pop that has also elicited that feeling.

(2:17)

A full studio album was released in August 1987,  "Ryukou Tsushinbo" (流行通信簿...Trend Report Card) . Several of the tracks from "C'est L'elegance na Tanoshimi" and tracks from this full album were put together to form a joint album called "Kidorikko" in 1989.

For Matsumae, he left not too long after "C'est L'elegance na Tanoshimi" had been released. He then got involved in other projects and bands including the group hi-posi during their indies days and SST Band.

Not sure if such a book has ever been published, but I think like my genre bible "Japanese City Pop", perhaps there could be a similar publication titled "Japanese Technopop" covering those bands from the late 1970s and beyond.