pas de chat -- Stop it!

 

Last fall, I introduced another group that singer-songwriter Miho Fujiwara（藤原美穂）had been associated with in the 1990s, and that was pas de chat which put out a couple of albums in 1993 and 1994. That second album "pas de chat 2 ~ Deux" contained "Nijuu-ni-ban-me no Kuchibeni"（22番目の口紅）, a bouncy urban contemporary number with a bit of New Jack Swing.

This time though, I'm diving into pas de chat's 1993 album "pas de chat" and I found "Stop it!". In comparison with "Nijuu-ni-ban-me no Kuchibeni", "Stop it!", which resides on Fujiwara's own YouTube channel, is a little more esoteric in its influences. With lyrics by Fujiwara and music by her partner Masahito Nakano（中野雅仁）, I pick up on the airier and odder choices of sophisticated pop groups such as The Style Council and Swingout Sister, and for some reason, I get tingles of Japanese synthpop duo PSY-S. Maybe to stretch out the analogies to breaking point, "Stop it!" could be the duo's efforts in making a beatnik tone poem and then filtering it through 1990s dance beats.