Hiroyuki Izuta -- Kodo no Distance（鼓動のディスタンス）

 

Always great to encounter a City Pop singer that I hadn't heard about before even at this late hour in the world's love affair with the uber-genre. 

Hiroyuki Izuta（伊豆田洋之）is a singer-songwriter from Chiba Prefecture born in 1959 who graduated high school in Tokyo and then went over to the States to study at Illinois State University (I heard another singer-songwriter went to high school in the Prairie State). Then, he transferred to University of California, Los Angeles and got a job in the City of Angels as a piano player. One day, a Japanese music producer met him and I gather that the meeting was a good one since they both went back to Japan and Izuta ended up cutting a single and an album, both titled "Rose Bud Days" in 1984.

Izuta released 16 singles up to 1993 and 7 original albums up to 2014. His third one in December 1987 was "Bless You". From here, I give you "Kodo no Distance" (A Heartbeat Away) which was composed by the singer, written by Masumi Kawamura（川村真澄）and arranged by Masaaki Omura（大村雅朗）. The first thing I was struck by was Izuta's resonant voice which reminded me of Billy Joel's own vocals (further enhanced by finding out that he was working at that piano bar in LA), and then there is the very 80s-sounding electric guitar that got me reminiscing over old music videos on Canada's Muchmusic once more. Izuta has been categorized as being a singer of City Pop and rock, and I think that "Kodo no Distance" fulfills that observation.

From the middle of the 1990s, Izuta was very much into collaboration. He worked with Masamichi Sugi（杉真理）and Kiyonori Matsuo（松尾清憲）to form the group Piccadilly Circus in 1996 and then the following year, he joined the drummer from the band Tulip（チューリップ）, Masatoshi Ueda（上田雅利）and others to become GAR-YIZ. Then in 1999, Izuta, Yasuhiro Abe（安部恭弘）, Kazuhito Murata（村田和人）and Yudai Suzuki（鈴木雄大）worked together as the unit A,M,S & I, even releasing one album.