Carlos Toshiki & Omega Tribe/Yumi Matsutoya -- Toki wa Kagerou（時はかげろう）

 

The other day in the Omega Tribe（オメガトライブ）forum on Discord, I read that the original drummer for the famed AOR band, Keiichi Hiroishi（廣石恵一）, had passed away on March 16th at the age of 64 due to a cerebral hemorrhage. Giving my condolences to Hiroishi's family, friends and fans, I wanted to start my contributions to KKP today with an Omega Tribe song.

Usually when it comes to the smooth and groovy stylings of Omega Tribe with Carlos Toshiki, I think of composer Tetsuji Hayashi（林哲司）and lyricist Chinfa Kan（康珍化）. But for the band's 6th single under their incarnation at that time, "Toki wa Kagerou" (Love is an Illusion), it was none other than Yumi Matsutoya（松任谷由実）who provided words and music with Hiroshi Shinkawa（新川博） handling the arrangement. Released in June 1990, it's an ethereal musing on love as an amourous couple enjoy each other's company on the sands of some desert (those synth-wood pipes help with the effect). I can imagine that the concept of time must dissipate like a heat haze in such an environment. Reaching No. 38 on Oricon, "Toki wa Kagerou" was also the first track on Omega Tribe's album "natsuko" which came out later in July; the album was a No. 13 hit.

Interestingly enough, the first time that I had even heard of the song was through Yuming's（ユーミン）self-cover of "Toki wa Kagerou" from her November 1990 album "Tengoku no Door"（天国のドア）. It isn't quite as ethereal as the version that Shinkawa had arranged but the drama is still in there under Masataka Matsutoya's（松任谷正隆）handling of it. I'm not sure when I ended up buying Omega Tribe's album, but it wasn't too long after getting "Tengoku no Door" since when I listened to that first track on "natsuko", I was left wondering where I had heard that song before.