Yasuhiro Abe -- Thrill Down

When I first started leafing through the pages of "Japanese City Pop", my eyes just goggled at all of these albums that I had never seen before and wondered if I would ever be able to track down even a fraction of them. I tried looking around for Yasuhiro Abe's（安部恭弘）albums, for instance, and my usual sources of Tower Records and even the huge old-&-used shop RecoFan didn't have them. However, my visit to Tacto in Jimbocho got me a hit. And it turned out to be one of his oldest albums, too....his 3rd album, in fact.

The first track on "Slit", which was released in December 1984, is "Thrill Down". It was written by Chinfa Kan （康珍化）and composed by Abe, and despite the ironic juxtaposition of the title words, the singer-songwriter provides some driving City Pop thrills as our congenial host steers us through the traffic on the nighttime expressways in downtown Tokyo. I think the steady beat and the guitar are the collective engine for our little nocturnal drive. The arrangement of the song reminds me a lot of the future Sing Like Talking's early works.

At this point, I only have "Slit" and one of his BEST compilations, so I will have to see if I can boost up my collection of his albums in the years to come. Unless one of my old buddies in Tokyo has suddenly come in possession of a Testarossa, I don't quite think I'll ever really be involved in bombing down the highways in a really cool car.