COSMOS -- Midnight Shuffle

If it hasn't already been done so, the following song should be adopted and molded into one of those Vaporwave/Japanese Future Funk videos that folks like Artzie Music have been creating. I'm pretty sure there would be fans who would swoon.

During one of my browsings on YouTube recently, I came across the keyboard trio of COSMOS, a band that was brought together by the Yamaha Music Foundation and had its debut in 1981 through the soundtrack for the movie adaptation of the novel "Hyouryuu"（漂流...Drifting）.

In November 1982, COSMOS released their album "Bourbon Suite" with one of the tracks being "Midnight Shuffle", a nice little nighttime boogie. The three core members of the band are leader Yumiko Tanaka（田中裕美子）, Keiko Doi（土居慶子）and Roman Kaieda（海江田ろまん）but they've had musical assistance by artists such as trumpeter Ichiro Nitta（新田一郎）and guitarists Masaki Matsubara（松原正樹）and Fujimal Yoshino（芳野藤丸）. Also, there were other members of COSMOS including Michiru Oshima（大島ミチル）who has gone onto bigger fame with her compositions for video games, TV shows, movies and anime. For that last category, I am watching one of her projects right now, "Little Witch Academia".

A few years later, Doi did her own side gig under KEIKO PROJECT and created the 1985 album "Compositions" which included a cover of "Midnight Shuffle" with some added lyrics and guitars. Perhaps by that time, she was already going by the name Keiko Matsui（松居慶子）.

"Midnight Shuffle" and Doi have reinforced those good memories of the urban contemporary side of synths and horns that I've known through artists such as Toshiki Kadomatsu（角松敏生）, T-Square and Casiopea.

Here is COSMOS in action with "Spiral Dream". Not sure but I think they are performing on "Let's Go Young".