Kinda too bad about the photo but I really did get the "Tribute to Taeko Ohnuki" album for Xmas this year. After discovering the delicious cover of "Tokai"（都会）by Ryuichi Sakamoto & Yasuyuki Okamura（坂本龍一・岡村靖幸）back in October, I checked out a few more tracks on YouTube and decided that I just had to get it.
The tribute, which was released back in December 2013, is in the form of a 2-CD set with Disc 1 featuring new recordings of Ohnuki's songs for this particular album by various singers whereas Disc 2 has songs created by Ohnuki that had been recorded long before on other artists' albums.
Along with Sakamoto & Okamura's "Tokai" which starts Disc 1 off, the second track is a cover of the unusual "Labyrinth" which was originally on Ohnuki's "Cliche" LP from 1982. Under the name of The Beatniks, Sakamoto's old YMO bandmate Yukihiro Takahashi and Moonriders' Keiichi Suzuki（高橋幸宏+鈴木慶一）give a slightly janglier and more organic version although it still retains that weird moodiness of the original.
Track 3 is Etsuko Yakushimaru's（やくしまるえつこ）tribute to the singer-songwriter through her cover of the whimsical "Peter Rabbit to Watashi"（ピーターラビットと私）which also came from "Cliche". Like "Labyrinth", the original "Peter Rabbit" was more in the technopop vein but Yakushimaru provides a mellower guitar pop take.
The clincher song for me to get this album though is from Disc 2. Akiko Yano's（矢野顕子）cover of "Umi to Shonen"（海と少年）from her 1986 album "Touge no Wagaya"（峠のわが家...Our Home on the Ridge）is pure fun. Compared to the first couple of songs from Disc 1 above, Yano goes the other route by taking the sunny New Music original and putting it through the technopop filter and setting the machine to Happy Happy Joy Joy. Not that Ohnuki made her tune a brooding shoegazer of a song when she recorded it in her 1978 "Mignonne", but Yano just perks it up with extra musical caffeine. In those three and three-quarters minutes, I got that happy-go-lucky Yano pop from the 1980s, even a bit of Prince's funk guitar with some rich piano and at the end, some PSY-S flourish. Pop songs should always be this happy.
As much as Yano was dabbling in her quirky technopop in the 1980s, actress/singer Miki Nakatani（中谷美紀）was also doing the same thing in the 1990s. Her contribution to the tribute album came from her 3rd album in 1999, "Shiseikatsu"（私生活...Private Life）through her cover of "Natsu ni Koi suru Onna Tachi"（夏に恋する女たち）. The original by Ohnuki was from her 7th album "Signifie" and had that romantic French pop sweep to it; I'm now wondering if it even could have been treated as a precursor to Shibuya-kei. In any case, Nakatani's cover has got the technopop touch to it.
"Tribute to Taeko Ohnuki" has no fewer than three versions of "Shikisai Toshi"（色彩都市）which was another nice mix of old-fashioned and technopop from "Cliche". The one that I like the best is Tomoyo Harada's（原田知世）version which veers fully into the former area with strings and harp. Feel like having a cup of tea in a parlour after listening to this version. The Harada cover is a track on her 2007 album "music & me" and apparently was selected by Ohnuki herself for the singer.
It's been quite a long and happy journey for me when it comes to the Ohnuki file. After hearing her name in the wind for so many years, I got that BEST album of hers to listen to it once and then let go fallow for many more years before I finally saw and heard the light. Then I made it the mission to collect her first several solo albums and enjoy them before getting this tribute album. The artists who came together for this project certainly respect her and so do I.
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