Blue Peppers -- Retroactive

Well, the allure of free points for a limited time on CD Japan was too much to reject. I ended up getting another 4 albums to add to the collection, and one of them was a recent discovery. About a month ago, I discovered a duo called Blue Peppers（ブルー・ペパーズ）which has been creating this groovy sound of AOR and fusion for a few years. The song that I fell for was "Roku-gatsu no Yume"（6月の夢）with Shiori Sasaki（佐々木詩織）as the guest vocalist, and it was this cool happy-go-lucky number that could have described a sunny Sunday afternoon outing.

I heard a few more of their songs on YouTube and checked out their website. From that point, I decided that I would invest in their latest release which is their first full album "Retroactive" from November 2017.

Not certain whether Naoki Fukuda（福田直木）and Kaoru Inoue（井上薫）had thought about it this way, but I think the title is pretty darn clever because when I read it, I think of "retro" and "active". Having listened to the album once and hearing the individual tracks on YouTube again, there is that modern groove to be sure but there is also that love letter to the sounds of yesterday, notably the music that Fukuda and Inoue have loved listening to, ranging from the discography of Steely Dan to Toko Furuuchi（古内東子）. Retro is indeed active.

One of the tracks is "Zutto"（ずっと...Always）that actually came out earlier in 2017, and once again, the lovely vocals of Shiori Sasaki come to the fore. The music harkens back to the 1990s when the aforementioned Furuuchi first made her presence known. It is some of that J-Soul that was percolating through the late 90s into the early 2000s that "Zutto" reminds me of. Inoue wrote and composed this track.

"Akikaze no Regret"（秋風のリグレット...Autumn Wind Regret）, which was the coupling song for "Zutto", takes my mind back even further since it reminds me of an old late 70s/early 80s AOR number from one of my compilations from the genre, perhaps Jackson Browne. Fukuda composed and sang this piece of nostalgia while Masato Inami（伊波真人）wrote the lyrics about a fellow who has lost a love but would like another chance.

Former AKB48 member Michiru Hoshino（星野みちる）who has been carving out her own solo career for the past few years comes in as a guest vocalist for "Cobalt Blue"（コバルトブルー）which seems to be a new song. Written and composed by Blue Peppers, it has that similar happy-go-lucky vibe as "Roku-gatsu no Yume".

And for the final track, here is a shortened version of  "Ase wa Amai Kuchizuke"（汗は甘い口づけ...Sweat is a Sweet Kiss）which nearly demands to be heard with a glass of sangria. Some very sunny bossa nova infused into this track, and I think Blue Peppers even gave a tiny shoutout to Antonio Carlos Jobim's "Brazil".

I will leave it at that for now since you can also listen to the samples of all of the tracks from "Retroactive" below and form your own opinions. As for me, another happy acquisition from the current crop of urban contemporary music from Japan.