Aru Takamura -- Ta Ta Ya My Love〜ARU 2nd.〜

Forgive me...just sorting out my geek thoughts after watching the season premiere of "Doctor Who" with Jodie Whittaker and the first episode of "Short Treks", a series of vignettes before Season 2 of "Star Trek: Discovery". The feeling is not unlike that of a post-regenerative crisis.

Anyways to get a bit grounded again, I'm here at the blog and yesterday commenter RideZeLitenin mentioned that the 2nd and final album of Aru Takamura（高村亜留）, "Ta Ta Ya My Love〜ARU 2nd.〜" has been put up on YouTube. I certainly hope that the powers-that-be will keep this one up for a good long while since it's probable that this January 1986 release hasn't been remastered yet. It's not available at Tower Records or CD Japan and the one copy at Amazon.jp is selling for about a nosebleed 8000 yen!

I've taken a listen to most of the tracks and enjoyed it as a Japanese singer's voyage through what I was listening to in the genre of R&B throughout the 1980s here in Toronto. There is soul, funk and dance stuff in there. Case in point: the first track above, which is a cover of Tomoko Aran's（亜蘭知子）"I'm In Love" (interesting to point out that Takamura also sang a different "I'm In Love" on her debut album). It's got that American dance remix arrangement, and although I will still go with Aran's original City Pop take, Takamura has got a stronger handle on the vocals.

Track 2 is the deliciously smoky "Saigo no Tenderness"（最後のTenderness...Last Tenderness）. Written by Takamura herself and composed by pianist/arranger Yoshinobu Kojima（小島良喜）, there is definitely something urban and spacey at the same time here. Dancing in the clouds is an image that comes to mind.

Here is "Kaigi Gesshoku"（皆既月食...Total Lunar Eclipse）, another winner. This time, it's soul that Takamura is expressing here with some guitar licks which had me thinking of George Benson. Cosmic phenomena couldn't sound cooler. Yuuichiro Oda（小田裕一郎）, who had handled Seiko Matsuda's（松田聖子）early hits, came up with the mellowness here while Kazunori Sonobe（園部和範）who provided the lyrics to Anri's（杏里）fun "Innocent Time", wrote the words.

"Ta Ta Ya My Love", the title track is a trip through the dance-funk of an 80s disco. For some reason, I couldn't help but think up of many a dance scene in an action movie starring Sylvester Stallone or Arnold Schwarzenegger while I was listening to this. Takamura once again wrote the lyrics with Masatoshi Nishimura（西村麻聡）, the same fellow behind Aran's "I'm In Love", taking care of the music. The guitarist here was Takahiro Matsumoto（松本孝弘）, i.e. one-half of the future B'z.

The final track is "Good Luck Again", a nice mellow way to finish things up. Sonobe was the lyricist here with Kenjiro Sakiya（崎谷健次郎）weaving a pop/AOR melody similar to many a ballad that I used to hear on radio back in my high school and university days.

It's too bad that "Ta Ta Ya My Love" is not readily available right now, but since Takamura's first album is out at Tower Records and CD Japan, here's hoping that the 2nd album may not be too far away from getting its re-introduction. The album is not just for City Pop fans but also for anyone who has enjoyed the R&B from America in the 1980s.