Friday, January 4, 2019

Tomoco Yasuno -- Mysterieux



The Tomoco Yasuno(安野ともこ)that I found at J-Wiki is listed as a fashion and jewelry designer, and from doing some more digging, it looks like that she's indeed that person behind this light technopop tune from 1985 composed by Yellow Magic Orchestra's Haruomi Hosono(細野晴臣)with lyrics by Michio Akiyama(秋山道男). "Mysterieux" is well-titled since I think Yasuno had this single and one other previously from 1984, and it's this rather intriguing curiosity that was the theme song for a murder-mystery titled "Kiken na Onna tachi"(危険な女たち...Dangerous Women)also released in the same year.

Considering the few pictures that I could find of her at Google Images from way back then, perhaps she was being modeled somewhat after the gamine Miharu Koshi(コシミハル)after her transformation into a technopop diva at around the same time. At one Japanese site which specializes in French technopop, the author wasn't too kind toward "Mysterieux", but I'm not quite sure whether Hosono was actually trying his darnedest for a true French tango sort of sound in the first place. I mean, during his time with YMO, he and his mates were going more for an affectionate poke at some older genres of music through computers, so why not with this one?

As for Yasuno herself, she was born in 1959 so she would have been in her mid-20s at the time, but her voice isn't too bad in an aidoru-ish sort of way. Overall, "Mysterieux" is pretty nice as an addition to any compilation of techno kayo.

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