Ichiro Nitta -- Ryuusei City（流星City）

At the end of last year when I wrote up my list of my choice of City Pop albums in the 1980s, I had an inquiry from commenter tokugawa7 about the source tune for this Japanese Future Funk concoction known as "City Lights". Happily enough, I could track it down unusually quickly, and it turns out that it was the second track, "Bisexual"（バイセクシュアル）, from Ichiro Nitta's（新田一郎） November 1983 album, "Kotobuki". Listening to "City Lights", I was taken in by the dynamism of the horns so I checked whether the original existed as a YouTube video but unfortunately, it didn't. However, there is a brief excerpt of it at Hip Tank Records once you scroll down the page for "Kotobuki" to the track list.

http://hiptankrecords.com/?pid=104688909

Of course, when it comes to a potentially rewarding find such as has been the case with Nara-born trumpeter and singer Nitta, I'm not all that easy to discourage, so I took a look around and found another song of his with some of those amazing horns. This is his lead track, "Ryuusei City" (Meteor City) from his second album released in May 1983, "After Image".

It starts dreamily enough but then within 17 seconds, it then takes off with the power of that titular meteor falling to Earth. Written by Kazuko Kobayashi（小林和子）, who also helped out in Yurie Kokubu's（国分友里恵）debut album from the same year "Relief 72 Hours", and composed by Nitta, the musician's vocals and even his appearance from the album cover for "After Image" reminded me somewhat of Kaname Nemoto（根本要）, the lead singer of Stardust Revue（スターダストレビュー）.

The thing is, though, that Nitta isn't actually new on "Kayo Kyoku Plus". Yep, he's been covered before as the leader, Spectre No. 1, and first trumpeter of the fusion band Spectrum（スペクトラム）. As a solo performer, Nitta has so far released 7 singles and 6 original albums, all in the 1980s.