Kirinji feat. YonYon -- Killer Tune Kills Me

It was just a few months ago that I discovered Kirinji's（キリンジ）19th single from May 2018, "Jikan ga nai"（時間がない）, and fell in love with its spacey disco perkiness.

Well, almost a couple of weeks ago, Kirinji released their 20th and latest single, "Killer Tune Kills Me" with vocal assistance by Seoul-born and Tokyo-raised DJ/singer-songwriter YonYon. The other interesting thing is that vocals are provided this time by guitarist/singer-songwriter Erino Yumiki（弓木英梨乃）. According to her bio on J-Wiki, she's been a member of Kirinji since 2013 but for this song, she's got lead vocals for the first time on a single release.

I mentioned about the spacey disco perkiness of "Jikan ga nai". Well, with "Killer Tune Kills Me", it's more of a spacey dreaminess from a few decades back. The melody by composer/vocalist Takaki Horigome（堀込高樹）hearkens back to some of the early 80s work by Taeko Ohnuki（大貫妙子）; there's a certain European calm in the music and vocals by Yumiki. She starts off floating lightly over the notes but then lands and is equally adept at skipping with the beats. I especially like how she repeatedly fires out the title. Not that I'm a voice fetishist, but I also like how guest YonYon goes into her Korean and Japanese rap. It's kinda like vocal choreography. She and Horigome were also responsible for the lyrics.

With "Killer Tune Kills Me", I can imagine any official music video having a couple go into a major dance number on the nighttime streets of one of the major quarters in Tokyo, whether it be Aoyama or even Shibuya.