Soichi Noriki -- Noriki (Follow-Up)

Almost 18 months ago, I wrote an article on pianist, composer and arranger Soichi Noriki's（野力奏一）1983 debut album "Noriki" with its goodly rounds of fusion and AOR, so I decided to try wrapping up the story with any remaining tracks. Strangely enough, those tracks are right in the middle of the lineup.

"Black Duck" must have had this waterfowl strutting like a peacock instead of waddling about. It's happy and funky and cool, and a lot of this Noriki piece reminds me of folks such as Rod Temperton and Quincy Jones. Haruo Sakai's（酒井春雄）saxophone does a good part of the heavy lifting here, but I love those horns, too. My whole image of the song is some very confident person in the 1970s walking the walk and talking the talk in a big city neighbourhood.

One of the electric guitarists on the "Noriki" project, Koji Nakai（中井浩二）, helped Noriki arrange "Cozy's Melody", and I'm fairly certain that the title had been created for Koji himself. This is indeed a song ready for orange mimosas, beach umbrellas and lounge chairs. In addition, despite the probability that "Cozy's Melody" was indeed named more after the co-arranger, it truly is a cozy melody although Sakai and Nakai are having a friendly battle of the instruments somewhere around the middle.

I couldn't help but hear some Huey Lewis & The News as I listened to "Rag Box", an energetically-paced track that has decided to put the musicians through their paces. Again, I love the horns here and it sounds like Noriki was having the time of his life on those keyboards during recording. Not sure if the title was meant to hint at a modern tribute to ragtime music but it certainly goes at warp speed. Even Masayoshi Imaizumi（今泉正義）gets some notable licks in on the drums.

The final song for this article thus completing the album is "Ballade" is one of the two contemplative tracks along with the final track which was covered in the original article, "Go Over The Hill". The difference between the two, though, is that while "Go Over The Hill" has got that warmth of family and friends getting together around the BBQ, "Ballade" seems to hint more at someone preferring to be by himself/herself nursing a drink while at a bar with Noriki himself on duty at the piano.

I'll end the article here the same way that I did in the original article. "Noriki" is definitely more than worth the yen that I paid for it.