benzo -- Mahiru（真昼）

And the "Light Mellow ~ Wing" dividends keep paying off.

I also have to include this song that was included on "Wing" along with Noriyo Ikeda's（池田典代）"Hitonemuri"（ひとねむり）. This is "Mahiru" (High Noon) by Hokkaido-based benzo, a band that had an initial time together between 1992 and 2001. At first, I was rather wondering whether the mellow bouncy funk of "Mahiru" would be considered to be in Shibuya-kei but then I kept getting reminded of some of that City Pop of the 1970s, so I've categorized it as such even though it's not all that easy to think of the genre during the late 1990s. According to the liner notes in "Wing", benzo has been characterized as a unit performing their brand of Northern soul through the filter of Sugar Babe（シュガーベイブ）.

"Mahiru" was originally from benzo's first of two albums "benzo no Baai"（benzo の場合...benzo's Case） released in March 1998, and guitarist Koji Hiraizumi's（平泉光司）vocals also take me back to some of the deliveries by people like Original Love's Takao Tajima（田島貴男）and Nona Reeves' Gota Nishidera（西寺郷太）from that time. Hiraizumi was also responsible for words and music, as he was joined by Kazuya Sasaki（佐々木一也）on drums, Wataru Iga（伊賀航）on bass, Michiyo "Kindo" Tsuji（辻みちよ）on keyboards, and Hisami/Kumi Sasaki（佐々木久美）on backing vocals. Along with those two albums came six singles. About a decade later, there was a second look given to benzo with the result being that those two albums were given a re-release in 2013 and live performances were given in Tokyo and Osaka while the members continued their careers as session musicians.