Ryusenkei -- Hanabira（花びら）

Y'know...I think that cover of Ryusenkei's（流線形）"Tokyo Sniper" is the meme gift that keeps on giving. How many more captions can any of us come up with for that somewhat annoyed jogger on the lonely road? I already gave a couple in the actual article for the album. Maybe another one is "OK, so was the hitchhiking sign a thumbs up or my arms on my hips?".

Ahem...I did mention in that article as well that I would eventually write about the remaining tracks that I hadn't covered there. So, more than a year later, here is one of them. Actually, it's the 2nd track, "Hanabira" (Petals), written and composed by Ryusenkei guitarist Cunimondo Takiguchi（クニモンド瀧口）.

Glad that I could save this one for its own article since with Nika Eguchi（江口ニカ）, aka Hitomitoi（一十三十一）, in there as the vocalist, "Hanabira" is this creamily groovy piece that has some interesting influences, in my opinion. Track 4, "Koi no Last Number"（恋のラスト・ナンバー）has Steely Dan written all over it, but those first several notes of "Hanabira" had me hearkening back to good ol' Gino Vannelli, and then near the end, in the last minute and change, I even got some fine Tatsuro Yamashita（山下達郎）via that rat-a-tat horn intro into the silky sax solo. That's about as nice an aural cameo appearance as I can get as a City Pop fan.