With "Yellow Moonlight", which was a track on Okayasu's first album "Yume e no Setsuzokushi"（夢への接続詩...Dream Connection）, Nishimatsu managed to make a hybrid of those styles that were present from both albums. Beginning with some techno jazz swing, the keyboards then enter the dance floor with a mellow urban contemporary melody, and the two just weave in and out with each other in a pleasant little dance that also include that wailing guitar of early City Pop. Okayasu herself was responsible for the lyrics.
Matt also let me know that he didn't know anything about the singer outside of the fact that "Yellow Moonlight" was a Nishimatsu composition. I didn't know anything about her either but she does have a J-Wiki article, so I was able to glean the following information. Born in Tokyo, she graduated from the Joshibi University of Art and Design, and is a singer, actress and car racer. Beginning her career in show business as a member of a street performance team, she became a host of the late-night TV show "All-Night Fuji", and then went into acting and singing. She started auto racing from the 1990s and is currently the director behind her own team, Heart-in-Heart Racing Team. As for music, she released a total of 3 albums and 2 singles up to 1987.
The video below has her in a commercial for a Subaru.
Great work with the article J-Canuck, couldn't have said it better myself and I might look into Yumiko's other work now that I'm hooked on Yellow Moonlight. Love the funky beat on this song and the combination of city pop and jazzy techno that it entails.
ReplyDeleteI can't help but wonder if Nishimatsu ever wrote anything else for any other artists or whether Good Times and Bouekifuu Monogatari were his only solo recording output, he only had those two albums to his name as far as we know and yet his grasp of music is pretty impressive with the way he's able to seamlessly blend genres in his work. Still waiting to see if there's any performance footage of him out there as well, it doesn't seem too far out of the realm of possibility for him to appear on something like Yoru no Hit Studio, especially with Tatsuro Yamashita's seal of approval on Bouekifuu Monogatari. Do you think something like that album had any shot at chart success or was it too out there in your opinion?
Thanks very much, Matt. I briefly took a look at some of the other videos on YouTube featuring her and I remember one of them being rather more on the side of something more 50s in sound.
DeleteAs for Nishimatsu, I also checked out his work on the JASRAC database, and so far in terms of writing for other artists, only Okayasu's name showed up. However, that doesn't necessarily mean it was just Okayasu he wrote for since although I think the database is extensive, I don't think it's complete.
"Good Times" may have had some chart success because it was more on the conventional pop side but "Bouekifuu Monogatari" may have indeed been too out there to really get high up on the charts. It may have slipped into the bottom half of the Top 100.