REICO -- Navigator Lover（ナビゲーターラヴァー）

All these years, lyricist Shun Taguchi（田口俊）has been quite well-represented on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" through his works for other artists including enka singer Sayuri Ishikawa（石川さゆり）for which he provided the jazz torch song "Whiskey ga O-Suki deshou?" (ウィスキーが、お好きでしょ）. Well, he actually started out as a singer in 1980 with the band Lorelei and then began the songwriting aspect of his career from 1982. Just a little after that, he teamed up with Kazuo Horiguchi（堀口和男）to form the singing duo REICO.

Their debut album "REICO" was released in October 1983 as you can see in the thumbnail above and the first track is "Navigator Lover". Man, the sound and the appearance of that album cover couldn't get more 1980s. Throw me that Rubik's Cube, will ya?

"Navigator Lover" has got that West Coast AOR sound down pat right to the fine print, and listening to Taguchi and Horiguchi, who wrote and composed all of the tracks on "REICO", I get nostalgic vibes from their contemporaries at the time such as H2O and Off-Course（オフコース）. That guitar and their vocals had me thinking of a motorcycle ride on the Ventura Freeway one sunny Sunday.