KAY -- Shihosai（し・ほ・さ・い）

 

Found another one of those obscure City Pop singers recently and for her 1979 debut album "Somewhere in New York", she was surrounded by a lot of top-notch musicians.

KAY is a singer that I simply found through my regular browsings of YouTube and as one person put it on his/her Japanese blog, she's got a husky, sexy and mysterious voice, to go along with some of the other urban contemporary singers of the time including Kimiko Kasai（笠井紀美子）and Haruko Kuwana（桑名晴子）. As I mentioned, she had a lot of fine accompaniment helping her out in the recording studio including saxophonist David Sanborn, drummer Steve Jordan from The 24th Street Band, Mike Mainieri on vibraphone, David Spinoza on guitar and Jun Fukamachi（深町純）on keyboards and overall production of the record.

The second track of "Somewhere in New York" is "Shihosai" for which I couldn't find any definition for. Perhaps it's a fanciful version of the word shiosai（潮騒）which refers to the sound of waves, and so maybe it's about that lovely walk by the Atlantic Ocean...which is perhaps nowhere near Manhattan. Still, I would categorize it as a very languid slice of sunset City Pop created by lyricist Mitsumi Hasegawa（長谷川みつ美）and composer Hisao Sato（佐藤久夫）.

According to that same Ameblo blog that I was referring up a couple of paragraphs, following "Somewhere in New York", KAY released a single titled "Love Tactics". However, not getting much notice from listeners, she apparently did the slow fade from the business. I couldn't find out what her real name was, but I don't think KAY is the same person as Kei Ishiguro（石黒ケイ）.