Tomoko Aran -- Warner Years '81-'87

 

Well, although I already have a Tomoko Aran（亜蘭知子）BEST album from many years ago, when I saw this new BEST album pop up at CD Japan last month, it didn't take me long to plunk down my yen. For one thing, this compilation of her hits is narrower in focus on her first years in the business as a singer-songwriter between 1981-1987. In other words, "Tomoko Aran ~ Warner Years '81-'87" covers her first seven albums with Warner Music which includes her City Pop material.

Let's go through the playlist.

1. Kanzen Hanzai（完全犯罪）

2. Noah no Hakobune（ノアの箱舟）

3. Disharmony（不協和音）

4. Monochrome（モノクローム）

5. Blue Note（ブルー・ノート）

6. Baby, Don't You Cry Anymore

7. I'm In Love

8. Midnight Pretenders

9. Slow Nights

10. Busy City

11. Kanashimi no Sing（哀しみのSing）

12. Chinatown Girl（チャイナタウン・ガール）

13. Last Good-bye

14. Doll

15. Mind Game

16. Sometime I Feel

It looks like I already have the middle of the order sewn up on the blog, thanks to getting two of the three albums involved for those particular songs, "Fuyuu Kuukan"（浮遊空間）and "More Relax". As such, I was keenly interested in finding out especially what happened in Aran's beginning years in 1981 and 1982 with the albums "Shinkei Suijaku"（神経衰弱...Nervous Breakdown） and "Shikisai Kankaku"（色彩感覚...A Sense of Colour）.

My first ever article on Aran was a songwriting one for her, "Season In The Sun" by TUBE all the way back in the spring of 2012, and my first ever article on Aran as a singer was "Slow Nights" as already linked above. It was quite the interesting contrast between the two songs. I'd imagined from "Season In The Sun" that Aran herself was as much about the summery 50s-style good-time rock n' roll as her clients in TUBE. But then, I was then caught off-guard when I first heard "Slow Nights" which is as City Pop as all heck. Truly, I was starting to think that this lady from Aomori Prefecture up in the north was a bit of a chameleon, thus my curiosity about the rest of her discography as a singer.

Well, first off on the BEST list here is "Kanzen Hanzai" (Absolute Crimes) from "Shinkei Suijaku", and yep, true to form, this particular track is quite different but then again, I heard some pretty avant-garde stuff on "Fuyu Kuukan" already. "Kanzen Hanzai" is a nostalgic dive into that old-timey New Wave thanks to those keyboards that I'd like to classify as Hall & Oates piano, and another notable thing is how much higher Aran's voice is here. It's almost kinda like the singer was aiming for a bit of Blondie as she sings cheerfully about a woman who thinks she's being played by her boyfriend in the tactical game known as love. Aran handled lyrics while saxophonist Yasuaki Shimizu（清水靖晃）took care of the music and arrangement.

Now, compare "Kanzen Hanzai" with "Monochrome" from her 2nd album "Shikisai Kankaku". I'd like my cocktail now, please! 🍸It's got that Latin-tinged City Pop feeling and there are those smoky and sultry vocals (and lyrics) by Aran that I've gotten familiar with over the years. Plus, we've got Shimizu on the sax solo and composer/arranger Masanori Sasaji（笹路正徳）on the piano. Very classy and on my first listening to the album, "Monochrome" was the first to stand out for me.

"Blue Note" is also from "Shikisai Kankaku" and was tackled by the same duo of Aran and Sasaji. It's got more of the soulful side of the genre with the gentle horns and bass. The lyrics may have to do with the time after a breakup when those familiar sounds at the apartment no longer echo now that the residency has been halved. Yumi Murata（村田有美）and Tetsuro Oda（織田哲郎）provided the background vocals according to the liner notes.

"Kanashimi no Sing" (Singing Sadly), another lovelorn ballad, hails from Aran's 5th album "Imitation Lonely" which was released in April 1985 and is a fellow track with "Busy City". This time, it's Akira Jimbo（神保彰）from Casiopea helping out with the melody and from the liner notes, it looks like Jimbo's band is contributing once more as they did on all of "More Relax", and indeed, Makoto Matsushita（松下誠）is on guitar.

Some bouncy pop here with "Chinatown Girl" that comes from Aran's 6th album "Last Good-bye" (April 1986). In fact, I would say that this is closer to what I've heard from another 80s pop singer, EPO. It's not quite a duet but the extra voice here is supplied by William C. Lee. I wouldn't have been surprised if it had been used in a commercial, and guitarist Hideo Saito（斉藤英夫）really enjoyed himself here. Once again, it's Aran on lyrics but we've got a mystery person behind the music. In the liner notes, he's pegged as (I think) Yasumaro Ota（太田泰磨呂）but at JASRAC, he's listed as Tohru Pekin（北京トオル）. On Aran's blog, she was asked by one fellow if the two names were for one person and he took a guess that it was actually Saito under a couple of pseudonyms. Although Aran did provide a response, she didn't particularly resolve the matter.

My final song for tonight is "Doll", a track from Aran's 7th album, "Mind Games", which was released in March 1987. All of the tracks were produced and composed by Tetsuro Oda who was also a frequent contributor to TUBE's songs. A driving pop/rock tune given further wings by saxophonist Toshihiko Furumura（古村敏比古）, Aran's lyrics here talk of a woman who refuses to be shackled anymore. Furumura's beefy saxophone helps to illustrate a storm blowing around the protagonist but this time to help release her instead of scaring her in.

Aran's latest BEST album does what I was hoping that any BEST album for any singer would do for anyone listening to him/her for the first time. I get to savor a good sampling of a variety of her music within a certain period of time so that I have now become really interested in tracking down the original albums.