Mami Imazu -- Silhouette '90

 

I've had this YouTube video in the backlog for some months now and so I've decided to take a look at the album "Silhouette '90" by pianist/singer Mami Imazu（今津真美）.

Another one of those artists who basically popped up and then left the scene just as quickly, Imazu released just two albums: "Mascara" (1989) and then "Silhouette '90" (1990). The interesting thing is that by looking at the cover for "Silhouette '90" with her visage, she rather looks a bit like another singer who's well known for her keyboard skills, Ami Ozaki（尾崎亜美）.

However with "Silhouette '90", only about half of the tracks have her singing while the others are instrumentals. She is behind all of the composition while lyricist Kayoko Fuyumori（冬杜花代子）provides the words for the sung songs. According to "Rate Your Music", she had quite the backing studio musicians helping her in the recording booth including Wornell Jones on bass, Jun Aoyama（青山純）on drums and Chuei Yoshikawa（吉川忠英）on guitar.

Listening to the album, it seems like Imazu loves a nice squirt of funk with her piano playing for a number of the tracks, and there are quite some influences from various musical sources. The album launches with "Mami-Yume-Memories"（Mami・夢・Memories...Mami-Dreams-Memories）, a fusion piece enhanced with fortified funk strutting although Imazu likes to glide on the piano for one passage.

"Urban Bedouin" at 5:25 is a slightly smokier downtown number, balanced more toward the jazz side of things with Imazu showing off her light vocals for the first time. There's something rather Junko Yagami（八神純子）in there. Then, following at 9:52 is "Pointe de Refrain"（ホアントでルフラン...Refrain at the Pointe） which brings in the early 1970s horns and the song actually feels like something that should adorn the opening credits of an old Quinn/Martin cop show. The weird thing is that there are parts of the song that also remind me of Thomas Dolby's "Hyperactive".

"Water Dream" at 14:20 is an artsier New Age-y instrumental which could illustrate the sun rising up to another day. One more that I'll throw in is "Purple Sky" at 25:18 that's arguably the most pop of the entire album with that percolating rhythm. The whole album is very accessible but with "Purple Sky", there isn't even a door on the hinges to that house...just stroll right in!

As far as I know, both Imazu albums are on the dreaded haiban status and I haven't seen "Mascara" on YouTube, so it looks like it's just "Silhouette '90" for album representation for Imazu. The album isn't the be-all or end-all for fusion albums but the variety in the tracks does make it attractive to me...if it ever gets remastered.