Akaiko-en -- Highway Cabriolet

 

Getting this from the long backlog, I think I found this number sometime late last year and it sounded pretty good to me so I decided to see if I could write about it.

As someone who's still exploring around shoegazer like a newbie, "Highway Cabriolet" by the band Akaiko-en（赤い公園...Red Park） rather fits the bill. A track from the band's No. 26-ranking October 2019 EP, "Kienai"（消えない...Doesn't Disappear）, I've only also known recently that shoegazer can also be defined as being dream pop but with those driving and relentless guitars in there, "Highway Cabriolet" has got the emphasis on rock here for me, although vocalist Riko Ishino's（石野理子） vocals are nice and light, and they manage to fly over the rhythms. Written and composed by guitarist and Akaiko-en member Maisa Tsuno（津野米咲）, "Highway Cabriolet" seems to be about a couple flying on the road in the titular car, and perhaps at least one of the pair is wondering about where the relationship is heading. 

The band, according to J-Wiki, has delved into avant pop, garage punk and post rock along with shoegazer, and got its start in 2010 in the city of Tachikawa which is a part of Tokyo. The original four members were Tsuno, keyboardist/vocalist Chiaki Sato（佐藤千明）, bassist Hikari Fujimoto（藤本ひかり）and drummer Nao Utagawa（歌川菜穂）who met in their high school music club and then later launched Akaiko-en from a local live house known as Tachikawa BABEL. In 2017, though, Sato decided to retire from the band and her replacement was Ishino who came over from the aidoru group Idolrenaissance.

Sadly, it wasn't very long after I had discovered "Highway Cabriolet" that the news came out about Tsuno's apparent suicide on October 18th 2020. As a result, Akaiko-en announced yesterday on their website that it would disband with their final appearance being on May 28th at Nakano Sun Plaza in Tokyo. The announcement stated basically that it simply wasn't the same band anymore without Tsuno. During their time as a major act, Akaiko-en has released 11 singles, the EP "Kienai", a couple of mini-albums, 5 full albums and a BEST compilation which came out in February 2018.