Tomomi Sano -- six

 

Happy Monday! Well, not quite sure as of yet, but it feels as if we are at a certain corner that we have not yet turned when it comes to this 3rd wave of COVID. Some of those mass vaccination campaigns have borne fruit over the weekend while the vaccines themselves have been pouring into the country and the daily infection rates are slowly coming down. I can only hope that things will further improve as we approach the end of the month.

It's been a while since I've written about Tomomi Sano（サノトモミ）, who seems to specialize in the current form of urban contemporary music in Japan. Back in 2016, I covered her "Myojo"（明星）from her 2005 album "Silent Flight", and that particular track starts off with a bluesy and fairly dramatic intro before segueing into a contemporary downtown beat with wacka-wacka guitar. It's got the groove and I do love my groove!

The first track from "Silent Flight" is "six", a song written by Midori Kanai（金井緑）and composed by Yuzo Hayashi（林有三）. From what I could understand of the translation of Kanai's lyrics in the comment section for the above YouTube video, it all comes across as an atmospheric description of a night in the life of a film noir detective. It's a tad lighter in tone than "Myojo" though, and so I gather that it fits the role of a first track in an album which I guess is all about the coolness of night and situation. The bluesiness is still there and the keyboards are at the fore along with Sano's soft vocals. Not sure what the title is referring to, however.

It looks like that including "Silent Flight", Sano has released at least three albums according to Tower Records, and her Twitter account is still active.