Kazuo Zaitsu -- Ima Dakara (今だから)

 

Vocalist of the band Tulip（チューリップ）and singer-songwriter Kazuo Zaitsu（財津和夫）has had a long history on "Kayo Kyoku Plus", but the last time that his name was up on the title byline was when contributor nikala wrote up about this amazing 1985 collaboration among him, Kazumasa Oda（小田和正）of Off-Course（オフコース）and Yumi Matsutoya（松任谷由実）all the way back in early 2013! The product of their working together was the special one-off single "Ima Dakara" (Because It's Now) which was a percolating pop song of its time with some City Pop here and some Technopop there.

Guess what? Zaitsu is back up on the byline and strangely enough, it's for his own cover of "Ima Dakara" on his special album of covers "Z-shi no Warui Kuse"（Z氏の悪い趣味...Mr. Z's Bad Habits） released in December 1987. What's really intriguing about his solo take on the original 1985 single is that the arrangement seems to take a slower and more mysterious journey through the darker areas of town, so to speak. Gone is the technopop perkiness which is replaced by a richer glaze of synthesizer and other more introspective keyboard work (maybe a hint of Tangerine Dream?).

There is a far more haunting approach in Zaitsu's vocals and I guess in reflection of that film noir-like album cover and the mystery within his "Ima Dakara", there also has to be a femme fatale in the form of his singing partner. Sure enough, I have yet to find out who she is but she does add that extra level of sultriness in what strikes me as "Ima Dakara" filtered through a Mickey Spillane novel. Well, I'm not sure that Spillane would enjoy this sort of music, but hey, I'm OK with it!