Negicco -- Hikari no Spur（光のシュプール）

 

This being the 8201st article for "Kayo Kyoku Plus", I bid you a Merry Christmas for 2021 and I'm hoping that readers have been enjoying December 25th if they do celebrate the holiday. It's been fairly quiet today for us and I'm more than grateful for that, but in a few hours, some of my family will be showing up for dinner tonight.

I got the Twitter notification last night that my good friend Rocket Brown of Come Along Radio had put up his latest mix which of course centered on the Yuletide titled "City Pop Christmas Marathon". So if you're into the Japanese urban contemporary and you need some music while you're cooking in the kitchen or just resting on the sofa before the potentially voluminous dinner, feel free to have a listen to it at Rocket's Mixcloud page.

Late last night, I was able to hear the first 20 minutes of the marathon before deciding to turn in but I was already hearing some good stuff that I hadn't come across before. One example was the bouncy "Hikari no Spur" (Ski Tracks of Light), aidoru group Negicco's December 2014 single. Not as much about Christmas as it is about potentially making romance while hitting the slopes, the song does have a truly upbeat and fun melody that does make one feel like jumping into the SRV and head for Naeba Ski Resort (eat your heart out, Yuming!). By the way, the sunny music video was apparently filmed in Finland.

"Hikari no Spur" was written and composed by connie who has been the group's music producer but I think that delicious beat is also due to the arrangement by Takao Tajima（田島貴男）, aka Original Love, and I've trusted him to make some really catchy songs over the past few decades. 

I'd initially wondered about that last word in the title "spur" since the usual image in my head for such a thing has been that of those tiny spiked wheels near the heels of a cowboy's boots. At the same time, I also thought that it could be "spoor" which refers to the scent of an animal or a human being but I didn't want to imagine what the lyrics would be about in that case. Luckily when I checked on Jisho.org, there was just the one definition for "ski traces", originally from Germany. Anyways, "Hikari no Spur" hit No. 5 on Oricon and was a track on Negicco's January 2015 studio album "Rice & Snow".