Miharu Koshi -- Belle Tristesse ~ Myo naru Kanashimi（妙なる悲しみ）

 

As much as I remember the wonderful working partnership between Taeko Ohnuki and Ryuichi Sakamoto（大貫妙子・坂本龍一）of Yellow Magic Orchestra during the early 1980s with their eclectic mixture of synthpop and French-feeling music, I also have in mind another fascinating tandem. That would be the relationship between Miharu Koshi and Haruomi Hosono（コシミハル・細野晴臣）, also of YMO, starting from around 1983 in which Koshi transformed from the good-time City Pop lady into a New Wave gamine, heavy into the synths but with a different aural sensation, more along the lines of Old Europe in general for the lack of a better description.

I found a good representative of that new Koshi sound in the 1980s through "Belle Tristesse ~ Myo naru Kanashimi" (Strange Sadness). This wasn't a part of her albums or singles under her name but it was a track on a November 1983 compilation album by Alfa Records titled "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" produced by the Takahashi Brothers, Nobuyuki and Yukihiro（高橋信之・高橋幸宏）, the latter of whom completes the YMO trio.

The words, music and arrangement were all handled by Koshi and Hosono, and the feeling that I get from "Belle Tristesse" is some sort of weird technopop drama occurring within a toy shop based in Germany or Austria. Perhaps the toys come alive and are now pondering existence...maybe it's an emo version of "Toy Story"? In any case, it's quite the 80s Koshi tune and just from the title alone, I can understand the potential melancholy that can arise in folks around the Yuletide, and after all, it's a common trope in J-Xmas songs.

If "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" is hard to come by, then "Belle Tristesse" can be found as a bonus track in Koshi's remastered CD "Epoque de Techno" which came out in 2009.