FreeTEMPO -- Prelude

 

It may be a Sunday night, but I think it's still nice enough for some grooviness before the business week starts up once more.

DJ Takeshi Hanzawa（半沢武志）also goes by the moniker FreeTEMPO and he began his career in his early 20s in the year 2000. According to his J-Wiki profile, he specializes in lounge music and House. Still, not sure about my hold on the various dance/techno genres but his January 2005 2nd album, "Oriental Quaint." has been categorized at Discogs as House, Downtempo and Deep House. Well, so be it.

In any case, his "Prelude" track in his No. 52-ranking "Oriental Quaint." is very nice to listen to, and it's kind of the dance music that I remember from around those early 2000s. The lyrics are by guitarist Maynard Plant who hails from Ottawa, Canada while the vocals themselves are supplied by Plant's younger brother Blaise Plant. There is a certain jazz crooner quality to Blaise's delivery while FreeTEMPO's music has a certain mix of romance and mystery...a musical film noir, you might say.

The music video (provided by YouTuber Kojer) with a shorter version of "Prelude" shows Seoul, South Korea. I did hear about yesterday's horrific incident there involving the deaths of 150 young people as of this writing, and I am truly sorry about what has happened. At this point, I can only hope that the survivors will be able to recover from their trauma and that the families of the lost victims will somehow be able to eventually cope and move forward in the weeks, months and years to come.