Crystal Pop Attraction -- Kagayaku Hoshi no Melody（輝く星のメロディー）

 

The name Shinichiro Murayama（村山晋一郎）may not hit too many ears with recognition but as I've been able to learn, he's been a songwriter, producer and arranger who's been around since the end of the century. Although he was born in 1968 in Kawasaki City, Kanagawa Prefecture, he spent some of his childhood growing up in the United States where he fell for the R&B music of the time, and as such, his works have revolved around J-R&B singers and songs such as Hikaru Utada's（宇多田ヒカル）"Movin' On Without You" and a 2000 remix of Sing Like Talking's "Together" (1994).

In 2022, Murayama collaborated with singer-songwriters Eri Yamashita（山下絵里）and HI-D to form the group Crystal Pop Attraction and the result was a self-titled album. One blurb on a website described the music as a love letter to the J-R&B that was coming out in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and with this track "Kagayaku Hoshi no Melody" (Starlight Melody), I do get that era's feeling of night soul reverberating across Tokyo. Indeed, it does feel rather nostalgic listening to this one when I think of the music coming out of Japan at that time a couple of decades ago, thanks to folks like the aforementioned Utada.