Vitarise -- Costa

 

The above is the result of my attempt to make some art on a Midjourney-esque site. All I asked the site was to create the skyline of my hometown of Toronto in a Japanese City Pop style. The above was what I got. Not too bad, and for the first time in history, the CN Tower and Mt. Fuji get to be together in the same picture. I got a little overambitious, though, as I tried looking at other AI art sites only to fall into a malware trap. The next few hours last weekend were spent debugging my computer. Serves me right.  Regardless, my newest cornball joke is that no matter who takes credit for the "painting" above, I can honestly that it will always be AI (since those are also the initials of my real name).😎

My fellow contributor to KKP, HRLE92, was the one who introduced me to the duo that was known as Vitarise (a mash of "vitamin" and "rise"), under his YouTube handle of Island Fantasia. Vocalist and lyricist Maiko Nakagawa（中川麻衣子）and keyboardist and composer/arranger Kouji Takata（高田耕至） were together for the better part of a decade (2000-2009) creating a blend of club music, bossa nova, jazz and funk, and from the collaboration, two albums and two singles resulted along with a commercial jingle for a cosmetic line.

One song I found comes from Vitarise's 2nd album "Panorama" from July 2004 and it turns out to be the first track "Costa". Nakagawa's quick and slightly smoky vocals help out Takata's melody which brings together the club music and samba. There's something also very jet-set about the whole tune which may be inspired by that album cover of the duo dressed up like airline staff, and certainly the samba elements of "Costa" can get folks to think about taking that overseas trip to more tropical climes.