When I first heard The Renaissance's "Arcadia" on one of the "Light Mellow" series of CDs a few years ago, I'd assumed that the band consisted of a bunch of shoegaze-loving twenty-somethings. How wrong I was!
In actual fact, The Renaissance is made up of two members, 71-year-old rock bassist and composer Rei/Ray Ohara（小原礼）and 61-year-old multi-instrumentalist and music producer Gota Yashiki（屋敷豪太）. Ohara began his career in 1968, played with the band Garo（ガロ）and then joined Sadistic Mika Band along with Yukihiro Takahashi（高橋幸宏）in the 1970s; he also got married to singer-songwriter Ami Ozaki（尾崎亜美）in 1997. As for rock-and-reggae loving Yashiki, his professional time started in 1982 and he was able to collaborate with a number of Western artists including Soul II Soul and the late Sinead O'Connor. He even became an official member of British band Simply Red in 1991.
The Renaissance released their first album in March 2014 titled "Renaissance 1er" and it is the original source for "Arcadia". Written and composed by Yashiki, it's a cool-down song which almost heads into reggae territory with that insistent but reassuring beat and it also has a lonely psychedelic rock guitar twanging away. I'm not sure who is singing here, Yashiki or Ohara, but he also gives off a reassuring if slightly ghostly presence as he and the lyrics lead us listeners to the titular Arcadia of peace and good times. A second album "Rock Steady" came out in September 2019.
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