CHiLi GiRL -- Tokai no Mori（都会の森）

 

For folks who have never been to Tokyo, the general impression might be that Japan's capital city was the inspiration for Coruscant: nothing but wall-to-wall buildings and concrete. And to be honest, looking at the city from the top floors of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government buildings in West Shinjuku, Ewen McGregor and Hayden Christensen probably would have said "Whoa! Lucas was right about one thing!". However having said that, there are some large patches of green within Tokyo including Komazawa Park in the western end of town as you can see above.

Yesterday, Van Paugam put out a tweet regarding the September 27th release of a third part, "Interchange", in a series of CD compilations by Cunimondo Takiguchi（クニモンド瀧口）titled "City Music Tokyo". The theme for this disc is music that one can drive to. There are a few tracks that I'm familiar with such as Blue Peppers' "Believe In Love" but a lot of them are new to me including this song.

I never heard of CHiLi GiRL before last night, but according to this December 2022 article in "Tokyo Weekender", this has been a collaborative solo project undertaken by singer-songwriter and shamisen player Shinobu Kawashima（川嶋志乃舞）. Active since June 2020, she has put out her brand of "spicy and charming" music through a number of singles and an album thus far, and one track from that June 2022 album "MEBAE", "Tokai no Mori" (Forest in the City) is the one that has been selected for "Interchange".

Written and composed by CHiLi GiRL, "Tokai no Mori" has been charming the socks off me with her sweet vocals, its mix of the current spacey incarnation of City Pop and some feelings of the genre from the late 1980s and early 1990s. Of course, the singer's shamisen is involved as well, and the combination of the traditional and the groovy modern reminds me a little of Yutaka Yokokura's（横倉裕）work. Overall, it's fresh and cheerful, something for the Sunday morning stroll or even just waking up leisurely from bed.