Junk Fujiyama -- Shoukei Toshi ~ City Pop Covers（憧憬都市）

 

Yup, Kayo Grace is in the big city which means that we are at Friday, the day of the urban contemporary on KKP. And today launches with a rather distinct article because not only am I talking about an album, but it's an album that won't be released officially until March 6th this year.

But allow me to give some background information. For one thing, I can't quite believe that it's been almost ten years since I posted the first article on singer-songwriter Junk Fujiyama（ジャンクフジヤマ）because of his "Hoshikuzu Pipeline"（星屑のパイプライン）, that homage to the sound stylings of late 70s/early 80s Tatsuro Yamashita（山下達郎）that first got known as the amazing musical accompaniment to the ending scene of Episode 6 of the bonkers anime "Space Dandy". Some years before the whole "Plastic Love" thing, "Hoshikuzu Pipeline" had some of us City Pop fans back then swooning that maybe the good ol' days of music grooviness can come back with new tunes. Well, it's kinda crazy what's happened over the last decade.

Fujiyama has continued to do his groove thing although his profile has struck me as being somewhat low-level over the years. Well, I found out a few days ago that he's coming out with an album of City Pop covers, "Shoukei Toshi" (City of Aspirations), which I said above will be released on March 6th. I guess that a lot of fantasies of City Pop fans have now come true with Junk Fujiyama handling other tunes of the uber-genre. For instance, an advance digital single came out on January 23rd, a mellower cover of the late Junko Ohashi's（大橋純子）"Telephone Number", a special favourite for many of the fans.

Even earlier...on December 13th 2023, to be exact...Fujiyama released another digital single which is a cover of Anri's（杏里）"Windy Summer" and it'll also be included on the album. It's of course arranged in his style but it's no less summery than the original. I'm hoping that the other tracks which include covers of Junko Yagami（八神純子）and Miki Matsubara（松原みき）will also be fun. I've also noticed that Junk had covered a few Tats tunes in 2021 and 2022 but they're not on "Shoukei Toshi". Nice cover art, by the way.