Shoko Arai -- Circuit

 

Got Kayo Grace Kyoku standing in front of some tall skyscrapers which probably means that it's Urban Contemporary Fridays on "Kayo Kyoku Plus". 

It was almost a couple of years back in April 2022 when I first posted a song by Shoko Arai（荒井尚子）, "Kansho Ryoko"（感傷旅行）from her one-and-only 1990 album "Je Vous Aime", produced by Meiko Nakahara（中原めいこ）. Arai is someone that I had not heard about but from "Kansho Ryoko", it sounds like the singer enjoyed some of that Quiet Storm in her music. And my posting of the song was deliberate since I also noted there that travel was finally beginning to awaken after a few years of the pandemic.

Well, another track from "Je Vous Aime" is "Circuit" which was created by the same duo behind "Kansho Ryoko", lyricist Keiko Aso（麻生圭子）and composer Tsunehiro Izumi（和泉常弘）. The song takes things into the late 1980s City Pop and sophisticated pop realms, and it has quite the pop through the bass and percussion (was Sheila E in the house?:)). Of course, having the brassy saxophone lends even more brio to the proceedings.