Quinka, with a Yawn -- Futarikiri（ふたりきり）

 

Back on Thursday, I covered a song titled "Night Hike", a synthy but warm and elegant song by Yoshinori "HARCO" Aoki（青木慶則）that came out in 2005 but was also a track in the 2022 compilation "City Music Tokyo: Junction" that I received recently. In trying to find out more about HARCO and this song, I also discovered that his wife is also a singer-songwriter under the stage name of Quinka, with a Yawn (her real name is Michiko Aoki/青木美智子). With that stage name, I couldn't help but be reminded of the "Star Trek: The Next Generation" episode "Darmok" in which the guest of the episode was a Tamarian named Dathon whose race only spoke in metaphors such as "Sokath, his eyes uncovered!" and "Shaka, when the walls fell!".

Well, consider my curiosity sparked! I made the decision to look up Ms. Aoki's career. Originally under the name of Mikko sky（ミッコ sky）, she was the vocalist for the band esrevnoc which lasted between 1995 and 2001, after which she became Quinka, with a Yawn in her ambitions to have a solo career. According to her J-Wiki profile, she's so far released nine albums of which the most recent one is "Sayonara Tristesse"（さよならトリステス）which came out in April 2013.

From "Sayonara Tristesse" is the track "Futarikiri" (Just the Two) which was written and composed by the singer. With a bit more jangly electric guitar, I would have considered it shoegaze but it's more of a relaxing pop number with a lone horn providing some warmth from the cold in the music video above. Not sure whether Quinka, with a Yawn walking alone in the snowy woods is signifying a certain form of loneliness but her whispery vocals give some comfort and reassurance.

Between 2007 and 2010, Quinka, with a Yawn released a set of cover albums under the name Dog’s Holiday of Yawn, and then in late 2008, she and her husband HARCO formed the duo HARQUA, coming up with a self-titled album. I can honestly say that Ms. Aoki has had more Roman alphabet letters attributed to her than three turns at Scrabble. Still, I'd like to thank and her husband for some interesting and out-of-the-ordinary music and offer them both the new Tamarian phrase of "Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel".