Thursday, June 27, 2024

Yoshinori "HARCO" Aoki -- Night Hike

 

Depending on the neighbourhood, Tokyo can provide plenty of pleasant night walking including the Odaiba area which is presented to you above. Probably the closest that I ever got to a night hike though was back in July 1999 when a bunch of us ended up seeing "The Phantom Menace" at the special midnight first showing in Shinjuku (I tried to rationalize my feelings before ultimately failing). 

Back then, the transit system tended to close down just a little after midnight so all of us "Star Wars" viewers had to figure out transportation home without subways, trains or buses. In our case, we simply hit a nearby ramen joint for about half an hour before taking a night hike of sorts (pretty safe walking) north of Shinjuku toward Takadanobaba. Some of us opted to take an expensive taxi ride home while me and two others decided to spend the next few hours at an all-night manga kissa until the subways opened up again. Luckily, it was a Saturday.

Another track from the "City Music Tokyo: Junction" that I wrote about back on the 1st is Yoshinori "HARCO" Aoki's(青木慶則) "Night Hike". I hear it as a technopop tune created by the musician from Kanagawa Prefecture but I also get that urban contemporary feeling in the arrangement, too. As well, I enjoy the flowing and mellow keyboard work that gives "Night Hike" a warmth and elegance to something this synthy. 

"Night Hike" may have been introduced me to me via the 2022 compilation album but it originally showed up as the title track to HARCO's 6th album from April 2005. He has had his music career since 1990 but between 1997 and 2017, he primarily used HARCO as his nom de guerre before returning to Yoshinori Aoki since that time. Aoki has also done work on commercial jingles and narration, and his wife is fellow musician Michiko Aoki(青木美智子), aka Quinka, with a Yawn.

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