And here I thought that I had cornered the market on all of those Japanese words meaning "twilight" as I wrote about those twilight songs last year. However, I've found another term: hakumei. And for that I have to thank the good folks at Kirinji（キリンジ）along with Maika Loubté, a half-French half-Japanese singer-songwriter, producer and DJ whose first album came out in 2014.
"Hakumei" happens to be a track on Kirinji's December 2021 15th album "crepuscular", and it's another wonderful example how Takaki Horigome（堀込高樹）can weave together synthpop and City Pop together into a dreamy soundscape of possibility. Loubté also co-wrote the lyrics about a mesmerizing walk/drive around Yokohama at the titular time. I've done that exact thing myself when I was staying in the international port city for one night although the experience wasn't quite as atmospheric; I was rather hungry for dinner in Chinatown.
This is bit of nice change from what I have been listening, to. This feels as if it is some kind of fusion or mixed genre of some short. It is pop but it has a jazzy feel to it and something else I can't describe.
ReplyDeleteKirinji seems to have that ability to make their songs really heavenly spacey but also down-to-earth at the same time...almost like occupying two different spaces at once.
DeleteYou describe it very well 😅
DeleteThat’s the way the Horigome brothers catched me decades earlier. I think it was with the album "Fine" I picked at random in a Book Off store. Their contribution to the Yumi Matsutoya 30th anniversary tribute album, "The Queen's Fellows", with a very personal and powerful version of 曇り空 (search for it in YouTube) also definitively convinced me.
Not my basis too, but they (and now Takaki solo) possess something special that resonates with me, perhaps their sound and a mixed rythm sens as you wrote. And in this recent title, the presence of the French-Japanese Maika Loubté is a great addition to their sound, with her pure voice and excellent french pronunciation (I'm french myself and it's not the case on every japanese song trying to use my langage). This song is classy.
Hello, Stephane. It's been quite the ride for Kirinji and us Kirinji fans over the past quarter century. I was drawn in by the brothers' "Aliens" and then thrilled by their work as a full band in the mid to late 2010s. I was sorry that Kirinji is now a one-man show but I figure that every incarnation has its time and so Takaki is on his own. But even then, he's continued to come out with some great work. I'm now just trying to catch up with their discography between 2000 and the time that the full band formed.
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