Asami Kado -- Ko Ro Ku

 

Several days ago, a commenter asked me if I had done anything on Asami Kado's（門あさ美）"Anti Fleur" yet, and I had to confess that my answer was in the negative. But allow me to rectify.

The commenter made his inquiry on my most recent Kado article which had been posted back in late June, and that was for "Koko ni Iru no"（ここにいるの）,  a track that originated from her 10th and final album to date, "La Fleur Bleue" from 1988. The album was produced by Yellow Magic Orchestra's Yukihiro Takahashi（高橋幸宏）with him also handling all the arrangement of the songs,

"Anti Fleur" was the previous 9th album from April 1987 which managed to score a No. 21 ranking on Oricon. It was also produced and arranged by Takahashi, and I guess in a way, Kado was as much a collaborator/protégé of the YMO drummer as Taeko Ohnuki（大貫妙子）had been with YMO's Ryuichi Sakamoto（坂本龍一）in the early 1980s and Miharu Koshi（コシミハル）had been with YMO's Haruomi Hosono（細野晴臣）considering the dramatic change in sound of the singers under their aegis.

With "Anti Fleur", while Takahashi did his thing, Kado took care of the entire songwriting of all of the tracks, one of which was "Ko Ro Ku". I have no idea what the title is on about although when I put in the relevant hiragana into the dictionaries, I only got one definition of it referring to a right-pocket quiver that had been used from the Nara period onwards. As for the music and vocals, "Ko Ro Ku" strikes me as this very appealingly quirky pop which reminds me of those Ohnuki/Sakamoto collaborations, although "Ko Ro Ku" doesn't have any overt techno bleeps or bloops in there. Kado's voice also goes quite high much like her contemporaries Ohnuki and Koshi during their YMO associations (well, Ohnuki always possessed a high voice).