OPCELL -- Kanashimi wa Honesty（哀しみはオネスティー）

 

"Y'know, J-Canuck...you could've looked at the album a little more closely..."

Yeah, that's me talking to myself and giving myself the Agent Gibbs smack upside the back of my head right now. When I posted the first article on 90s band OPCELL, I mentioned that leader and singer-songwriter Kantaro Yamamoto（山本寛太郎）had changed his name to the stage name of Ken Ranmiya （KEN 蘭宮）, although I also placed an asterisk on my observation since I hadn't been 100% sure about how true that was; the name sounded awfully awkward. Well, as it turned out, if I had looked at the album cover with a bit more of a lens, I would have noticed that there was the name Ken Lang and 「蘭宮」can be pronounced as "ran-gu" and romanized into Lang. So, mystery solved.

Well, yesterday I provided an article for Yamamoto's "Jumping High Way", so I have decided to post something from the later part of his career when he and his friends keyboardist Yasuyuki Honda（本田恭之）and engineer/sound designer Tsuyoshi Inoue（井上剛）got together to form OPCELL in 1995. I'd done pretty much the same thing after posting a Yamamoto song last year when I put up the first OPCELL song onto the blog, "Hikari kara no Travel"（光からのトラベル）from their self-titled album.

"Hikari kara no Travel" is quite the dreamy track, almost taking things into synthpop although I left it as simply pop but this track, "Kanashimi wa Honesty" (Sadness is Honesty), sounds like something from Yamamoto's old days in the late 1970s and early 1980s but given that 1990s arrangement in terms of the keyboards and percussion. It's quite the car-friendly bouncy tune but still with some of that dreamy haze that was also in "Hikara kara no Travel".

OPCELL -- Hikari kara no Travel（光からのトラベル）

 

Yesterday during the usual Friday Urban Contemporary stuff on "Kayo Kyoku Plus", I introduced singer-songwriter Kantaro Yamamoto（山本寛太郎）who had his own solo career from the late 1970s into the early 1980s.

Well, he took a hiatus for several years, but then into the 1990s, he formed the pop group OPCELL which brought in keyboardist Yasuyuki Honda（本田恭之）and engineer/sound designer Tsuyoshi Inoue（井上剛）. Yamamoto himself changed his name to Ken Ranmiya*（KEN 蘭宮）for the purposes of the band, and in January 1995, OPCELL released their one and only self-titled album. According to the J-Wiki writeup for the group, they were known for their nostalgic but fresh sound.

Tower Records noted that the cover for "OPCELL" was illustrated by the Hiroshi Nagai（永井博）and that the album was a City Pop release. I've listened to a few of the tracks thus far but I don't think that I can agree on that point. If anything, the band gets closer to a Being sound of the 1990s along the lines of DEEN with some added unique sounds by Inoue. The opening track, "Hikari kara no Travel" (Travel from the Light), in fact, strikes me as being in the realm of dream pop or indies. But no complaints here; the album does stand out considering the time of the decade in which Tetsuya Komuro（小室哲哉）was dominating the period with his music and cadre of stars.

Following the OPCELL project, keyboardist Honda became part of the band face to ace. I'm not sure what became of Inoue although at the time of the production of "OPCELL", he was working as a recording engineer in New York City. Meanwhile, Yamamoto/Ranmiya is currently living in his native Shizuoka Prefecture where he runs a fishing lure company...and it's apparently called OPCELL (or Clinch Lure). Personally, I kinda thought that the name would have fit the name of Tom Clancy's latest Special Forces team.

*Not 100% sure of the pronunciation of the name. Also, OPCELL did put up their own YouTube channel a few years ago.

August 25th 2024: Ahh....that asterisked name mystery is solved.