I've been a fan of Japanese popular music for 40 years, and have managed to collect a lot of material during that time. So I decided I wanted to talk about Showa Era music with like-minded fans. My particular era is the 70s and 80s (thus the "kayo kyoku"). The plus part includes a number of songs and artists from the last 30 years and also the early kayo. So, let's talk about New Music, aidoru, City Pop and enka.
Credits
I would like to give credit where credit is due. Videos are from YouTube and other sources such as NicoNico while Oricon rankings and other information are translated from the Japanese Wikipedia unless noted.
Amaterasu is a name that I've been hearing since I began university in the mid-1980s. I've heard about her in lectures within my Japanese Studies major and read about her in books on religion and mythology in Japan. In Shintoism, she is known as the sun goddess and the mythical ancestor of the Imperial family.
But enough of the professorial lecture from me. This is "Futari no Amaterasu" (The Amaterasu of Two), the latest single by Tomita Lab（富田ラボ）that was released last month, and according to the good folks at the Otomo website, it's "...an urban pop song focusing on the inner workings of people whose days shift under the influence of the weather". Man, considering the weather that Toronto and Tokyo have been wrestling with over the past few days, I'm hoping that our collective inner workings are hanging on for dear life.
With vocals provided by Yo from the duo Natsudaidai (about whom I posted about back in 2024), it's a cute and blippy tune whose modern arrangement may actually hold an old-fashioned melodic vibe of optimistic American sitcom spunk theme tunes, along the lines of "That Girl" and "The Doris Day Show" from the 1960s. Not sure if Tomita Lab had meant it to be so, but that's how I'm taking it. Then as we approach the grand finale, things go all techno jazzy harmony. Maybe "Futari no Amaterasu" should be looking for a cute Japanese rom-com somewhere. While Tomita took care of the music, Sasuke Haraguchi（原口沙輔）provided the lyrics.
We've got some decent weather over the past couple of days and hopefully that means we can actually start dressing for spring. Drivers can finally replace the winter tires.
And on a nice day like today, especially on Urban Contemporary Friday on KKP, we should bring back the Horigome brothers of Kirinji（キリンジ）. This time, I have their 6th single from April 2001, "Good Day Good Bye". To quote the person who came up with the article for the song on J-Wiki: This upbeat song features a lively brass arrangement and a distinctive urban, poppy sound. And indeed, when I listen to it, I can get shades of City Pop and Shibuya-kei at the same time. Lyrically, the song seems to be about life in an idealized metropolis, one with lots of flowers and humour, efficient subways and friendly people that the protagonist would love to strike up a chat with (although he's too busy handing out flyers, probably near the station). Not surprisingly, Tomita Lab（富田ラボ）was the one producing the source album, "3", which came out in November 2000.
The above video is provided by WizArno: A Magical Journey Together, and it's a most detailed tour of what is perhaps the leading drug store chain in Japan, Matsumoto Kiyoshi. It may sound like the name of an enka singer but believe you me, you'll remember it for all of the medicine, medical supplies and cosmetics that you can shake a stick at.
A while back, I posted up an article regarding one of my favourite songs, period, "Like a Queen" by Tomita Lab（富田ラボ）with the sister R&B act Soulhead providing their smooth vocals. If I ever need a pick-me-up that doesn't involve caffeine or alcohol, this is one of the songs.
Well, the original 2005 single of "Like a Queen" did have a coupling song called "PHARMACY", and to be blunt, it's not quite as catchy or epic as the main song. But it's still a Tomita Lab creation so there is still a fair bit to like. At first though, it was a little weird listening to this odd conglomeration of the typical Tomita groovy smoothness and a synth-based reggae rhythm underlying everything. If I'm not mistaken, it's Tomita himself singing the lyrics here although according to the JASRAC database, no lyricist name is given so perhaps he was winging it while recording it. And as we approach the end, I even get some late 1970s Steely Dan feeling. Maybe "PHARMACY" is the type of song to hear while chilling at the most boho cafe in Tokyo.
There's nothing like a Tomita Lab（富田ラボ）arrangement to soothe listeners and let them know that all can be right with the world...that is, as long as the song is playing at least.
I received those cool and warm and fuzzy feelings while listening to "Atatakai Ame" (A Warm Rain) which is a track from his February 2006 album"Shiplaunching", something that I posted about several years ago, but apparently didn't bother putting down the year of release aside from Labels. Bad, J-Canuck, bad!
Composed by Tomita Lab and written by the late Yukihiro Takahashi（高橋幸宏）, who also has his own vocal contribution to "Shiplaunching", that familiar chorus and the strings bring the present and the past in equal measure while Hirokuni Tanaka（田中拡邦）of the band MAMALAID RAG croons comfortably. It almost makes one want to sit outside at a cafe while the rain is coming down...almost. Can't get much smoother than this one.
The above is a very old piece of correspondence to Miss Mellie Ryan that is apparently at the Riley Birthplace and Museum in the state of Indiana, United States. The museum is where 19th-century poet James Whitcomb Riley was born and raised.
I was also born and raised in a time when pen pals were a thing. When I was on the JET Programme between 1989 and 1991, my friends back in Toronto and I exchanged letters on our situations in Japan and Canada. Since it took a week for a letter to get from Japan to Canada, the fastest that I could get a reply to my letter was most likely around three weeks, taking into consideration the time for my friends to write out their end of the correspondence. Things are obviously much more lickety-split now for most people and areas.
Back in 2023, I wrote about relative wunderkind singer-songwriter imase and his "NIGHT DANCER" with its groovy urban contemporary feeling. I liked it so much that I even went out on a limb and predicted that he would end up on the Kohaku Utagassen before too long. Well, I'm still waiting for that Nostradamus wish to come true but until then, I discovered that he and Japanese pop legend Yumi Matsutoya（松任谷由実）collaborated on a song together which came out in the last couple of weeks at the end of May.
"Buntsuu"(Correspondence) is a song about a couple of people getting to know each other through some form of the title and hoping that they can do a face-to-face in the near future. With both Yuming（ユーミン）and imase also working on words and music together, it's a lovely duet that has had some commenters noting that it's a mix of the old kayo kyoku (or perhaps New Music of Yumi Arai's time) and current J-Pop. I can also hear some of that bossa nova, a genre that Yuming has known for quite a long time since "Ano Hi ni Kaeritai"（あの日にかえりたい）. Plus the laidback groove was rolled out by Tomita Lab（富田ラボ）in the arrangement and he's quite the expert at that. I remember Yuming and Tomita Lab collaborating on something themselves a couple of decades earlier.
My growing knowledge of Kirinji（キリンジ）is still an ongoing project. Although it is currently just Takaki Horigome（堀込高樹）minding the store, I remember when it was a full-fledged band not too long ago with some spacy upbeat delights and then much further back at the entry point of the 21st century, when it was simply the duo consisting of Takaki and his brother Yasuyuki（堀込泰行）giving out some of the most wonderful soulful ballads such as "Aliens".
Of course, I'm a huge fan of Kirinji, no matter the era and style of their music, and so is fellow contributor HRLE92. We communicated recently and he's been rather busy with his own academic pursuits but he was able to let me know of one of his favourites by the Horigomes, and that is the first song on their 8th single"Drifter/Taiyo to Venus"（太陽とヴィーナス...The Sun and Venus）, released in July 2001, not too long after "Aliens".
Written, composed and arranged by the Horigomes along with Keiichi Tomita's（冨田恵一）help on arrangement, "Drifter" starts off with a piano rhythm that feels like it's introducing a couple of old buddies in a retirement home going over old times, and then it slips into that familiar smooth blanket-swaddling Kirinji and Tomita balladry from their early years. From the title, I had initially assumed that it was about a lonely soul going through life, never sticking around one place or one person for long before moving on, but then looking at the lyrics, I realized that it was about a couple trying their best to hold onto each other during tempting turbulent times.
Reaching No. 43 on Oricon, the single's two main songs also ended up on Kirinji's November 2001 album"Fine".
I've already done my two articles for today but I just had to do one more because it is an Author's Pick that I'd been letting stew in my brain for a little while. Approximately a decade ago, I posted a similar article titled "Happy Songs for Me (for International Happiness Day)" on occasion of the annual March 20th tribute to all things happy. I realized that there were a number of songs already posted on the blog that simply made me happy each and every time I listened to them and so all those endorphins were flowing around like cars in the Indianapolis 500.
At the same time, I also recognized that there were other songs that not only provided an emotional high to me but also got me moving in my chair...not particularly easy considering a man of my mass and for that matter, a man of my often stoic temperament. But indeed, those tunes actually got me to dance...after a fashion. As such, I opted to put up my own list of tunes that have gotten me to shimmy. When I did a bit of research for this article, I found that there is such a day as International Dance Day but that's all the way ahead on April 29th. I'm not quite willing to wait that long.
So, without further ado, here is my list of up-and-at-'em tunes. As with the "Happy Songs" article, I've left out the years from Labels since that part of the article would have exceeded the limit of twenty and anyways, the years can be included easily enough beside the singer and the title.
I believe I've given my opinions on each of the songs but allow me to add some more for each song. Knowing that there was basically no way that "TOWN" would be played at the Tokyo Olympics (especially since the song was actually more about New York City), but if it had been devoted to Japan's capital city, the music video would have had the buildings and the populace get into one massive dance party. It can almost...not quite, but almost...get me to play air guitar near the end.
Dancing?! I don't need to dance to the well-titled "Sugar Time" to have a great time. All I need to do is jump all over the place. Whenever I listen to this fun fest, I always envisage Bobby Van's amazing sequence from the movie "Small Town Girl" released in 1953. Play "Sugar Time" and the Van dance while muting the latter. You'll lose a kilogram!
I do my best air drums when I hear Carl Smoky Ishii and company blast this one out the headphone speakers. And then if I'm really in a mood, I even try to emulate the K2C dancers on stage (I make sure no one's home).
I usually just repeatedly shift my weight to this technopop tune but my overactive mind envisions this being a battle and a dance simultaneously on the level and magnificence of the fights in the very first "Matrix" movie which was a mere two years after the source album "cure" had been released. It could be the background music for a fighting manga brought to life. And when the composer is the legendary Ryuichi Sakamoto（坂本龍一）...well, quality guaranteed.
When you link back to the original article, you'll notice that I only supplied one paragraph to this song, something that I haven't done in years. However, it really is the song that can give the oomph compared to anything that I could put down in prose. Some great samba beats by Mondo Grosso and some lovely vocals by Bird to get me doing my own line dance. I'm sure any concert performances of "Life" would have the audience frenetically dancing to theirs.
Once you get past the technopop intro, it's all wonderfully soulful brass and bass and disco strings and the Sawayama sisters. Yep, this is another one to get the blood pumping and the shoulders shimmying all over the place. Of course, I encourage you to be more ambitious in the movements.
Honestly speaking, I had to include both of these songs which come from Kirinji's heavy rotation 2018 album"Ai wo aru dake, Subete"（愛をあるだけ、すべて）. I mean, I probably would have included a few more tracks but I didn't want to go overboard. Of course, "Jikan ga nai" is the finest example of SALARYWAVE that I've seen especially with that section chief tripping the light fantastic on the disco floor in the music video. And then with "Hi Zero Wa Game", I never thought that I could dance to a Doobie Brothers-like arrangement but here we are. The concert performance videos are splendid but I wonder what a conceptual music video would have looked like.
I've enjoyed these and even burned some calories to them. How about you? Any danceable kayo kyoku out there?
I have to admit that I hadn't known what my ears were getting into as the first thirty seconds of "Yasashii Tetsugaku" (A Gentle Philosophy) were getting under way. A bouncing then galloping electro rhythm followed by strings and then French horns. I knew that Tomita Lab（富田ラボ）and Ringo Shiina（椎名林檎）were the collaborators so I was expecting something distinct and certainly those thirty seconds were slowly raising expectations within me.
Then, the guitars and keyboards that reminded me of 1970s progressive rock and West Coast AOR simultaneously crashed right in. The rest of "Yasashii Tetsugaku" rises and falls in level of intrigue although the overall song is solid as I get to hear Shiina sing something that's not jazzy or supremely techno for the first time in a while. Tomita Lab took care of the melody while Shiina was the lyricist for this track from the former's 4th album"Joyous" from October 2013.
As for what this gentle philosophy is, looking at Shiina's lyrics, I get hints of the Force, Zen and the need to work together to reach that Nirvana.
Now that we are on the cusp of Thanksgiving here in Canada and Sports Day in Japan, it might be difficult to think of the summer and the beach, but I'm sure that there are still some folks who want to head out to places like Shonan (as pictured above) to frolic one more before the weather gets really chilly.
Maybe the young fun ladies from the music duo Natsudaidai can help out in this matter. The video for their "Dusky Dolphin" has singer Yo and trackmaker Nanae spending a fine summer day out by the surf. That titular dolphin must be the best dancer on the water considering how Yo trips the light fantastic with her vocals while Nanae's music is having the funkiest time out there, even throwing in some of those Delphinidae squeaks.
Yo and Nanae started up Natsudaidai in 2023 and their music has been described on J-Wave as some girls' chill pop. "Dusky Dolphin" is included as one track on the duo's first EP"Seikaten"（青果店...Greengrocer） which was released in August this year. I read that it was produced by Tomita Lab（富田ラボ）although I think "Dusky Dolphin" also feels like Mondo Grosso music from twenty years ago.
"Futago-za Graffiti" is City Pop's sunnyside progressive form extending the path laid down by Sugar Babe, Original Love and Kenji Ozawa（小沢健二）. It splendidly inherits the genes of "Downtown" via the groovy sound of that clavinet, but at the same time, its lyrical world is clearly in Kirinji's（キリンジ）21st-century court. It's the cool answer to the question "What is progressive City Pop?".
The above comes from "Disc Collection Japanese City Pop Revised" (2020).
This is going to be another entry in Yutaka Kimura Speaks within the next few weeks, so let's get on this one right now. Perhaps it's kinda weird but when it comes to how I see the beginnings of the great group Kirinji（キリンジ）, I always go to their romantic ballad "Aliens"（エイリアンズ）from 2000. Not only is it because it was the first time I'd heard of Yasuyuki and Takaki Horigome（堀込泰行・堀込高樹）, but the song itself made such an impact on me.
But of course, Kirinji fans know that the initial duo began life in 1996 with their two indies singles coming out in 1997 followed by their first major single being released in August 1998. That was "Futago-za Graffiti"(Gemini Graffiti) which was also placed in their debut album"Paper Drivers' Music"（ペイパードライヴァーズミュージック）that hit the record store shelves a couple of months after the single.
I've sometimes mentioned that it's always interesting to go back to the early days of a long-running singer or band to listen to how they sounded back in the day. And with "Futago-za Graffiti", which was written and composed by Yasuyuki with Tomita Lab（富田ラボ）handling the arrangement, the song seems like something from the Original Love basket thanks to the smart horns and the sunny groove. In fact, I'd say that the only difference is that it isn't the lonesome cowboy soulful voice of Takao Tajima（田島貴男） behind the mike but the early fresh-faced vocals of one of the Horigome boys. Not sure if the girl of the protagonist's dreams is a Gemini but he's head-over-heels in love with the lass to the extent that no Hollywood or Broadway producer is capable of writing their story.
Several years ago, I wrote about one other track from "Paper Drivers' Music", "New Town", which has a bit more of the 70s soul vibe.
Over the course of "Kayo Kyoku Plus", I've done articles on albums featuring tracks and sometimes I've felt that some of those tracks deserved their own articles because I liked them so much. So, there was a bit of regret in there.
However, in one case, I'm going to rectify that today. Back in 2018, I featured the 2006 album"Shiplaunching" by Tomita Lab（富田ラボ）and on that album, there was R&B sister duo SOULHEAD and their contribution "Like a Queen". With Tomita Lab taking care of the melody and legend Minako Yoshida（吉田美奈子）handling the lyrics, aside from that slightly odd New Wave intro, "Like a Queen" truly rides in like a most gorgeous queen with the wonderful harmonies of Yoshika and Tsugumi Sawayama backed by a gosh-darn fine funky orchestra of strings and horns. It's the type of song that I love to hear whenever I've gone through a hard day.
Another reason that I'm doing a follow-up on "Like a Queen" is that the even more improved music video with the full version of the song has popped up once more on YouTube. Still retaining its theme of transportation in the big city, instead of the gold car from the 1970s, this time, the focus is on a young lady commuting through one fantastical and rhythm-accurate neighbourhood while upgrading her mode of transportation. Considering our mess of transportation systems here in Toronto, the lass has my envy and desire of shimmying to the music.
Hope your summer is getting off to a good start. We in most of North America are in that temporal corridor between Canada Day and the Fourth of July which possibly translates into cross-border tourism. I don't know about weather in other places but things are actually a little cool here in Toronto which will gain a lot of envy from the folks in Japan who are now sweltering slightly earlier than usual.
"Uta Con"（うたコン）was back on as scheduled and the theme this time around was songs used in the semi-annual Koshien High School Baseball Championships since the summer version will be coming up within the next number of weeks. However, after all that was done, some of the remaining guests appeared to do some of their old favourites and new songs.
One act was the rock and soul duo Magokoro Brothers（真心ブラザーズ）. Several years ago, I covered their 12th single from April 1995, "Summer Nude"（サマーヌード）, which was a tune that I accepted right off the bat because of its cool funkiness and a sound that reminded me of Original Love and, though I didn't mention them in that article, Flying Kids, too. Well, Hidetoshi Sakurai（桜井秀俊）and Yoichi "YO-KING" Kuramochi（倉持陽一）were on the show to do what has become their "Summer Nude" 2.0, so to speak.
Apparently, a couple of years later following the release of the original single, the two of them realized that as wonderful as the original "Summer Nude" was, perhaps it had been rushed out a little too quickly and that it needed some further proper polish. So, they brought in songwriter and arranger CHOKKAKU and what everyone got was an even more oomphed-up version now known as "Endless Summer Nude" as their 17th single in July 1997. And man, does it have even more brassiness! Time to twist on the sands there. It hit significantly higher on Oricon than its ancestor by coming in at No. 41 and it's a track on Magokoro Brothers' 7th album"I Will Survive" from April 1998 which ranked in at No. 7.
Sounds like "Endless Summer Nude" was so infectious that it got its remix covers with one being by Tomita Lab（冨田ラボ）which he provided as the first track on "Magokoro Covers"（真心COVERS）, a tribute album of their songs done by other artists. That was released in September 2004 with a No. 25 ranking. The Tomita Lab sound goes quite well with this particular song especially. In fact, it's quite amazing when I look at the long line of cover versions on J-Wiki.
Considering what I've seen in the lyrics of this song, I couldn't help but think of the BBC/Amazon production of the show "Good Omens" with David Tennant and Michael Sheen. Incidentally, I am looking forward to seeing Tennant as the good Doctor again in a couple of months' time.
It was exactly a month ago that I posted the groovy "Natsu no Ghost"（夏の亡霊）, a collaboration between Tomita Lab（冨田ラボ）and Kirinji（キリンジ）as a part of the former's "WORKS BEST 2 〜beautiful songs to remember〜" album which came out a few months ago in June. Well today, I'm including another track here as the Lab's joint production with singer-songwriter TENDRE.
Having gone through TENDRE's lyrics in "Take That!", I haven't been able to understand them in full clarity but it seems that someone is undergoing an existential crisis which involves a certain dread of the future. As the cute video above makes clear, a devil and an angel are having their battles over and around the poor fellow. Still, Tomita Lab's music is jolly funky as well and it even includes an old-fashioned 1980s orchestra hit. Also, my compliments to the harmonious chorus by Hanah Spring and Meg.
With the O-Bon holidays arriving in Japan (despite all of the meteorological tempest being thrown upon the nation), families are getting together, festivals are being held and ghost stories are chilling listeners. Perhaps this is the first normal summer in terms of traditional activities there in four years.
Those two masters of the contemporary urban groove, Tomita Lab（冨田ラボ）and Kirinji（キリンジ）, are back together once more, and they've been collaborating regularly perhaps ever since the latter's "Aliens" in 2000. This time around, they released a digital single at the end of April this year titled "Natsu no Ghost" (Summer Ghost).
With words by Yukinojo Mori（森雪之丞）and music by Tomita Lab with Takaki Horigome（堀込高樹）behind the mike, this is an interesting twist on the summer ghost story. For one thing of course, with Tomita Lab and Kirinji cooperating, listeners are not going to get the usual scary music with a Theremin. It's gonna be groovy pop and the story concerns a ghost who may or may not be a woman's former lover still hanging about her surroundings and spouting some fancy stuff such as a Chilean Chardonnay, a walk through a marché, and even a cheap Cabernet. The only frightening thing here is the ghost's rising jealousy as he suspects that the woman may have gotten a new guy. Furthermore, I was struck by one line in "Natsu no Ghost" where the ghost puts out what he calls the paradox of him having no value unless there is unhappiness in her.
Tomita's music is always reassuring and comforting and this time there's a bit more romance in there, so the song is about as far as one can get from the typical supernatural tale. I thought that it was also a great idea to film the music video in Vietnam, a former French colony, where a woman played by Sakura Motoyama is walking the streets and sitting around, perhaps thinking about her past, present and future. I'm glad that the producers didn't opt to have a ghostly presence follow her.
"Natsu no Ghost" is one of the tracks on Tomita Lab's latest album"WORKS BEST 2 〜beautiful songs to remember〜" which was released in June.
Even when calling a town a town, it's so Kirinji（キリンジ）to not take into consideration a town or neighbourhood within the nation's capital but a community within the suburbs. I've been unexpectedly taken aback with the precision and vividness of the detailed depiction of things like "public housing", "bypasses" and "sports car looking like masks". Those who are isolated from the centre of things may suffer quietly from alienation and loneliness but hope springs eternal within this beautiful melody.
The above comes from "Disc Collection Japanese City Pop Revised" (2020).
The lyrics for the song of this article had me pondering about the ideal town to live in. And as such, I threw this question into the Google search engine: Where is the happiest town in the world? Well, as of April 2023, the answer is Tampere, Finland. The above video, by the way, was uploaded five years ago by YouTuber Honest Guide.
Considering some of the urban woes that my home city of Toronto is suffering right now: rising crime, moribund downtown life, long-delayed construction and repair projects being undertaken in one big mass, etc., I have thought about where a nice town to reside would be. In the province of Ontario, the university city of Kingston a couple of hours' drive away has been indicated. But wouldn't that be the thing? Happy industrious citizens, booming economy with a plethora of interesting shops and restaurants, safe and clean streets and the whole ball of wax.
I really have to stop assuming that amazing music unit Kirinji's（キリンジ）early works were all about the love balladry, just from the moving "Aliens"（エイリアンズ）. That was my introduction to Takaki and Yasuyuki Horigome （堀込高樹・泰行）and it's been a grand journey so far. But this particular song by the Horigome brothers had actually been released as their 4th single in April 2000, half a year before "Aliens" came out.
"Good Day Good Bye" is an uptempo song that was created by the Horigomes with Tomita Lab（冨田ラボ）helping them out in the arrangement as well. And it's one of those scrumptious songs that I don't think is that easy to categorize in one Label. I hear some Motown and Shibuya-kei (some Santana and even Chicago thrown in there?) in this tune that seems to describe the eccentric but fun antics in an ideal town. The wonderful thing is that I've discovered another splendidly catchy Kirinji song.
The video featuring the brothers along with a heartbroken customer, a café owner and his lone waitress looks like it had been created in the 1980s. It's a very sumptuous video for me because I've always appreciated those Mom-and-Pop coffee houses in Tokyo with the owners whipping up the home-cooked dishes by themselves. And I've had some lovely tuna salad sandwiches over the years in one particular establishment. I didn't exactly have the staff pull off a dance suddenly in the middle of the place, though. Incidentally, the single peaked at No. 54 on Oricon.
A Happy Good Friday to you! Yup, it's a long weekend here in Canada so while things are still chilly outside, at least the sun is out brilliantly.
Starting off Urban Contemporary Friday from a weird angle, I recollect that I saw Stanley Kubrick's classic "2001: A Space Odyssey" in its entirety only once. There were a number of noteworthy scenes including the title sequence with "Also sprach Zarathustra", the appearance of the massive spiral space station, HAL 9000, and that final mind-altering sequence featuring Dr. Bowman's evolution into the Starchild. The one chilling scene was seeing HAL murder Dr. Poole and throwing him into the celestial abyss (no worries, though...he gets better in the novel "3001: The Final Odyssey").
Watching the relaxing music video for Tomita Lab's（冨田ラボ）April 2021 digital single"MAP for LOVE", I couldn't help but feel that this could have been the perfect song and fate for good ol' Dr. Poole...he somehow gets thrown into an alternate universe over Tokyo in the year 2021 (mind you, he seems to have an even better future in the year 3001). As for the song itself, "MAP for LOVE" is basically a get-together of the Tomita Family in the recording booth. Written by Ryuta Tsunoda（角田隆太）of the band Mononkul（ものんくる）and Ryohu from KANDYTOWN, both of whom had a hand in Tomita Lab's 2018 album"M-P-C 'Mentality, Physicality, Computer'" and composed by the Lab himself, there are no fewer than nine singers behind the microphone: the aforementioned Ryohu, singer/seiyuu Maaya Sakamoto（坂本真綾）, guitarist Ryosuke Nagaoka（長岡亮介）of R&B band PETROLZ, Kento Nagatsuka（長塚健斗）of WONK, Naz, Bird, Sakura Fujiwara（藤原さくら）, Yasuyuki Horigome（堀込泰行）of Kirinji（キリンジ）, and Mononkul vocalist Sara Yoshida（吉田沙良）, all of whom have collaborated with the producer in the past.
All of the Arthur C. Clarke comparisons aside though, "MAP for LOVE" is a sweet and breezy romantic soul ballad about being connected by love no matter the distance whether it be in kilometres or light-years. My apologies but I'm going to have bring in another motion picture here. There's something about the story that reminds me of "Sleepless in Seattle" with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan...and the crazy thing is that I read on Wikipedia that Hanks had once been interested in adapting "3001: The Final Odyssey" for the big screen.
Finishing up last week on Part 2of Tomita Lab's（冨田ラボ）2018 album"M-P-C 'Mentality, Physicality, Computer", we have here the third and final part covering the remainder of his concept of the above three features being indispensable for 21st-century society thus far. As mentioned, all of the melodies have been provided by Tomita himself.
Strings so tender that you can have them with Worcestershire sauce greet the ears in "Interlude 2" once again with KANDYTOWN 's Ryohu as your congenial host singing about the ever-present dream, you and me.
Singer-songwriter Tavito Nanao（七尾旅人）lends his lyrics and silky and chocolatey vocals to "rain on you". It's a gently undulating pop piano piece about the rain perhaps a triggering bittersweet memory of a past romance. I really do like the combination of strings and piano here along with the background chorus. If I ever decide to write out an article on a rain theme, "rain on you" is more than welcome to join the list.
The band Mononkul（モノンクル）comes in with "Yuruyakana Doku"（緩やかな毒...Slow Poison）. Bassist Ryuta Tsunoda（角田隆太）wrote the lyrics about the so-called slow poison of love as the protagonist seems to be "succumbing" to the charms of the other whose voice repeatedly plays out in the head, and probably vice versa as well. Meanwhile, vocalist Sara Yoshida（吉田沙良）gives a soft and haunting account of the affair.
"Outroduction" with Ryohu finishes up "MPC" as a pretty lively funk-hop hinting melodically at some of the early 70s cop movie soundtracks such as "Shaft". It also references back to Track 2 (aka the title track) that was described in Part 1, but instead of the analog vs. the digital there, Ryohu gives a laidback warning about the choice between love and all of the other temptations out there in society including money. Being a realist in this century, I think a combination of everything would be fine. By the way, the album peaked at No. 72 on Oricon.
Last week, I provided an article on Part 1 of Tomita Lab's（冨田ラボ）2018 album"M-P-C 'Mentality, Physicality, Computer'", and so far, from him and his collaborators, it's been some a mixture of R&B, hip-hop and even a bit of synthpop. All music is by the Lab himself.
I guess with the overall concept of what life is like in early 21st-century Japan, there will be a couple of interludes. "Interlude 1" which is officially Track 5 is another cooperative effort between Ryohu of KANDYTOWN and Tomita that has disco and rap as the former gives his patter about making that first step going into the big city for what might be a terrifyingly exhilarating night. Looking in the liner notes, I gotta say that I never expected a couple of clarinet players alongside the horns helping out here.
Track 6 is "Let It Ride" which I already wrote about and the link to that song can be found in Part 1, so let's go over to the soulful "OCEAN" featuring Naz, aka Nazu Yamada（山田なづ）, an Okinawan R&B singer. With lyrics by Lori Fine of COLDFEET, Naz delivers a pleasingly smooth and smoky performance about suddenly finding joy, reassurance and power. Her website is currently out of commission but her Facebook and Twitter accounts are still open.
One more track is "POOLSIDEDELIC" featuring singer-songwriter and guitarist Rei. With lyrics by Jun Kamoda（鴨田潤）, aka hip-hop musician Illreme（イルリメ）, I'm not quite sure which part of R&B this track belongs to, but the percussion is snazzy. Lyrically, there seems to be an Agatha Christie novel's worth of suspense and intrigue surrounding one recreational pool. In any case, I will wrap up "M-P-C" with Part 3 next week.
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