STUTS & Taeko Onuki - Ohayō (おはよう)

Its always refreshing to know that older artist you grew up listening to still have "the sauce", and they can still turn out great music years later. It's kind of like seeing an old friend years later and knowing that he's doing great in life. That's kinda' how I felt after hearing Taeko Ohnuki's voice in the new song "Ohayo"( (おはよう) / Good Moring).

Produced and arranged by the artist STUTS, Ohayo feels like the perfect marriage between Ohnuki's 70s sophisticated jazz sound and the modern indie/ lo-fi vibe that us chronically online folks have grown accustomed to. We even get a relaxing music video accompanying the song, which I gotta say, this is probably the best music video I've seen for a City Pop song, ever. 

We follow a day in the life of nameless woman as she runs her motorcycle garage, located somewhere what looks to be Kamakura, Kanagawa Prefecture (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong). We even gets some lovely shots of Enoshima Island in the background as she rides her own bike down the highway as she greets all her neighbors throughout the peaceful coastal town. We even gets some cameos from SPUTS and Ohnuki scattered throughout the video. 

I've never heard of STUTS before this song, but after exploring some of his other work, he seems to be a really good producer. The Nagoya born musician really excels at creating a nostalgic sound clearly influenced by 90s hip hop, House, and R&B. I think any Nujabes fans will gravitate forwards this guy real well. 

If you want to get a good sense of his style, I'd recommended checking out his Tiny Desk concert.

 Overall I think Ohayo is the perfect marriage of old & new and show cases both artists strengths very well. I think anyone who misses the easy listening quality of Taeko Ohnuki's music and those who are on the search fore more beats to study to will both be satisfied. 

Momoe Yamaguchi -- Harukaze no Itazura（春風のいたずら）

Amazon.jp

This Momoe Yamaguchi（山口百恵）song was recommended to me by a commenter a few days ago and it turns out to be her fourth single that I hadn't known about. "Harukaze no Itazura" (Spring Wind Mischief) which was released in March 1974 arrived between a couple of arguably more well-known hits by the famed 70s aidoru and actress, "Kinjirareta Asobi"（禁じられた遊び）from November 1973 and "Hito Natsu no Keiken"（ひと夏経験）from November 1974.

As with those two songs, "Harukaze no Itazura" was written by Kazuya Senke（千家和也）and composed by Shunichi Tokura（都倉俊一）. The arrangement by Shunichi Makaino（馬飼野俊一）was reflective of what Momoe's early material sounded like: light and bouncy kayo paired with her younger and higher-pitched vocals. It's all about a young girl who's gotten so distraught after a fight with the boyfriend that she's gotten lost somewhere in the big cruel city while a cold spring wind is blowing. If Momoe's late-career persona of jaded mankiller ever saw this lass, she would have either taken her under her wing or perhaps given her a sneer and internally told her to dry up.

"Harukaze no Itazura" reached No. 11 on Oricon and ended up as the 85th-ranked single for 1974. The song was also included on her 3rd studio album "Juu-go Sai no Tehma ~ Momoe no Kisetsu"（15歳のテーマ 百恵の季節...Theme of 15 Years Old ~ Momoe's Season） which came out in April 1974 and reached No. 7 on the album charts.

Wink -- Manatsu no Tremolo（真夏のトレモロ）

From YouTube

I'd been noticing it for a while but the Labels on the right had been showing 1,990 articles under the Aidoru tag. Well then, I decided (having that little bit of whimsy inside me) that the next article regarding an aidoru wouldn't only be the 1991st article but also an article about an aidoru with a song from the year 1991.

Well, when I think of aidoru from 1991, my first thought will always concoct the duo Wink. And sure enough, I found their 11th single from June of that year, "Manatsu no Tremolo" (Midsummer Tremolo). It's a song that I hadn't heard in so long and yet when I made my reacquaintance with it yesterday, the memories came back and I gave myself a Gibbs slap for forgetting about it in the first place.

First off, I'm not a musicologist or a musician, so I had to find out what a tremolo is. According to Wikipedia:

Tremolo: "trembling" or "quivering". In music, it describes a wavering effect created either by repeating a single note very quickly, rapidly alternating between two different notes, or quickly varying the volume of a sound.

Now, as to how a tremolo fits into a Wink single, I'm not sure. Perhaps Neko Oikawa's（及川眠子）lyrics refer to a young lady quivering herself over some sort of love affair. Takashi Kudo's（工藤崇）melody with Satoshi Kadokura's（門倉聡）arrangement is right along the Wink formula of synth-heavy Eurobeat (although I could use a confirmation or denial on whether "Manatsu no Tremolo" would be considered Eurobeat), and again I'm not sure if any tremolo effect had been employed in the music. 

The music video above was also one of a number of such Wink videos that employed a ton of computer graphics. The effects company staffers probably didn't have to worry about their kids' tuition for college during the Wink heyday. In any case, "Manatsu no Tremolo" hit No. 2 on Oricon, going Gold. By the end of 1991, the song was the 63rd-ranked single of the year. It was also placed as a track on Wink's 6th album "Queen of Love" which was released in July that same year.

Masahiro Kuwana -- Limelight（ライム・ライト）

From Rakuten

Just by coincidence, I noticed that yesterday would have been singer-songwriter Masahiro Kuwana's（桑名正博）73rd birthday. Unfortunately though, the native of Osaka had passed away at the age of 59 in 2012 from heart failure.

I came across this track from his 5th album titled "Kuwana No. 5" from June 1979. "Limelight" is a cool and strutting number that has been classified as blues-rock and I can also throw in City Pop and New Music into the mix. With lyrics by Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆）, "Limelight" was composed by Kuwana while its arrangement was handled by the singer and Canadian-American composer and arranger David Campbell. Noting how TOTO-like the song felt, I tried to search whether Campbell had anything to do with the legendary American band. I couldn't find anything definitive but the man has worked with artists on both sides of the Pacific including X Japan, Chika Ueda（上田知華）, Jackson Browne and Carole King.

Anri -- Sentimental Express

 

When it comes to Anri's（杏里）albums, I've devoted articles to them such as her 1981 "Kanashimi no Kujaku" （哀しみの孔雀）and her 1988 "Boogie Woogie Mainland". And then there are times when I cover individual tracks from an album through individual articles over many years. I think her "Mystique" from June 1986 is one such example and I'm going with the most updated version with the bonus tracks from 2011. Thus far, I've done "Innocent Time", "Morning Squall/Evening Rain"（モーニング スコール）and "Honeymoon Shuttle"（蜜月船）. 

From what I've read of "Mystique" on J-Wiki (which peaked at No. 6 on Oricon), it seems as if Anri had wanted to once more have a clean slate with a new album with help from new songwriters and new sounds, without any assistance from Toshiki Kadomatsu（角松敏生）who had been producing and writing for her for several years prior. In a way, it reminds me of the aforementioned "Kanashimi no Kujaku" which was also quite a different project for Anri which involved her trying out different things there as well.

I have here her second track from "Mystique", "Sentimental Express". And although this is not a Kadomatsu-penned number per se, it is still City Pop with that crystalline synth, boppy bass, a good bouncy rhythm and a nice battery of horns. What's interesting is that "Sentimental Express" may have been the first collaboration among composer Anri, lyricist Yumi Yoshimoto（吉本由美）and arranger Yasuharu Ogura（小倉泰治）. Getting into Japan in 1989, it became a tradition for me to buy up new Anri albums at the CD shops. Starting with "Boogie Woogie Mainland", I saw that songwriting triangle of Anri, Yoshimoto and Ogura becoming the main engine behind the next few albums of hers leading from the late 80s into the early 90s as the singer adopted more American R&B dance pop. If "Sentimental Express" had been an audition of sorts for Yoshimoto and Ogura, then they passed swimmingly.

Crest Four Singers -- Elise

 

I still don't know a lot about the vocal group Crest Four Singers aside from the fact that they had started out in the 1970s with Tsunehiro/Norihiro Uchida（内田典宏）as a folk/Mood Kayo group before female vocalist Kazumi Kaai（かあいかずみ）joined. Then, the group went more into the jazz and urban contemporary.

At this point, Crest Four Singers released two albums with their debut being the 1978 "The Crest Four Singers" (the definite article, you might say? Sorry, that was a "Doctor Who" joke), and I've yet to hear the entire album (as provided above) but it seems as if the group was fully in thrall to their jazzier side by this point. At 4:15 of the video is the second track, "Elise", a rum punch of a song with influences that seemingly fly in from Santana, Henry Mancini and disco. Kaai shapes her vocals like a seen-it-all and done-it-all heiress in the lap of luxury while Uchida and the rest of the Singers provide some French in some funky harmony. Listening to the coolness of "Elise", I just kinda wonder why I never heard about Crest Four Singers at the same frequency of fellow vocal acts Hi-Fi Set and Circus.

Michiru Kojima -- Haruka naru Rakuen（遥かなる楽園）

 

For some reason, YouTube's "kojima michiru -- Topic" placed this song and album as 1996 productions when they actually come from the year (September) 1986. But to be honest, listening to the cool and crystalline "Haruka naru Rakuen" (Distant Paradise), I probably would have believed the 1996 dating. There's just something about the certain synths or other keyboards in the song that also has me thinking the 1990s.

But let's not stray from my observation that this is a pretty good tune by Michiru Kojima（児島未散）. Written by Chiroru Yaho（谷穂ちろる）and composed by Masaki Matsubara（松原正樹）with Ichizo Seo（瀬尾一三）as arranger, I was hovering between City Pop and regular pop for at least half the song until certain urbane chords punched their way through and that saxophone at the end finally convinced me that we had another City Pop tune. I guess on the pop side of things, we can consider "Haruka naru Rakuen" a pop tune of sophistication. Incidentally, this song belongs to the album "Michille".