Listening Project Chapter 7

in

We continue the listening project with a flurry of Japanese artists.

Makoto Matsushita was an easy inclusion into the project for me, as his beautiful album First Light (1982) is my favorite city pop album. But he also made three more albums, so I checked them out. The Pressures and Pleasures (1982) and Quiet Skies (1983) were more of the same soft city pop style is First Light, but to me none of their songs reached the same level as most of the songs in First Light, which are pillars of the genre for good reason. In 2019, Matsushita-san released a very different album from his previous work. Called Visions, it is an ambient album. I do like some ambient, but this particular album wasn’t for me, except for the first track “M 31 Andromeda”.

Mariya Takeuchi is the artist behind the legendary “Plastic Love”, the most famous and iconic city pop song. That song is most peoples’ first exposure to the genre, and is a wonderful track. Takeuchi-san has quite a few albums, and while most of the songs therein lean more towards just pop rather than city pop, I found a few gorgeous songs that I love - 3 from Expressions and 2 from Request.

Miki Matsubara is another well-known city pop artist, thanks to her hit “Stay With Me”. But like Mariya Takeuchi and most city pop artists, she has an extensive discography besides. Sadly, she is no longer with us as cancer took her far too soon in 2004, but she left behind plenty of great music. Out of her songs that I’ve added to my library, the most unique is probably “Touhikou”, which has a very dark, almost Bond vibe in the choruses.

microstar is an interesting artist that I don’t really know how to describe, as every album/EP has a different sound. While most of it wasn’t my cup of tea, the album She Got The Blues is where all of the microstar tracks I like come from.

Satoshi Bandoh is a drummer and composer who has played with T-Square since 2004, maintains a solo career, and also played on the soundtracks to Gran Turismo and Mario Kart 8. So basically, everything that’s right up my alley. I’ve known and loved one of his songs as an artist (“Every Moment”) for years, so it was no surprise to me that I found several more to love in his 3-album discography. Funky, modern jazz fusion at its best!

It’s hard to think of an artist that I would be guaranteed to love more than Masahiro Andoh. In addition to being the founding guitarist/composer/leader of T-Square, Andoh-san also wrote some of the soundtracks to the early Gran Turismo games, which were the sound of my youth and one of my biggest musical inspirations. His discography is only two albums, but they are strong albums. Winter Songs is a precious little pearl of joy and warmth.

Akira Jimbo is a drummer who most notably played in the band Casiopea, but he also has an extensive library as a solo artist. For me, while I did really enjoy a few songs, most were tarnished by Akira’s overly-showoffy drumming. It often sounded like I was listening to a drummer performing at a drummer convention, showing off as many hip polyrhythmic fills as he could in order to impress his fellow drummers. Drummers might hear it differently, but to me these constant random fills ruined the groove and never felt like they were serving the music.

TRIX is a newer Japanese jazz fusion band in the same vein as Casiopea and T-Square, formed by former members of those two bands in 2004. After listening to the complete libraries of all three bands, if I had to compare their styles in general terms it would be as follows:

  • Casiopea: Gran Turismo

  • T-Square: Mario Kart

  • TRIX: Sonic the Hedgehog

Especially with the synth patch choices, TRIX got a heavy Sonic vibe going in quite a few tracks. Otherwise, it felt like their sound was somewhere in between Casiopea and T-Square.

Based on how much I love the music of those two bands, you’d think TRIX would be a slam dunk for me. But while the arrangements and playing were just as tight, there was something off about most of TRIX’s library to me. Most of the time it was the mix that felt lifeless to me…bass too quiet and everything above sounding empty and flat. Sometimes it was the melodies, which were often boring, even amateurish. Sometimes it just felt that the band was playing it very safe. Other times it was all of the above. I did find a few songs that had none of those problems and were great listens, and those are now saved in my library alongside the many Casiopea and T-Square songs. But I expected to love a lot more going in. Oh well! We move on.

Previous Chapter | Next Chapter