Akiko Yano - Tadaima

Japan Record, 1981
EX/EX

Akiko Yano's experimentation with synthpop in the early 80s in quite the experience. Sakamoto is on production duties and you can be sure the spirit of YMO is alive and well here, but with Yano we've a popstar savant who is able to move the whole thing into a space beyond what YMO were doing. This is showier, glossier, hiding elements of the avant garde in plain sight. In that sense, the comparisons that have been made with Kate Bush aren't just sonic (i wonder who was watching who?). The current fascination with Japanese music of that era is bordering on fetish, and there is a Western tendency to 'other' the Japanese voice and Eastern pop variants regardless of what they actually sound like. That ackowledged, I will say that this is undeniably eccentric and like so little of what we might traditionally understand as pop music while still retaining that same sense of extrovertism central to what makes pop POP.

This is the original Japanese press, never available in Europe. A collectors item (at a non-collectors price, may i add) no question.