Review Summary: Feel that Ocean Breeze.
Toshiki Kadomatsu has had one of the more interesting careers when compared to his City Pop contemporaries like Tatsuro Yama***a, Anri and Momoko Kikuchi. Starting his career in 1981 with the breezy, sunny and summery Sea Breeze, The next five years would see Kadomatsu indulging himself in the maximalist sounds that City Pop had to offer. The peak of the rising star's power however, came with the release of his 1984 album After 5 Clash, an absolute monster of a pop record filled to the brim with walls of synths, ungodly amounts of slap bass and a focus on the aesthetics of Japanese nightlife. After releasing six studio albums and a swathe of singles in this style, Kadomatsu decided to take an artistic risk, and what a risk it was. In 1987 Kadomatsu released Sea Is A Lady, a record I consider to be not only one of the best Japanese albums of the 80s, but one of the best albums from the 80s as a whole.
Abandoning vocals altogether, Kadomatsu decided to focus entirely on his guitar playing, hiring legendary Japanese fusion band CASIOPEA as his backing band for the project. While this album uses very sparse vocal melodies and harmonies scattered throughout, the instrumentals contained on Sea Is A Lady ooze style, atmosphere, and still maintain an emphasis on catchiness. Opening with Sea Line “Eri” after a brief intro, the listener is greeted with a brief guitar lick before a wash of synths, bass, and drums explode into the mix. A complete polar opposite of the sound found on After 5 Clash, Sea Is A Lady is bubbly, tropical and extremely euphoric. As the song expands to include a guitar and trumpet solo before fading into summery glory, track 2 Night Sight of Port Island “Midori” continues the momentum and throws the listener into an absolutely filthy groove. With one of the catchiest hooks on the album and a rip roaring saxophone solo, the song is easily one of Sea Is A Lady’s best. With CASIOPEA adding technicality behind Kadomatsu’s playing, the marriage of City Pop sensibility and virtuosic fusion had never sounded better.
While the album maintains a consistently bouncy and energetic atmosphere, tracks like Sea Song “Naomi” and Lovin You “Sawako” serve to give the listener time to breathe, embracing more synth based textures and stacked background vocal harmonies. Sunset of Micro Beach “Satoko”, incorporating the maximalist tendencies of the energetic tracks, has beautiful guitar and string passages that, while grand, remains the best slow song on the record. The album then continues to provide masterful jazz fusion banger after banger until the album concludes. Highlights of the last leg of the album include the monstrously technical rhythmic switch-ups in Oshi-Tao-***ai “Kaori Oso” , the literal bass guitar battle in The Bass Battle “Chako” and the beautiful main melody in Midsummer Drivin “Reiko”.
The crown jewel of this album however, belongs to the behemoth track that is 52nd Street “Akiko”. Clocking in at almost six minutes, the song is the longest on the record and deservedly so. Starting off with an iconic Synth Bass line, the song piles layer upon layer of sounds together as the track progresses, ending off with easily the best guitar solo on the album. The solo, filled to the brim with not only the melodicism that Kadomatsu was known for, also showed that the pop star could hang with the Japanese Fusion Scene’s best.
Selling more copies than After 5 Clash, Sea Is A Lady was an unprecedented success for Kadomatsu. The success of the record actually led to a direct sequel, 1990’s Legacy of You, which while not as impressive as its predecessor, still cemented itself as a decent fusion album. Sea Is A Lady remains one of the boldest sound switch ups from any artist, and is a must listen album in the world of City Pop. So go ahead, drive to the beach with Mr. Kadomatsu, and feel that ocean breeze.
