Ichiko Hashimoto – D.P.
From Ichiko Hashimoto – Vivant
Released on Polydor, 1986, Japan

This beautiful lady is not your average good-looking J-pop singer, Ichiko Hashimoto is instead one of the most emblematic figures from the Japanese  experimental New Wave scene, releasing, alongside Atsuo Fujimoto, one of the most famous albums on Better Days, Colored Music.

Two years after her – now – classic album, Beauty, Ichiko Hashimoto released Vivant on Polydor, showcasing her great vocal abilities on neo-classical influenced tunes, as well as on this crazy proto-something oddball, D.P.

As a matter of fact, D.P. is the only song on the album written by both Hashimoto and her former partner from Colored Music, Atsuo Fujimoto, and that’s no surprise : indeed, this song definitively sounds like a sequel to the experimentations from the landmark album with its arpegiator and agressive drum machine sequence backing some more organic parts played on piano and saxophone ! . So… you know… if you dug the classic Better Days album…