Kuniko Yamada – Tetsugaku Shiyo
From 山田邦子 ‎- セカンド – 贅沢者 
Released on Victor, 1982, Japan

Our first dancefloor-friendly post in a while is a classy Japanese synthpop track by Kuniko Yamada. Kuniko has a long career of humorist,comedian, actress, and writer behind her but she also found the time to record 2 albums in 1982, which mainly contain comedy songs… However, some of the tracks are produced by Haruomi Hosono and Ryuichi Sakamoto (who are legendary members of the also legendary Japanese electropop band Yellow Magic Orchestra, but you may already know about this…).

We chose to upload Tetsugaku Shiyo from her 2nd album. Produced by Haruomi Hosono, it is a very well crafted synth/techno pop tune, featuring a super heavy baseline and this particular kind of female vocal which was somehow hype in the 1980’s in Japan. Kuniko shows a unique way of singing; sometimes sounding like lecutring poetry, rapping or mimicking  pop idol’s way of singing with great skill.

This track is still not well-known but we bet this is one of he best « Haruomi Hosono–produced female synthpop tune », the same musical corpus than Chiemi Manabe‘s classic Untotooku… Definitively worth checking !