V/A: Pacific Breeze - Japanese City Pop, AOR & Boogie 1976-1986 (2LP, blue vinyl) [LIGHT IN THE ATTIC]

Why you'll love it

This 2LP set on blue vinyl comes with an obi, printed inner sleeves and a fold-out booklet of notes and artist bios. It was the third volume of Light in the Attic's Japan Archival Series, wrapped in Hiroshi Nagai's sun-drenched cover art.

This edition

• 2LP set
• Blue vinyl
• Obi strip
• Fold-out booklet with notes and bios
• Printed inner sleeves

About the album

Between 1976 and 1986, Japan's best songwriters and session players built a sound as glossy as the cities they lived in. City pop mixed American AOR, jazz-funk, disco and boogie with Japanese melody, and forty years later streaming turned it into a worldwide obsession. Andy Cabic, Zach Cowie, Yosuke Kitazawa, Dublab founder Mark McNeill and Matt Sullivan dug through the era for 16 tracks that play like a perfectly sequenced mixtape.

Haruomi Hosono's "Sports Men" bounces along on bright synths, Taeko Ohnuki's "Kusuri Wo Takusan" and Minako Yoshida's "Midnight Driver" glide, and guitar hero Masayoshi Takanaka turns up with "Bamboo Vender." Yukihiro Takahashi's "Drip Dry Eyes," Yasuko Agawa's "L.A. Night" and Hitomi Tohyama's "Exotic Yokogao" keep the windows down. Shigeru Suzuki's "Lady Pink Panther" and Hiroshi Satoh's "Say Goodbye" show off the session-player chops behind the genre, F.O.E. bring the funk on "In My Jungle," and Dave Cooley remastered the lot.

PopMatters called it the perfect soundtrack for a sunny day off with the ocean breeze in your hair. We can supply the record; the breeze, in our case, comes off Lake Ontario.

Also at Kops: more Pacific Breeze on vinyl · browse World

Tracklist

Listen

On Light in the Attic (cat# LITA 163), a reissue of the 2019 compilation.