Another curious tidbit is that the 12' immediately following Anju is the only cover that doesn't feature the titular model, but instead a woodcut. It's possible that she acted as sort of muse. In fact, Anju is the title of another Tomo 12' from 1985, so did these two share a close relationship? It's possible, but for some reason I can't imagine this attractive woman going for the kind of guy who self-produces his own synthesizer records to complete obscurity.

Who is this girl that appears on all the cover art? Her name shows up on the back cover as Rena Anju, credited as model. This stuff is moody, languid, brilliant minimal synth/New-Romantic music - possibly the pinnacle of it's certain sector in the genre.Ī certain mystery develops when one really enjoys these records too. Becoming hooked on the song, I eventually moved past that sort of tongue-in-cheek nostalgia-loving and developed a full-on love of Akikawabaya's records. The corny New-Romantic conviction in Tomo's voice as he delivers the fantasy-themed lyrics of Diamond strangely affected me, drawing me in to his no-doubt mirrored and fog-machined world. Now confident that what I was hearing was a crooning dude, I began to really enjoy this Akikawabaya stuff. When I eventually obtained 1985, I played it first at 45 and it confirmed my suspicions.

I thought it must have been either a mistake, a guest vocalist, or a woman with a hell of a deep voice. Being not entirely proficient in determining the gender of some Japanese names, I had assumed it was some synthy dance-pop with female vocals, so you can imagine my surprise when I finally heard the song Mars on YouTube. didn't add to my eBay watch-list) the works of Tomo Akikawabaya for a while, mostly due to the kinda cheesy covers (all featuring the same 80s-lady), but the huge prices they were fetching weren't helping to catch my interest either. Some of you might have already heard the A-side to this fantastic single over at the Habit of Sex tumblr (which I hope all of you are following), but I thought I'd post it here at SD because #1 - it would be a little bit redundant to post it on HOS, and #2 - you wanna hear the B-side, right?

Ryuichi sakamoto b2 unit blogspot