My apologies to my less than trusty Google Translation app, but there are only a few things I can describe as legibly belonging in the shared space of Yuki Nakayamate’s Octopussy. Names like Roxy Music, Matia Bazar, August Darnell (as part of Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band and Kid Creole and the Coconuts), and Grace Jones jump out amongst the unreal translations of the original liner notes I scanned. Those are the ones that make sense to me. Others, like those of Masahide Sakuma, Yutaka Mogi, and Kyohei Tsutsumi (writer of countless classic J-Disco cuts) ring true — they were responsible for the bulk of the sound/music here. Ideas from Pecker sound out when I get the reggae-influenced tracks. Octopussy sounds exactly like the cover — cosmopolitan, sexy, intriguing, and utterly beguiling. What was hiding behind Yuki’s shades?
It all began as an idea: create an album that uses the trope of spy films (complete with bombshells) as a means to create a sexier album than was the norm — at least in Japanese Pop, at that moment. Tokyo native Yuki debuted in 1982 as one of famed disco label Casablanca’s first Japanese signings. Taking leave from backing up future City Pop icon Motoharu Sano, it was her time to shine. On the downslope of popularity, Casablanca tried to use Yuki as an entryway into the world New Music (which we now identify as City Pop) and to tap into the growing Japanese Pop market. Her voice, much like Minnie Yoshida’s, owed a great debt to the deeper voiced American soul singers who’d made a huge splash during the first disco diva age. Her career was supposed to fill the void left when Mariya Takeuchi when she married Tats Yamashita, leaving Japan without a stellar crossover Pop and Soul artist.
I believe Yuki had some initial success. A song from her debut got selected as a theme for Japanese television and Casablanca felt they had an artist they could use to promote itself in Japan. A year later, Yuki caught the same bug that seemingly afflicted Kyoko Furuya. Reviving her singer-songwriter chops, Yuki tried to make an album that’s more of her making, one influenced by the Tropical Soul of America.
Enlisting the help of just disbanded Plastics leader Masahide Sakuma and Yutaka Mogi (keyboardist of hugely influential J-Prog band Yonin Bayashi) who seemed to have met before, during the creation of Yonin Bayashi’s NEO-N. It sounded like a weird idea but it seemed like she wanted something towards what Pete Barden’s Camel approximated: a high degree of musicianship for a high degree of quasi-Tropical-influenced songs. Looking at the liner notes, others would join them like Jake Concepcion, Hiroyuki Namba, and Pecker, approximating her own idea of what a Japanese “Savannah Band” could be. If you know those names, you know how right she was to follow her gut.
Splitting the album in two, Octopussy, in a cheeky way gave 4 tracks per figurehead — Masahide Sakuma and Yatuka Mogi — to dive deep into reggae, samba, Italian Pop, going to town, in the span of a “Pop” song. On the “S” side, Mr. Sakuma takes inspiration from Matia Bazar and Donna Summer’s work, kicking off the album with “Ange Blanc” a mix of Italian Electro-Pop and breathy chanteuse Canzone. “3-Trois”, menage-a-trois, brings Pecker in to lay a bit not that far off from his own rasta-inflected albums, difference here being that Masahide doesn’t rescind from those continental European influences as washes of accordion play the role of nimble melodica, mutating the riddim. As the sampled lit cigarette gives away, Yuki laconically meanders behind the beat, coaxing a sultry vibe unlike anything else, matching those Grace Jones comparisons quite nicely.
Huge hints of Sakuma’s future minimalist side wash around the Ambient Pop ballad “The Student’s Pet” full of moonstruck electronic atmosphere that Yuki matches with an equally elegiac vocal — thought’s of Roxy Music’s Avalon, surely begin here. “Secrets (9 to 4)” circles back with a divine creation, taking the swing of Kid Creole and marrying it with the prior’s ambiance, approximating something memorably melancholic. Sad dances, for all…
Yatuka’s side (the “M” of the equation) kicks off a bit less impressively. “Sexy Fingers” is pure New Wave, punky, bounce that plays down to Yuki’s strengths. Luckily, as if he got the right call on the line, Yatuka switches tracks and uses “Silhouette Call” to create a drop dead gorgeous tropical soul ballad that predicts Sade, using Isabelle Antena’s template, or better yet Narada Michael Walden’s own guide posts from Angela Bofill’s albums. Put it simply, it’s funky, it’s sexy, its best played out in the summer (underneath the satin covers) when the pull of its Spanish guitars and light reggae touches those Walearic nights.
“A Top Model” continues with Jake Conception lending some nifty ideas to create a sparkling City Pop stunner. Upbeat and jive-y, it’s the closest they come to touching the swinging soul of classic horn-led American R&B music. Then, who can resist the album’s closer: “Chiquita”. Another, quasi-Tropical Pop song, it finds the mid-point between Min’Yo, Pacific Islander music, Pan Latin, and floating Dub riddims. A duet, “Chiquita” caps off the album on a seemingly more innocent vibe, letting this much longer groove gestate, inviting you to (as Mr. Darnell used to say), appreciate “fresh fruit from foreign places”.