TASOGARE

ABOUT THIS ALBUM

Released in 1980, Tasogare was Mai Yamane’s debut album and also an important early production project for guitarist and arranger Makoto Matsushita. Matsushita arranged the entire record, and its combination of mellow AOR, jazz-funk, bluesy vocal phrasing, and clean urban groove already points toward the studio language he would develop more fully on his own FIRST LIGHT. Yamane’s voice gives the album a different weight, however: darker, rougher, and more blues-rooted than many of the lighter female vocals associated with later city pop. The title track establishes that contrast immediately, while “City Drive” moves into a sharper urban groove and “Wave” slows the record into a deeply mellow, spacious atmosphere. Fujimaru Yoshino contributed composition to “Get Away,” connecting the sessions with the wider network of musicians who would shape Japanese AOR and fusion in the early eighties. Tasogare is therefore valuable not just as a rediscovered city-pop title but as a document of musicians and production ideas crossing between rock, fusion, AOR, and vocal pop before those categories had settled into fixed identities.