Pacific breeze 2 : Japanese city pop, AOR and boogie 1972-1986

"Far to cool to admit your love for yacht rock? With "Pacific Breeze 2" you can scratch that shiny AOR itch, safe in the knowledge that the sockless loafer-wearers won't have a clue who Yu Imai is. More's the pity. His buffed-to-a-sheen "Kindaichi Kosuke Nishi E Iku" is three minutes of dream-pop disco, its ethereal keyboards and yearning strings mixing with a touch of Yellow Magic Orchestra to remind you this is most definitely retro Japan in full sail ... This volume finds a meeting point between the post-war exotica craze and the precision-drilled musicianship and production values of an era when The Land Of The Rising Sun soared into place as one of the world's economic superpowers".

"After the jazz, Latin and chanson crazes that impacted Japan on either side of World War II, the folk rock and psychedelic scenes of the '60s and '70s gave way to "City Pop", the local excursions into album-oriented rock mirroring the economic boom experienced from the mid-'70s to the mid-'80s. Following on from the success of an inaugural compilation exploring the genre, this second volume unearths another 16 prime examples of the form. Thus, sometime Roxy Music stage cohorts The Sadistics give a tongue-in-cheek reading of captal hipsters on "Tokyo Taste", and Keisuke Yamamoto's band Piper offers the breathless funk of "Hot Sand". Stevie Wonder's pals, Bread & Butter, draw from the Crosby, Stills & Nash harmony approach on "Pink Shadow", and future Yellow Magic Orchestra polymath Haroumi Hosono often hovers in the background. In short: cringeoworthy, bright and addictive".