Music / rock

Pacific breeze : Japanese city pop, AOR and boogie 1976-1986


Reviews (1)


Pitchfork

d. 20. May 2019

By

By

Jullian Mapes

d. 20. May 2019

"This compilation of extra smooth, funky, and sometimes very odd songs from the heydey of Japan's technological boom is a broad yet nuanced introduction to the genre of city pop ... In the mid-2000s, at a listening station in one of Tokyo's sprawling Tower stores, Andy Cabic, frontman of folk-rockers Vetiver and one of the curators ... first stumbled upon city pop. Nearly a decade and a half later, the moment seems primed for this style of music, which despite a lack of official releases available stateside, spread online and helped inspire the internet-obsessed genre vaporwave. As nameless, faceless, genreless "vibe" muzak proliferate online, city pop might just be a kind of ground zero. But the version of city pop heard on Pacific Breeze plays up its more experimental side, via forays into exotica and cutting-edge electronics".