Back to Yuji Ohno by request in The Night (1979) with Koji Ishizaka

  

Here's one of my Xmas presents to myself, a gorgeous, heavy cardboard eminently solid LP in near mint condition both externally and vinylly [ouch]-- altogether just beautiful to behold and rare enough that there isn't usually more than one copy for sale if at all at any one time both outside and inside of Japan. And of course someone in requesting it made me aware of it.

I've covered Yuji Ohno exhaustively, starting with Jimmy Dean and the Inugami soundtrack, followed by Silent Dialogue and then Chu Kosaku, which was also requested.  His music in the earliest days was enjoyably funky with some progressive thrown in for us hungry dogs but later atrophied to purely soundtrack / easy listening generic orchestral banality with totally by-the-numbers chord changes.  Accordingly, this album from 1979 is primarily the latter but does have some funkishness on display.

Regarding Koji Ishizaka, who, it's important to note, recites either poems or stories above the music on every track except the final one, wikipedia-Japan's page says:

Koji Ishizaka (Koji Ishizaka, 1941 (1941) June 20 -), the Japan of the actor - entertainer , emcee , painter , writer , translator , lyricist , narrator is. From October 2015 belong to Production Oguri . Real name, Mutsuyoshi Muto (Mutual Heiichi). My nickname is Militia.  Stage name derived from the best friend Mayumi Ozora is their favorite writer Yojiro Ishizaka and actor Koji Tsuruta due to be named by borrowing from each. According to Mr. Ishizaka himself still playing in real name TBS 's TV producer Ishii Fukuko was advised to rename, it is said that the stone' s name of the stone ("It is said to have taken a stone" of Ishii Fukuko) It was decided to " Ishizaka Koji " also because the father of the expanse was making a surname check .

And Google Translate shows us once again how the magic of artificial intelligence aka robots and their 'deep learning / neural nets' will soon replace us all with their eerily human-like abilities of translation which are clearly indistinguishable from a real human being.  I love how The Great Google 'translated' the year 1941 into (1941).  That kind of thing is just priceless.  Can't wait to hear those robot musicians create some artificial fusion too though I have a feeling it will be better than some of the 80s stuff I've posted here.  Two more things I'd like to point out: why is the computer program so confused by the alternating first person and third person "it" subject in this article, a mistake which no human would ever make--ever, and how did that AI program unwittingly compose a poem in the middle section:

His stage name due to be named by borrowing from each
According to mr. Ishizaka himself still playing in real name 
TV producer Ishii Fukuko was advised to rename
it is said at the stone's name of the stone 
"It is said to have taken a stone" --of Ishii Fukuko--
and it was decided to " Ishizaka Koji " also-- 
because the father of the expanse 
was making --the surname check...


Wow. "The father of the expanse was making the surname check."
Reboot that robot.

On the inside you will note multiple photos of the man, the stone's name of the stone, plus the spoken passages written out.  I doubt they are as beautiful as the wild google translate's wiki page.  But I might be wrong.  If you add up the scans I did you'll notice there's an odd number (that is if you're astute enough), and the reason is because behind the beautiful colour photo of the stone's name there is a beautiful blank white page I didn't bother to reproduce.

The most funky track is called Jealousy:





This is definitely the classic Ohno we love so much.  As I said, the last track, which is totally generic soundtrack, does have (female) vocals, it's called Lost and Alone:





More Xmas presents shortly.