Seychelles

I discovered the Sadistic Mika Band years ago and loved their sound and heyyy here's the founder with his first solo album, no wonder there's a similar vibe/sound. Sure it may approach or enter cheese status but I love it. The light fusion itself but also that sweet 70s production is perfect - can clearly hear each element. Takanaka's guitar tone is fantastic, as is is playing. Perfectly tasteful. as ever I seem to prefer the non-vocal tracks/sections but even still the language barrier is ever a positive anyways, just serving as a separate instrument. love it 8/10 4 stars IMO: Belonged in book? Guitar hero/legend in Japan and we could have used more eastern representation so Yes.

I've said in previous reviews that Japanese music often falls into the stereotype of taking a genre, stripping it back to its bones and then recreating a perfectly honed version of what that genre could be. The unfortunate counterpoint to that is that sometimes, just sometimes, the result sounds a bit like a pastiche. This does, in places, sound like a pisstake version of euro porn groove. I have to admit, it seldom persists in this, and there's a decent variety of stuff that isn't euro porn groove to keep the attention focused, but given that euro porn groove is of itself a bit cheesy, twee and campy, it's genuinely quite astonishing how Japanesing it takes it further even in that direction too. It's really well produced, the artists involved are clearly talented, and I'm very glad that I've listened to it. I just wish it didn't sound quite so subtly "off" in places.

Very funky, relaxing music. Musically diverse

I am here for every single Takanaka album

Japanese jazz is a thing I really had never experienced before this fan-made list. And it's quickly becoming my favorite genre. Thanks everyone!

First two, and last track are 5s. But for the other tracks, someone hit the ass on the cheek when he called it a "pisstake version of euro porn groove." 4

This was different and interesting to me, so I liked it however only a little bit after I did get slightly bored because not much was happening, however pleasantly surprised.