![]() There is nothing about Bossa Nova 2001 that is not Shibuya-kei in the extreme. While songs on earlier (and later) P5 albums often sound like sample collages moreso than conventionally-assembled pop music, the sole representation of that particular style to be found on Bossa Nova sticks out like a sore thumb – the incessant repetition of “ Sophisticated Catchy” may live up to the second half of its title, but the suggestion of sophistication seems more like a bitterly ironic joke than anything else. Relying less on sampled instrumentation than previous releases, Bossa Nova 2001‘s clean pop sound allowed it to spawn the group’s biggest hit in “Sweet Soul Revue” (embedded above), and Maki Nomiya’s vocals had never sounded brighter than on its 16 sparkling tracks. The difference that the addition of Oyamada to the production lineup made to the final product is hardly a case of night and day, but it certainly allowed for Bossa Nova to represent a step up in production quality from previous P5 releases. Previous Pizzicato Five releases had all been produced by the band’s rotating cast of players (which included, at one time, Original Love frontman Takao Tajima), but on Bossa Nova the group took their flirtation with Oyamada – who had previously been featured in the “ Tout va bien” promo clip - all the way to home plate. Although the origins of the style we now know as Shibuya-kei can be traced back to the late 1980s (with acts like Original Love and the first incarnation of Pizzicato Five serving as the prototype), it is worth considering that the actual phrase itself wasn’t coined until the early ’90s – and that, despite Flipper’s Guitar being considered as the first Shibuya-kei group by many, the duo of Kenji Ozawa and Keigo Oyamada had already broken up before people were even calling their music “Shibuya-kei.” In this sense, Pizzicato Five’s Bossa Nova 2001, released in 1993, represents one of the earliest essential examples of Shibuya-kei as a musical movement with a name and defined ideology – and, as such, no attempt at forming a Shibuya-kei canon would be complete without it.Īlthough he would later come into his own as a solo artist, in the early ’90s Keigo “Cornelius” Oyamada was most content to work his magic behind the scenes, lending his talents as a producer to pop releases from Kyoko Koizumi and his then-girlfriend Kahimi Karie, but his most famous production work from this period came with his contribution to the elder Shibuya-kei group Pizzicato Five’s Bossa Nova 2001. ![]()
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