Off Course - JUNKTION (1985)

It may be undeniable that the word "trial and error" has some negative nuances. That said, there are some experimental things that haven't been done before, or that can only be seen there, and there are sprouting of things that have been established after that, so in that sense it is also the most valuable time. right. This album is just such a work. Released on September 5, 1977. From April of this year, an off-course tour of 5 people including Hitoshi Shimizu, Jiro Oma and Kazuhiko Matsuo has started. In other words, it was a recording that was made between tours. It is also a tour where Kazumasa Oda, who used to play the guitar until then, began to concentrate on the keyboard.
"I had never hit 16 beats by then." Jiro Oma, who participated in the recording for the first time with the single "If you live alone", said so at that time. Originally he started music from the drum and fife corps, and after working for Japanese GS and Beatles, he longed for British rock such as Zeppelin and Deep Purple, and it was also 8-beat rock. Hitoshi Shimizu also said, "He used to play while crying." What can we do with five people? This album is an interesting album where you can listen to the off course just before opening a new door called band sound. The first recording of the five members was the lead single "Autumn Sign".
"A confirmation of the musical width and depth of the off course". Director Toshifumi Muto positions this album as such. 77 years. The times were changing from new folk music to new pop music called city music. Tatsuro Yamashita, who disbanded Sugar Babe, started full-scale activities as a solo and became popular among music lovers, and urban AOR incorporating Boz Scaggs, Crusaders, Michael Franks, jazz and bossa nova began to attract attention. Age. This album is probably the album that Kazumasa Oda and Yasuhiro Suzuki faced with such music. That is not all. The first song, "INVITATION," which decorates the opening of how to give a story to one album, is suitable for such a beginning. The stage of the song is also "Ball". Ports, cruisers, coastal roads, and Hayama. A "changing woman" with a bird's-eye view of the light "scent of the tide" and the tea room on Saturday afternoon. Yasuhiro Suzuki's scene description and AOR's sense as a songwriter are outstanding in this album. "Stealing memories" and "if you are" where the tempo and composition change in one song. And "HERO" which is also the final chapter of the story. The composition that becomes a band sound on the way sounds like singing the off course itself before and after this album. "JUNKTION". Confluence. Transfer station. Perhaps it was the possibility of a new off course that I met on an album that sang such encounters and farewells between men and women.