When Yasuaki Shimizu’s Mariah split up their story appeared to end there. Marica’s Jellyfish 海月 proves that Mariah was just a small part of the bigger slice of Japanese Pop music these same members created, that still merits rediscovery. Produced by ex-Mariah members Masanori Sasaji, Jimmy Murakawa, and Morio Watanabe, Jellyfish 海月 finds vocal jazz artist Marica Hiraga exploring the experimental pop aesthetics of Grace Jones, Laurie Anderson, and other big beat, worldly-influenced artists. Showing overt glimpses of quite contemporary sounding production techniques, Marica’s Jellyfish 海月 is a deep, dark-ish, collection of woke, Japanese Pop.
Marica Hiraga didn’t just turn overnight into a skylarking avant pop singer. Her beginnings lie truly in jazz music. Much like Lisa Ono, Marica came to fame by being one of the country’s eminent bossa nova singers. As a young singer in Tokyo, Marica would be drawn and put her focus on singing American soul music. Ella Fitzgerald, was a huge, early influence and one that would remain (vocally) in her raspy, breathy, tone.
After winning various television and radio jazz singing competitions, in 1984, she debuted as a professional artist, performing a duet album with fellow urban jazz vocalist Mikio Masuda. Twilight, showed her attempting to enter the same middle ground of heady J-Soul music that Minako Yoshida had threaded through. On that album, contemporary smooth jazz and radio-friendly MPB-influenced also sneaked through.
On her debut, 1987’s That’s My Style, as some astute YouTube commenter noted, the influence of next-wave, New Wave vocalists like fellow label mate Yasuko Agawa and Isabelle Antena started to creep in. Drawn to the sophisticated soul of artists like Sade and Anita Baker, she enlisted the help of ex-Mariah keyboardist Masanori Sasaji to help mature her sound. What came out was something approximating the electro-samba and acid-jazz fusion music that would become the rave, later on in the late ‘80s. You could tell there was something special brewing for the next one, though.
Masanori Sasaji had for a time been specializing in reinventing artists who were looking for that change. The list is long: Tomoko Aran, Marlene, Pierre Barouh, Yumi Seino, Rie Murakami, Naomi Akimoto, Yumi Murata and Mami Koyama. All of these musicians might have trafficked in “Pop” but if you dig deep, in their albums, you hear a lot of the same twisty avant leanings his previous band Mariah only briefly touched on.
By the time of Marica’s sophomore release, Jellyfish 海月, Masanori was now an in-demand arranger expected to produce radio hits. The years of producing an album like Yumi’s “Face to Face” had dried up to churning out more overground material. However, Marica likely demanded something special for Jellyfish 海月. For the first time, in what seemed like forever, Masanori rounded up nearly all the members of Utakata No Hibi-era Mariah (Yasuaki and Julie Fowell must have missed the voicemail?) to come together on this project.
Much more muscular than much of the Japanese Pop out there at the time, Jellyfish 海月 seemed to be an outgrowth of the ideas created in Jimmy Murakawa’s own Original De-Motion Picture. I don’t think I would be wrong to say that electro (samba and minimalist), maybe Peter Gabriel’s Melt, post-punk, and nocturnal urban soul music was supplying the current sparking these recording sessions. A song like the opener “扉 (Tobira)” written by Morio and Jimmy seeming like another lily pad on the same pond “心臓の扉 Shinzo No Tobira” floated around. This was urban soul like Marica requested but one more in tune with the grimier one being experimented with in America’s inner cities.
If you’ve heard Prince’s Sign o’ the Times you can also hear various similarities to it here. Both share this knowing, minimalist production that tries to amplify a “dangerous” feeling and both have periods where they open up briefly to early, paisley-tinted psychedelic music as a means to not completely leave you in the dark, from the world.
On songs like “Dangerous” in between Ella-like swing jazz you hear Masanori inject all sorts of wayward noise and samples that make the song far more unsettling that it seems, on first listen. For it to segue so perfectly into the sublime electro-samba of “Astrud” makes one take pause and realize that they’re not trying to remove Marica’s roots in jazz music. Amplifying what you can do with that swing on songs like “Meteorite Rain” they momentarily let the skeletal rhythms set the mood, only to have Marica swoop in and knock the song into a stunning torch ballad with one foot in dramatic opera and another in Afro-Caribbean musical experimentation. The Grace Jones comparisons begin here for a reason.
A stunning album, that sorely left Marica a bit to far out on a limb, still yields other hidden gems. Release a single like “Angel In The Night” on American urban radio and instantly you have a Quiet Storm staple. The “Jumping Without Thinking” adds brilliant Kate Bush-like Avant Pop movement. “くらげ (Kurage)” makes no mistake of drowning out Marica over its sonic maelstrom, as particularly knotty song grows itself, organically into its shape. You don’t realize this until the album ends, but Marica remains the star of this whole story, understanding exactly what the grind was building itself to. Is this a testament to the ex-Mariah boys? Partly. But it’s Marica’s vision ‘til the end.