Mebae Miyahara: Portfolio (1986)

Now, I finally feel that we’re ready for an album like Mebae Miyahara’s Port･fo･lio. But first a huge thanks to Giacomo Lee for sharing it with me and, by extension, with us. Full of wonderfully gorgeous, lilting tropical techno-pop, Port･fo･lio should instantly remind you of all those artists you might have heard in the recent Walearic mixes I shared. There is a sound to Mebae Miyahara’s music and it’s steeped in the music of Moonriders, and their quiet production work for others like Steve Hiett. Another sound to Mebae Miyahara’s Port･fo･lio is the sound of sorely underrated Japanese dance-pop group PSY･S of who a few sometime members contributed to this work. Not to be left behind is some magical atmosphere played by someone from the Zabadak crew, filling in as a studio wunderkind. A spiritual music kin might also be Tabo’s Project Eyes Of A Child. At the core of this music, though, is the sorely unheralded work of singer-songwriter Mebae Miyahara.

Born in Fukuoka but raised in Tokyo, Mebae’s musical career began, while attending high school in the late ‘70s, as lead singer and frontwoman for タイニーパンプス (otherwise known as Tiny Pumps). In Tiny Pumps, Mebae was the precocious singer fronting a deeply heavy funk and boogie rock unit. In the course of two years and two albums she went from some degree of notoriety to a flawed flop of a debut. Going solo, and going Pop, she turned her beginnings as a rock ‘n roll strummer into something a major label, Warner Brothers, could promote. Perhaps due to her naivety, 1981’s Cats wasn’t quite the catch her label expected and with no backing to promote it, Mebae’s solo career was nonexistent for nearly half a decade. Nevertheless, she persisted.

Mebae, would go on to befriend and assist Shibuya acts like Pink Tank, Rebecca, Zabadak and Kei Ogura as lyricist and composer to a few memorable tracks. Another love of hers, writing (poetic and literary) and drawing, kept her afloat in what could have been her time out to musical pasture. Finally, 1986 rolled around, and she had enough pull to get re-signed to another record label.

At Polydor, Mebae enlisted the help of Moonrider keyboardist (and sometime producer) Tohru Okada to help her flesh out new influences she had developed as a guitarist. Influenced by the sounds of Brazil, the whispery singing of Gallic pop, and the tropical-lilting music of Nile Rodgers production, Mebae believed she finally found a style that could fit her to the tee. Tohru himself rounded a crew of session musicians to tweak those ideas far enough that they could stand on their own, as their own.

On Port･fo･lio, Mebae captures the feeling coursing naturally within the Japan at that time. A product of the generation who had listened to City Pop, who had digested AOR and new school R&B, it was the sound of a newer generation already fomenting forward, towards the next vista. One wouldn’t be hard pressed to hear Madonna’s Like A Prayer as a signpost to what Mebae hoped to capture. Perhaps it was the sound of a grown woman who was able to speak with far more sophistication and with far more resolve, to whatever the varied ideas she had going inside of her.

You could dance and sway to a lot of what you’ll hear Port･fo･lio, but a lot of it also had mixed emotions, dipped in saudade that might have spoken to Mebae’s attempt to reconcile far more personal things. Whatever it was speaking to, Port･fo･lio, spoke to a flowering sophistication that Mebae afforded her crew to dig deep into.

Much like Yukako Hayase’s 躁鬱 So・Utsu, Port･fo･lio couched quite varied, instant moods in deeply different, worldly-looking touches. “昔みたい” is a perfect placeholder for what I mean. On that track, gorgeous tropical jazz that flounders in between the bossa nova electro-pop of Antena finds another gear to expand into epic torch balladry you could quite easily dance too (or sob too), depending on the mood you hit it on. “月の影” takes sampled sound and sublime Latin-tinged arrangements by ex-Zabadak, Takao Abe, into the exact point where romantic ambient Pop and sand-sifting funk can both tread the same water. “Good Night” on the flip side, uses light, dub techniques to enhance a different, beefy slice of seductive soul, this time of a jazzy kind. Even minimal, modal pop songs like “蛾” have their way of sounding so unlike anything else here, yet meet you (via atmosphere) to the core of what the whole album seems to be about.

Rather than cover every song, I would hope you go back to songs like “黄昏ばかり” and feel the gorgeous, Abbey Road-like vibes, special vibes Moonriders (on occasion) could reach. Then, try to put in the frame of this being, the wonderful panoramic vision of one artist who literally needed the right characters to match her scope. Better yet, take this album out for a sunny Sunday afternoon drive…then see where it takes you. Albums like these deserve their time and their space. Again, what better time than now?

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