If it’s comfort week for me, it’s more music comfort for y’all. And it doesn’t get any more comfortable than Yasuko Agawa’s (aka Miss A) Dancing Lovers’ Nite. On the surface, far from being the jazzy/soulful Japanese pop music she’s much more known for, somewhere, lay something hidden: a fascinating, heart-pumping stab at taking her strengths into a different kind of underground.
It’s not me to introduce Yasuko’s biography into the world. For those sleeping under a rock, it’s Yasuko Agawa’s scorching hot rendition of Light Of The World’s “London Town” as her “L.A. Night” that instantly pencils in whatever history I’ll fail to sketch out. A totemic single in Japanese R&B, “L.A. Night” and the album it came from, 1984’s Gravy crowned her as the de facto queen of her homeland’s soul-jazz vocal scene. After 6 years of trying to find her footing as a singer, this one-time actress finally found a way to split from the “standards” and poor pop market and set off on her own trailblazing path.
From then on Yasuko’s sprawling work further branched out. Toying with latin jazz a year later, reimagining pop standards as boogie monsters, or taking the torch to soulful quiet storm ballads, from Tokyo to Hollywood, Yasuko held court in every shoreline. So one might wonder what in the world possessed Yasuko to take a left turn into the (seemingly) alien world of Yann Tomita.
1989 was a long time removed from Mr. Tomita’s more known work in the Doopees and little removed from his self-released space age music. Ever the oddball in Japanese music, Yann was perhaps more known then for his quietly successful sojourn as session musician. Whether working with jazz guitarist Hiroki Miyano or banging out numbers with J-idol Kyoko Koizumi, somewhere in all the music that spans the gamut of this gulf (and beyond), listeners could instantly hear his vibraphone calling card calling his name. However, as for letting him take the whole reins of a project, the last person you’d imagine letting him do so would be Yasuko. Perhaps Yasuko knew better than anyone did.
Whether with the Toshio Nakanishi’s Melon Group or Seiko Itoh, Yann was responsible for a new fork in Japanese music. Sometime in the mid ‘80s as the rise of hip hop shifted American urban music, so too did Yann (ever the experimental head) take it upon himself to bring that influence into Japanese music. By 1986 or so, it was Yann who had introduced totemic singles like Seiko Itoh’s “Body Blow” into the culture and in doing so signal a shift away from the smoother, increasingly dated sound favored by new music aficionados. If Yasuko tapped Yann to helm this project it was because in him she saw the curve of the next transformative shape of pop music.
1989’s Dancing Lovers’ Nite is gloriously straight to the point. It was a love letter to the burgeoning dance culture. Adopting the moniker “Miss A”, Yasuko would shapeshift, acting as acid jazz muse, singing as house diva, blazing through dancehall burners, or fuzzing through ambient techno or sashaying through a new jack swing. If Yann was tasked to moonlight in his most sophisticated role yet, Yasuko would take their golden selection of covers through the prism of hard-earned maturity to match his hidden strengths.
Every trick in the book would not be spared. Yasuko and Yann would split time recording in studios strun in Tokyo and Hollywood. Longtime friend Tetsu Hoshika would rejoin as producer, bringing everything he learned since producing her iconic Gravy and helping steer Marica into her own bracing new direction. Shooting down the laser beam into the first track, a reimagining of Boz Scaggs “Low Down”, Dancing Lovers’ Nite rarely lets up.
Diana Ross & the Supremes’ “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me” is acid-showered with drippy, drippy house-love. Smokey’s “Ooo Baby Baby” positively booms with their proto-trip-hop experimentation. Yann’s magic takes Jesse Dixon’s gospel soul ballad “You Bring The Sun Out” into the land of Jamaica, dubbing-out a classic into new lovers’ realms that only Yasuko’s wonderfully mature voice could take.
Then, before you know it two quick tracks — one a high-energy, pumping house reimagining of the original boss’s “Stop In The Name Of Love” and the other a twinkly come down to Eartha Kitt’s “Santa Baby” — whisk you away. What else can I say? Dancing Lovers’ Nite remains a pleasant surprise, still surprising, to the very end.