Light In The Attic’s Pacific Breeze 2: Japanese City Pop, AOR & Boogie 1972 – 1986 spotlights the sonic development and diversity of a style that often feels reduced to an aesthetic or algorithmically-assisted curiosity.

When Light In The Attic released Pacific Breeze: Japanese City Pop, AOR & Boogie 1976-1986 in 2019, it was the first collection of its kind to be released outside Japan. It proved to be just what music fans had been waiting for—a compilation of sought-after tracks that had been nearly impossible to obtain unless you were well-connected with dealers and collectors, or traveled regularly to the countless record stores in Japan. 

Pacific Breeze included Minako Yoshida, Taeko Ohnuki, Hiroshi Sato and Haruomi Hosono among other key players of ‘70s-’80s Japanese City Pop, the nebulous genre that encompassed an “amalgam of AOR, R&B, jazz fusion, funk, boogie and disco, all a touch dizzy with tropical euphoria,” as we described it the first time around.

With Pacific Breeze 2: Japanese City Pop, AOR & Boogie 1972-1986 we dig deeper into those sounds of bubble-era Japan. From the proto-City Pop funk of Bread & Butter and Eiichi Ohtaki to the crate-digger favorites Eri Ohno and Piper, the latest entry in Light In The Attic’s Japan Archival Series brings another set of sought-after tunes, most of which have never before been available outside of Japan. Tomoko Aran and Anri, also included in this compilation, are just a few of the artists who have gained popularity in recent years thanks to Vaporwave, the meme-genre that heavily samples Japanese City Pop to create its particular aesthetic.

Pacific Breeze 2 once again feature the artwork of renowned Tokyo-based illustrator Hiroshi Nagai, whose iconic images of resort living have become synonymous with City Pop. Nagai’s urban tropical imagery is a perfect match for the expertly curated tunes, evoking a certain sense of nostalgia for the leisure lifestyles of ‘70s-’80s Tokyo, while simultaneously being perfectly in tune with the current zeitgeist.

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"Japan’s bubble years feel like a fantasy in 2020. During that period, which played out over the course of the 1980’s, the country’s economy soared and the mood was jubilant. It was a decade defined by opulence, neon-soaked nightscapes, and persistent optimism. Thirty years on, and images from this time function as a kind of nostalgia for better days that younger people all over the world haven’t actually experienced. The same goes for music—specifically a style dubbed “city pop,” referring to glitzed-out songs borrowing from funk, R&B, and disco designed to be blasted out of a high-end car system. City pop has served as the building blocks for niche genres such as vaporwave and future funk, inspiration for young Japanese creators and the source for surprise YouTube hits. 

Light In The Attic’s Pacific Breeze 2: Japanese City Pop, AOR & Boogie 1972 – 1986 spotlights the sonic development and diversity of a style that often feels reduced to an aesthetic or algorithmically-assisted curiosity. It follows last year’s Pacific Breeze, a release that made songs from artists helping define what city pop would become—and among the nation’s most celebrated acts, including Haruomi Hosono and Takeo Ohnuki—available outside of Japan for the first time ever. That mission is continued here.

Pacific Breeze 2 captures the way city pop and its adjacent genres developed in Japan, reminding that this sound didn’t burst out at the same time the nation reached its capitalist peak, but in fact took form earlier. Fuyumi and Satsuya Iwasawa’s Bread & Butter project begins the compilation with “Pink Shadow,” a number closer to the folk-rock of Japan’s “new music” of the early ‘70s thanks to its acoustic guitar sprint. Everything becomes sleeker with other mid-period cuts, such as The Sadistics’s “Tokyo Taste,” and more bombastic with Kimiko Kasai’s horn-assisted “Vibration.” The ‘80s cuts, all electronic sheen and shimmy, roll in shortly thereafter (Piper’s “Hot Sand” and Momoko Kikuchi’s “Blind Curve.”) There’s also reminders of how important jazz fusion is to this era of Japanese music, capped off by Yuji Toriyama’s “Bay/Sky Provincetown 1977,” Pacific Breeze’s most soaring moment.

Optimism is one of city pop’s defining characteristics, mirroring the rise of a country emerging from ruin to become an economic powerhouse allowing people fun lives. These flashes of joy come through in “Pink Shadow”‘s chorus hollers and the excess of Eri Ohno’s “Skyfire.” Yet Pacific Breeze shows many more emotions swirled around in this sound, from the tension lurking beneath the flute and tropical percussion of “Yubikiri” (from former Happy End member Eiichi Ohtaki, one of and among Japan’s most celebrated songsmiths) to the melancholy funk of Anri’s “Last Summer Whisper”: a song focused on how nothing can last forever, though the memory can be revisited. That’s fitting for this set, considering the genre’s arc—when Japan’s economic bubble popped, city pop faded as well—but as Pacific Breeze demonstrates, its uplifting mood will never go out of style." By Patrick St. Michel, BandCamp