[Relaxing & warm]
No.230EX "Risa" by Tomohito Aoki
Hi. It is an instrumental day.
The song we would like to introduce to you today is, "Risa" by "Tomohito Aoki".
"Risa" is a warm, lyrical, and melodious guitar instrumental in medium swing rhythm included in "Tomohito Aoki"'s first album "Double face".
As saying by some references, "Risa" is the name of "Aoki"'s small daughter, and he wrote this track for her.
So, we feel there is a full of warmth of "Aoki" as a father in this song.
If you like please listen to.
Links to the music shops, offering song samples, are located on the bottom of this page.
Some contents have been put away in tabs with "▶" mark in each section, so please click it to see.
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Cover art today
Song data
| Title | Risa |
|---|---|
| Artist | Tomohito Aoki |
| Album Title | Double Face |
| Catalog Number | M32D-1004 |
| Track No. | 7 |
| Duration | 4:06 |
| Released | 1989 |
| Publisher | Om (BMG Victor) |
| Lyricist | Instrumental music |
| Composer | Tomohito Aoki |
| Arranger | Masahiro Ikumi |
About the creators
Instrumental music Lyricist
This is an instrumental music, and there is no lyrics for this song.
Tomohito Aoki Composer
The composer, "Tomohito Aoki" is also a performer of this song.
So, We would like to come back to him in "About the artist" section later.
Masahiro Ikumi Arranger
"Masahiro Ikumi" is a Jazz, Fusion, and Pops guitarist, composer, arranger, and music producer active since 1967.
For more details on "Masahiro Ikumi", please have a look at the references linked below.
-
(Ref: masahiro-ikumi.digidonuts.com,
profile)🇯🇵
Song image & Lyrics
Open
Link to the lyrics
Some notes on the lyrics link
Sound impression
Gentle & relaxing
This is a gentle and relaxing guitar instrumental in medium swing rhythm.
Warmth
The electric piano, Cello, string, percussions, and electric guitar begin a gentle, lyrical, and melodious introduction, then the main section start.
In the main part, the drums, bass, tambourine, and rhythm guitar take over, and keep a comfortable swinging rhythm. Then the classical guitar plays the main melody.
In the bridge, a nostalgic, lyrical, and an impressive harmonica solo appears which is played by a known expert "Nobuo Yagi".
The electric bass performed by "Tomohito Aoki" never try to stick out from beginning to the end as usual. But powerfully support whole music with his rock-steady bass play.
Musicians
The musicians playing in this track are,
- Fretless Bass
- Tomohito Aoki
- Electric & Acoustic Guitar
- Masahiro Ikumi
- Drums
- Yasushi Ichihara
- Keyboard
- Ken Shima
- Percussion
- Yuki Sugawara
- Harmonica
- Nobuo Yagi
- Strings
- Joe Kato Group
Reference
About Google translate
About the artist
Tomohito AokiBassist trusted and respected by professionals
"Tomohito Aoki" was a bassist, and composer active from 1976 to 2006.
"Aoki" had collaborated with various top musicians like, "Toshiki Kadomatsu", "Sadao Watanabe", "Anri", or "Katsumi Horii" etc etc, and helped them to create their best sound.
His masterly skills on bass (particularly slapping), absolutely professional performance, but sunny & well-rounded personality were widely known by professional musicians and fans.
Therefore, "Aoki" was much loved, and is still greatly respected as one of the best bassists ever in the Japanese popular music scene.
As a solo artist, "Tomohito Aoki" debuted in 1989 with his first album, "Double Face". And 2 original albums in total have been released until now.
(Ref: Wikipedia-jp, Tomohito Aoki)
Early times
According to some references, "Tomohito Aoki" began to play the guitar when he was fourteen.
After only two years, he started to play the electric bass, and quickly got into it.
At the age of nineteen (1976?), "Aoki" formed an amateur rock band named "Super strut" led by him, cooperatively with the member like a "Michiaki Tanaka" (perc) who later became a long time peer to "Aoki" in his full and busy professional career.
Thanks to outstanding skills of the members, "Super strut" quickly became famous among local amateur music scene.
And perhaps because of this, "Aoki" decided to enter an amateur band contest hosted by "Yamaha".
Lucky enough, "Aoki" was awarded a "Best bassist prize" at the contest.
And this took him into a career as a professional musician.
Work with "Kadomatsu"
At least by the year 1981, "Tomohito Aoki" and a known Pops singer "Toshiki Kadomatsu" had met with each other, and already been rapidly expanding their interactions between each other as musicians.
At this time, "Kadomatsu" had not been debuted as a singer. But "Aoki" had already become convinced his rare musical talent as a sound creator.
In 1981, "Kadomatsu" debuted as an up-and-coming new singer-songwriter.
In the very early period of his career, "Kadomatsu" had no chance to say something about his album production, since he was a total newbie.
In 1983, he "Kadomatsu" happened to leave the first management office, and moved to another one. The new agency expected "Kadomatsu" to work more in producing side.
As his first task, the office asked him to produce a mew album of a rising Pop-singer "Anri".
It was a high-pressure job "Kadomatsu", but also a challenging task for , since he had been allowed to use his creative talent far more freely.
Almost naturally, "Kadomatsu" asked "Aoki" to help him in full scale, to create the best sound he believed.
And at the same time, "Kadomatsu" wrote, and arranged a set of fine Pop songs for Anri's 6th album "Timely!" released in 1983.
Thanks to the excellent creativity displayed by the team members, Anri's album "Timely!" turned out to be a brilliant Pop album. (It's really nice. We love it.)
As a result, "Timely!" stormed to the top of the charts for the first time in Anri's career.
And Anri became a true singing start by this success.
"Kadomatsu" became recognized as a talented music producer, by the people in the Japanese music industry.
And his management office gave the reins to "Kadomatsu" even if he intended to create his albums.
Since this time, "Tomohito Aoki" became an indispensable peer bassist for "Kadomatsu".
And not only for album recording, but also for concert tours, "Aoki" supported, and helped him to create his music &sound.
As a professional bassist
Mainly through the close collaboration with "Kadomatsu", people gradually began to recognize the outstanding skill and music sense of "Aoki".
And already in the mid '80s, "Aoki" was a bassist and studio musician of attention.
In around 1988, "Aoki" met with two prominent musicians, namely "Nobu Saitō"(Perc) & "Shuichi 'PONTA' Murakami"(Dr), at a concert tour of "Toshiki Kadomatsu". And performed together as members of backing band to him.
They hit it off well right away, and this eventually turned out a new 7-8 piece Fusion group "Nobu Caine" having three of them as a core.
"Nobu Caine" had not been a very active Fusion group. But it released five albums until year 2000.
And surprisingly, the band is still alive, and released a new album in 2018.
Simultaneously in the same year, "Tomohito Aoki" was invited by a popular Fusion music project, "Katsumi Horii Project" to participate in a recording of their third album as a bassist.
"Aoki" readily agreed to their proposal, and contributed to their album with his excellent bass performance.
Since then, "Aoki" became a regular member of the project, and played as a bassist until their assumed last album, "Blue Waters" in 1998.
Not just these two, but "Aoki" also became a regular, or temporary member at the prominent Jazz-Fusion groups like, "Sadao Watanabe group", "Masato Honda band" or "Dimension".
And as a studio musician, "Aoki" took part in the recordings of the various groups, or singers, like "Hi-fi set", "Hideki Saijō", "Miho Nakayama", "Yurie Kokubu","Speed", "Cindy" "Midori Hara" and so on.
As a solo artist
In 1989, "Aoki" released his first, (almost) instrumental solo album "Double Face", which we are introducing today, after encouraged by his peer musician "Kadomatsu".
"Aoki" and "Kadomatsu" acted as producers, and various composers, and arrangers wrote melodies.
Nearly 40 of top musicians in Jazz-Fusion field participated in this album, and all 11 tracks in this album were performed by different mixes of musicians.
Therefore sound wise, none of those tracks has similar atmosphere, but all distinctively different.
All musicians thrown down their extreme performances, so the quality of each tracks are very high with no exception.
So, in a sense, you need to keep high-tension during listening.
Among those, today's song "Risa" is just like an Oasis, a shelter in an active volcano, or a tranquillizer which gently cool you down and relax.
If you have a chance, please listen the whole album.
"Double Face" is a superb album with no doubt.
After eleven years from the first album, "Aoki" released his second solo album "EXPERIENCE" in July 2000.
Different from the first album, "Aoki" took (almost) full control on this album, and the most of tracks are composed and arranged by "Aoki" himself.
As is the case with the first album, more than 30 of very skilled Jazz & Fusion musicians were joined. And demonstrated excellent performances after formed a different session team for each songs.
But contrary to the first album, all those tracks have a common cool, but gentle atmosphere, and perhaps that is the character of "Aoki".
This high quality, but somewhat relaxing album, "EXPERIENCE" was selected as the Best Fusion Album of year 2000, by one of the authoritative monthly Jazz magazines "ADLIB".
This proves that he was a really talented musician, while also being one of the top bassist in Japan.
Four of a kind
In around year 2000, "Aoki" had been ranked top for eight straight years as a bassist in popularity poll on the monthly Jazz magazine "ADLIB".
In the same way, the expert Jazz-Fusion musicians like "Masato Honda" (sax), "Satoru Shionoya" (Key), or "Takashi Numazawa" (Dr) were also regular members of the chart in their respective category.
One day in 2000, "Aoki" made a suggestion to them that he thought it will be fun if four of us form a new "Guitar-less" Jazz-Fusion band.
The members had known each other well though their music styles were a little different.
They all felt "Aoki"'s idea curious, and hit it off instantly. And naturally formed a new Jazz-Fusion group "Four of a kind" which was named by "Takashi Numazawa".
After a long discussion and rehearsal, a new 4-piece instrumental group "Four of a kind" released their first album "FOUR OF A KIND" in January 2002.
The album was unexpectedly orthodox, and legitimate with noticeable Jazz flavour. But the sound was very precise, refined, and thrilling, then caused a unique kind of excitement.
In a sense, it seemed that "Four of a kind" had established their character already on their first album.
Uncommon as a Jazz-Fusion group composed of the busiest musicians, "Four of a kind" was quite active since they were releasing albums almost once every year until 2004 including a live album.
We were thinking that the members of the band presumably were feeling comfortable in this group, and therefore, the group might have lasted longer.
However...
Sadly in June 2006, "Tomohito Aoki" suddenly passed away from a heart attack.
He was 49.
Responding to the loss of "Aoki", a lot of messages of condolence were arrived from musicians and fans.
A close peer like "Kadomatsu" sealed off some of his works which he was planning to work together with "Aoki".
"Four of a kind" also stopped releasing albums.
Recent
Even now, musicians are occasionally holding tribute concerts to "Aoki" in various places.
Or in 2022, a leading instruments retailer in "Osaka" held an electric bass exhibition related to "Tomohito Aoki", and displayed his own basses, like famous his signature model "Atelier-Z M#245".
In 2023, two of his solo albums were re-pressed and relaunched.
References
For more details about "Tomohito Aoki", please have a look at the references linked below.
The number of available references decrease as time proceeds, though it is almost inevitable.
We would like to however update the lists as we find new ones.
-
(Ref: www.jvcmusic.co.jp/four/profile/aoki,
profile)🇯🇵 -
(Ref: www.jvcmusic.co.jp/four/profile/index.html,
Four of a kind, profile)🇯🇵
Video clips
You can find some music video of today's song by searching search for them on the site like Youtube, with keywords like "Tomohito aoki" "risa".
But due to copyright concerns, we would like to hold back providing links on this page.
Instead of that, we would like to introduce two of Aoki related music clips for you.
The first one is a classical guitar version of "Tomohito Aoki, Risa", performed by another known guitarist and studio musician "Jun Kajiwara".
His very nice play of "Risa" will begin at around 7:30 (elapsed time).
If you are in a hurry, please click progress bar.
And the second one is a slow & relaxing instrumental track "Egret", from the first album of a 4-piece Fusion band "Four of a kind" which "Tomohito Aoki" was also a member.
"Egret" is a song composed by "Tomohito Aoki". And maybe therefore, it has "Aoki" like gentle atmosphere, which slightly remind us of "Risa", though this one is a little more Jazzy.
If you like, please listen to.
Music Samples
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Japanese Letters
| Song Title | Risa |
|---|---|
| Artist | 青木智仁(Tomohito Aoki) |
| Album Title | double face |
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