I miss Nobuchika Eri.
Between sickness and long periods of sleepness nights with shitty internet, I found myself playing Pokémon Pearl while listening to my music collection.
Interestingly enough, the CD that kept me company the best was Eri Nobuchika’s somewhat eponymous album of nobuchikaeri.
For those of you who might not know who Eri Nobuchika is, she was an artist who auditioned to Sony and was successfully signed to the label and coupled with producer Shinichi Osawa aka Mondo Grosso. She had her first single “Lights” featured in the highly innovative PSP game Lumines and that is where I first heard of her.
Shinichi’s production worked well for dear Eri while he was Mondo Grosso because she has a smooth, powerful voice that has a very unique quality to it . Mondo Grosso made her standout with the acid jazz, funky house sound that made Eri Nobuchika more than just a pop artist. It made each of her singles a delight to listen to and nobuchikaeri a cohesive collection of nicely produced songs with unusual elements (such as the flamenco inspired guitar in Voice or the horns in Kodou) and Eri’s voice soaring over them gracefully and fluidly, like the swallowtail butterfly that was Eri’s logo.
After a period of releasing several singles, vinyls, an album and a remix album with Sony, Eri went into a long hiatus in which it had been speculated that she cut ties with Sony – though this was never officially confirmed on either side.
I decided to check up on Miss Nobuchika’s work post-Shinichi Osawa and to my disappointment, neither delofamilia or her indies album hands managed to interest me. At all. After being treated to the winning combination of Mondo Grosso + Eri Nobuchika, the alternative flavoured pop that she’s come out with is bland in comparison. Her voice, was still as powerful as I can remember it but that wasn’t enough to keep my interest.
I can think of many instances in which there are good pop vocalists have crap composers. Or if not crap composers, then composers who play it too safe so the song as a whole becomes unremarkable, no matter how good the vocalist is. They have perhaps a handful of songs that work really well, and then the rest is just too bland to be of any listening value to me at the very least.
There doesn’t seem to be hope of Eri Nobuchika reuniting with Shinichi Osawa since he seems kinda busy being famous. But at least, Eri’s collection of work under Sony will stand as perhaps one of my most favourite examples of Japanese music beautifully done.
Shinichi Osawa or how he’s not Mondo Grosso anymore.
If you’ve never heard of Shinichi Osawa I don’t know what’s wrong with you but if you’ve never heard of Mondo Grosso, that’s kinda expected now. 
This makes me sad.
Anyway, Mondo Grosso was originally a group led by Shinichi Osawa, then Mondo Grosso just became Shinichi Osawa’s alias for his work. Somewhere along the line, he shifted to electro house and started producing stuff under his real name “Shinichi Osawa” and released “The One” (There are several released versions of The One, I’m just starting to think of a bad joke related to all of this but I will hold back)
As Mondo Grosso, Osawa was signed to Sony Music Entertainment Japan and produced Eri Nobuchika and bird. He also provided music for the highly addicting PSP game Lumines, which was the primary reason that I became highly interested in his work in the first place.
The sound that he did as Mondo Grosso was very rich and atmospheric, firmly rooted in the house/progressive house/acid house style – using live instrumentation combined with skillful editing. It was very clever, both musically and production wise. I find that the best example of this would be the Mondo Grosso album “Next Wave” and Eri Nobuchika’s album “nobuchikaeri”. Admittedly under Mondo Grosso, Osawa had a couple of production quirks that irritated me (For example, some of his tracks take forever to build up and the main vocals or main part is so short compared to the build up. Like, Shake Ya Body on Henshin. It takes absolutely forever to go anywhere and the short version of the track on Lumines is so so so so much better.)
Anyway, Shinichi Osawa decided to shift styles from house to trendy electrohouse and somewhere along the line he left Sony for avex. And he realised he was making monies from this move. So he decided to stay with this.
I don’t think it’s a bad thing that he’s decided to go with electrohouse as his main genre now, it’s just that I feel, compared to his work as Mondo Grosso – it’s less inventive and more trendy. I wish he’d go back to producing Eri Nobuchika but that’s highly unlikely.
But yeah, if Shinichi Osawa would bother with stuff like Shinin’ and Everything Needs Love once again, I would be a happy camper. (Because I firmly believe that electrohouse is not the be all, end all.)
