One of the most soulful sets that Jun Miyake ever recorded – a set that's still very strongly on the jazz side of his musical spectrum, but which also has some strong city pop elements in the production at times! Jun serves up lead flugelhorn solos, in a manner that's inspired by American soulful fusion players of the 70s – mostly with small combo backing that features keyboards from Soichi Noriki and Hiroki Inui, and tenor from Yasuki Shimizu – key players amidst an array that shifts a bit from track to track. Some cuts have acoustic rhythms, others are more electric – and one track features backing vocals from the female trio Eve! Titles include "A Thoughtful Touch", "34 West 10th Street", "I Knew I Was", "You Would Smile So", "Scorpio", and "Could It Be Real". LP, Vinyl record album

Enigmatic sounds from the early years of the recording industry in Japan – served up in a style billed as ryukoka, which mixes older elements of traditional music with some of the newer flavors emerging from the west in the early 20th century! To our ears, these tunes still sound very traditional overall – but because of the lack of recordings, we also can't tell you what the Japanese music sounded like a generation before – and the whole package is a wonderful presentation of lost relics from the shellac era, similar to sets of this nature from Dust To Digital (although not in a larger book format.) CD features 16 tracks in all – work by Yayoi Tanaka, Mitsuko Nemoto, Ichiro Fujiyama, Chiyako Sato, Otomaru, Hamako Watanabe, Seki Taneko, Kouta Katutaro, and others. LP, Vinyl record album