Check out my Track of the Week, the very funky and cool ‘Just Do It’ featuring Clara Hill on vocals from Shuya’s album ‘Destiny’, all this week on Fusion Flavours.
Shuya is a lynchpin of the Tokyo club jazz scene and one of the brothers behind Kyoto Jazz Massive. As with his ‘United Legends’ album back in 2006, Shuya has assembled an impressive array of international artists to help him achieve his vision on ‘Destiny’, with the likes of of N’Dea Davenport, Navasha Daya, Diviniti, Clara Hill and Pete Simpson guesting on vocals, and some of the key musicians on the Tokyo scene (Masato Nakamura, Kenichi Ikeda, Motoharu, Shota Hishiyama, SWING-O a.k.a. 45, Nobukai Fujii, Takao Hirose and more) providing the backing. And with such an impressive lineup of musicians, you just know that you’re in for a treat.
The central concept behind the album is ‘jazz meets boogie’, with the classic funk/disco sound of the late ’70s early ’80s and jazz sounds combining with modern production values to create a superb dance album for the summer. Together with co-producer Kenichi Ikeda (better known as Root Soul), Shuya Okino set himself the challenge of recording covers of some all-time dance classics alongside some original tunes written in a similar boogie style. The result is an album packed full of memorable and stylish dance tunes that are likely to last the test of time.
Each guest vocalist features on one cover and one original, with the chance to tackle songs both old and new. For the covers, Okino refers to classics from the songbooks of Rose Royce, Aquarian Dream, Eddie Russ, Narada Michael Walden and Don Blackman, and the the originals, penned by Shuya Okino and Kenichi Ikeda, more than match the standards of the tunes from the past.
Find out more at Shuya’s Myspace page.