The Adventures of Kindaichi Kosuke

Writer Seishi Yokomizo is an institution in Japan. He could be compared to Agatha Christie with his series of novels based on the adventures of detective Kosuke Kindaichi. The fictional character was born in 1946 with Yokomizo's first novel in the series and solved mysteries until the late 70s under Yokomizo's pen before the death of the writer in 1981. Kindaichi is a peculiar character. He is a sort of goofy, yet scrupulous detective, not dissimilar to Columbo, and has become legendary in Japan over the decades.

Yokomizo's novels have been a prime source for film and TV scenarios, so when, in 1977, Japanese label King Records decided to record a concept album based on the Kindaichi novels, it made complete sense. The writer was slightly surprised though. As he wrote on the back of the LP sleeve "When I first heard an album was being made based on my novels, I felt very strange. I could understand if my novels were turned into films and then soundtracks were recorded based on these films. But this time, the music created was directly inspired by my novels. I felt very intrigued, yet very excited."

The concept album was arranged by pianist Kentaro Haneda, a key TV and film composer who has worked on many anime films and is also famous outside of Japan for composing the music for the video game 'Wizardry'.

For "The Adventures Of Kindaichi Kosuke" album, he assembled a supergroup of some of the best Tokyo funk and City Pop musicians. The long list includes jazz pianist Hideo Ichikawa who played on the 1971 'Joe Henderson In Japan' album, Jun Moriya (ds), who is on Joe Hisaichi's cult 'Wonder City Orchestra' album, Tadaomi Anai (perc) who played with Disco singer Eri Ohno, Koji Hadori (tpt) who's featured on Haruomi Hosono's "Pacific" album. Also present on the album are Takeru Muraoka (sax) who plays on many Tatsuro Yamashita cult albums including "For You" and "Spacy", Kimiko Yamauchi (koto) who's on Akiko Yano's landmark "Japanese Girl" and, last but not least, Koji Yamaguchi (fr horn) who plays on Yazuaki Shimizu's "Kakashi" album

Together they lay the funk on ten instrumentals filled with pur disco and funk breakbeats, making the album one of the highly-coveted Japanese LPs on international cratedigger scene. This reissue which Wewantsounds is delighted to officially put back on the market, features OBI strip and a four page insert faithfully reproduces the original artwork plus audio remastered from the original tapes.