Maki Asakawa seemed like a cool character, the type of person you could bond with over a smoke, in those days, in those clubs; but I can't say her debut album doesn't sound a bit hit and miss. The obvious approximation to western modes of expression, in the general compounded form of torch psychedelic jazz/blues songs, while competent, even endowed with a personality, doesn't feel transformative enough to make this approach sound particularly interesting on its own terms; and to appraise it just as a form of cultural mimicry would entail, by definition, that its artistic merits would always be relativistic. In fact, that aesthetic option reveals itself all the more equivocal once you realize that it's the haunting rendition of a haunted traditional japanese song, 赤い橋, that completely steals the show, indicating that a much more original path was open for inquiry, but was largely left untrodden. Perhaps it was one of those cases where we can't let go of our influences, or are afraid to do our own thing and fall flat; but that woeful lament alone suggests that, in this instance, it most likely would have been the other way round.
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