Midnight Cruisin' (reissue) vinyl

Nighttime city pop on this new LITA reissue of Hamada Kingo's fourth album Midnight Cruisin, first released in 1982. A nine-track fourth album by the Japanese AOR singer-songwriter, formerly a member of the band Craft, Midnight Cruisin' marked his first album for Moon Records, and remains emblematic of his lamplit brand of cricket-serenaded soul; we can very easily imagine the singer and guitarist posted up with his axe at the fall of dusk, half astride a cobbled, blossom-flanked bridge, beseeching his beloved for forgiveness. Though the offhand character of the songs also suggest he could carry out such a thing with a cool flair and mastery; even heartbreak may be sugared by the gentle breeze, and thus breeziness inherited, in the act of midnight cruisin'.