Before the Ropes Go Up 🍁 80s Japanese City Pop — Kanazawa 1986, Background Music for Work

🍁🎧 Fifty-two minutes of 80s Japanese city pop from Kanazawa, 1986 — a Hammond organ on a slow Leslie, Rhodes underneath, a clean guitar chopping sixteenths and a bass that jumps an octave at the end of every bar. Instrumental background music for work, study and long evenings. 100% instrumental. Every year on the first of November, the gardeners at Kenroku-en climb the old pines and raise the yukitsuri — bamboo poles with hundreds of ropes fanning down in cones, tied to hold the branches up when the snow comes off the Sea of Japan. It is the day Kanazawa admits winter is coming. This album is the fortnight before: the rain that gives the city its proverb, the gold beaters on the fourth floor, the last express from Ueno arriving before dawn. Perfect for: working late · the drive home · a rainy afternoon indoors · background music that stays out of the way 🎧 Best with headphones. ▶ New mixes every Monday & Thursday: https://www.youtube.com/@NeonLotus-77... 🎶 More like this → City Pop Nights:    • City Pop Nights — 80s Asian City Pop for a...   ━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🚉 AUTUMN LINE — seventeen stops, one falling season ━━━━━━━━━━━━━ The autumn colour front moves down Japan from north to south, a few kilometres a day, from late September to the end of November. This line follows it — city pop in Japan on Mondays, lo-fi elsewhere in Asia on Thursdays. 01 · HAKODATE — 5 Oct 02 · HANOI — 8 Oct 03 · SENDAI — 12 Oct 04 · NIIGATA — 15 Oct ▸ 05 · KANAZAWA — 19 Oct ← you are here 06 · TOYAMA — 22 Oct 07 · NAGOYA — 26 Oct 08 · HAMAMATSU — 29 Oct 09 · NARA — 2 Nov 10 · CHIANG MAI — 5 Nov 11 · HIROSHIMA — 9 Nov 12 · SAPA — 12 Nov 13 · MATSUYAMA — 16 Nov 14 · LUANG PRABANG — 19 Nov 15 · KUMAMOTO — 23 Nov 16 · SASEBO — 26 Nov 17 · NAGASAKI — 30 Nov Subscribe to ride the rest of it. ⏱ CHAPTERS 0:00 The Last Train from Ueno 4:08 Omicho, Before the Shutters 8:28 Gold Leaf, Fourth Floor 12:47 Nagamachi in the Rain 17:22 The Asano Runs Shallow 21:17 Kenroku-en Before the Ropes 25:38 Higashi Chaya at Dusk 30:22 Korinbo at Six 35:00 Katamachi, Friday 39:01 Utatsuyama, Lights Below 43:12 The Sea at Kanaiwa 47:47 Forget Your Lunch, Not Your Umbrella ━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🎛 WHAT YOU ARE LISTENING TO ━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🎹 HAMMOND ORGAN — the melody, all fifty-two minutes of it, on a slow Leslie that never stops turning. Tonewheels do not decay: hold the key and the note simply stays. 🎹 RHODES — the harmony underneath, two chords a bar: major sevenths with an added ninth, and a suspended fourth that refuses to resolve until the bar is nearly over. Under every fourth bar a bass pedal climbs. Metal tines where a piano has strings — that one difference is most of the genre. 🎸 CLEAN ELECTRIC GUITAR — muted sixteenth-note chords, chopped through every bar, and in the gaps where the organ breathes it answers with a single note. It never steps back to make room; it fills the room. 🎸 BASS — fingered, never slapped, and never idle. Sixteenths straight through the bar, then a jump of a full octave on the last beat. Every bar. Take it out and the record stops moving. 🥁 DRUMS — an 80s studio kit, close and dry. Ghost notes crowd the space between the 2 and the 4, the hats crack open on every offbeat, the kick doubles on the last eighth, and a fill lands every eight bars. 🎷 TENOR SAXOPHONE — three tracks only, answering the organ in thirds: the shallow river, Friday night in Katamachi, and the rain off the sea at the end. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🍁 KANAZAWA — 1986 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Kanazawa is written with the characters for gold and marsh, and it earns them: the city beats about ninety-nine per cent of all the gold leaf made in Japan, hammered to a ten-thousandth of a millimetre — thin enough to lift if you breathe near it. Hence the third track, and the fourth floor. It is also one of the very few large Japanese cities never bombed. The eastern teahouse district and the earthen walls of the samurai streets are not reconstructions. An album can walk through this city without inventing anything. And it rains. Kanazawa sits on the wrong side of the mountains, where wet air off the Sea of Japan hits land and gives up. The local saying is blunt: forget your lunch, never your umbrella. That is the last track, and the weather of the whole record. The year matters. The shinkansen does not reach Kanazawa until 2015, twenty-nine years after this album. In 1986 you arrive the slow way, on the overnight express out of Ueno, and you step down before dawn with the market not yet open. Hence the first track. 🎧 Fifty-two minutes, gapless and levelled throughout, from the platform before dawn to rain coming in sideways off the sea. Twelve tracks in the order of one day, start to finish. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🪷 NeonLotus — Asian Instrumental Music ━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🔔 Subscribe for Asian city pop and lo-fi, every Monday & Thursday:    / @neonlotus-77   #JapaneseCityPop #CityPop #シティポップ #Kanazawa #HammondOrgan #BackgroundMusic