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<\/p>\nYuka Funakoshi\u2019s musical journey has followed a circuitous path. The Japanese keyboardist, songwriter and vocalist was classically trained, but became an established presence in her home country\u2019s J-pop scene. A decade-plus later, Funakoshi has released <\/b>Ship<\/b><\/i>, the fourth album credited to Yuka & Chronoship, a progressive quartet that \u2014 at first blush, anyway \u2014 seems very much in the stylistic tradition of Yes, ELP and other early \u201870s progressive giants.<\/b><\/p>\n
\u201cI was playing piano ever since I was small,\u201d says Funakoshi. \u201cAnd I went to college to study classical music. I was heavily influenced by Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy.\u201d Funakoshi was drawn to what she describes as those composers\u2019 \u201cstructured yet very flamboyant and flexible kind of music.\u201d Chronoship bassist and musical director Shun Taguchi points out that those defining characteristics of Ravel and Debussy\u2019s work are \u201cquite common among the kind of progressive music played in European countries.\u201d<\/p>\n
Funakoshi\u2019s college studies focused on composition. \u201cEven when I was in primary school, I was composing,\u201d she says. But in college, Yuka wasn\u2019t a good student. \u201cI didn\u2019t want to listen to the instruction from my teachers. I didn\u2019t want to play the songs they asked me to play; I played all the songs that I<\/i> really wanted to play,\u201d she says with a laugh. \u201cI was not highly appreciated by my teachers.\u201d<\/p>\n
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The J-pop era<\/b>
\nOnce out of college, Funakoshi headed in a perhaps unexpected direction: J-pop. By the late 1990s, Shun Taguchi was already an established songwriter and producer; under his musical mentorship, Funakoshi recorded and released three albums: Pool No Nioi No Natsu<\/i> (1998), 1999\u2019s Silent Sun<\/i> and Morning Bird<\/i> (2000). The title track of that third album was a popular release; a professional music video of the song can be viewed on YouTube.<\/p>\n
But even as a pop artist, Funakoshi focused on musicianship over style. \u201cI was not dancing,\u201d she emphasizes. \u201cI was playing piano and singing songs, making quite a mixed format of J-pop.\u201d<\/p>\n
Working closely with Funakoshi, Taguchi noticed that progressive and\/or classical elements revealed themselves in her original work. Mentioning three specific songs \u2014 \u201cMorning Bird,\u201d \u201cKagerou Mitaina Kisetsu\u201d (\u201cSeems Like a Rush\u201d) and \u201cKokoro Dake Hitori Bocchi\u201d (\u201cOnly Mind is Alone\u201d) \u2014 Taguchi explains, \u201cThe original forms of these songs sounded quite like prog-rock: complex and extended structure, and a great amount of melody elements.\u201d<\/p>\n
To make the compositions work in the pop idiom, Taguchi says he \u201casked Yuka to slim down these songs, reducing elements to make them simpler, more pop, and commercially correct.\u201d But by the time of the release of the Morning Bird<\/i> album, both Funakoshi and Taguchi found themselves exhausted with the musical direction they had been pursuing. Besides that, both musicians were becoming a bit old for the youth-centered J-pop scene. (Asked her age, Funakoshi giggles and says, \u201cIt\u2019s top-secret!\u201d)<\/p>\n
Navigating the \u2018Ship toward progressive rock <\/b>
\n\u201cSo I decided to steer the direction of Yuka’s music into the genre of prog rock,\u201d Taguchi says. \u201cThat gave her more freedom of composition, and brought me closer to what I had dreamed of doing since I was 13 and first heard Pink Floyd\u2019s The Dark Side of the Moon<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n
Oddly, prior to Chronoship\u2019s launch in 2009, Yuka Funakoshi had absolutely no grounding in progressive music. \u201cI didn\u2019t know anything about it before I formed this band,\u201d she admits. While Taguchi concedes that there are stylistic cues in the music of Yuka & Chronoship redolent of Keith Emerson\u2019s instrumental flourishes, he insists that Funakoshi arrives at her musical destination via a different route. Taguchi suggests that any similarity stems from the influences that Emerson and Funakoshi have in common.<\/p>\n
Even today, Yuka claims not to have heard \u2014 much less been influenced by \u2014 progressive rock. \u201cI don\u2019t listen to it, even now,\u201d she says. \u201cShun doesn\u2019t want me to; he doesn\u2019t want me to compose music that\u2019s similar to Yes and Pink Floyd and King Crimson.\u201d Without a hint of discomfort, Funakoshi freely admits that \u201cShun is controlling my imagination.\u201d<\/p>\n
Taguchi also brings his progressive musical orientation to bear on the work of Yuka & Chronoship. For the group\u2019s first album, 2011\u2019s now out-of-print Water Reincarnation<\/i>, Funakoshi says that \u201cShun asked me to compose a couple of songs, and then he added a couple of elements that came directly from his own experience of progressive rock.\u201d She describes the end result of that process as \u201ccomposed by me with Shun adding bits and pieces of prog.\u201d<\/p>\n
That first Yuka & Chronoship album began as a collaboration between Funakoshi and Taguchi. \u201cLater on, Takashi [Miyazawa, guitar] and Ikko [Tanaka, drums] were added to make it an album,\u201d Funakoshi says. Water Reincarnation<\/i> was embraced by progressive rock fans; more than half of the respondents to a poll on progarchives.com rated it excellent or essential. But the album likely confused at least some of Funakoshi\u2019s J-pop fans.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are a number of people who were fans of my J-pop music, and later on, they kept on listening to my progressive rock songs,\u201d Funakoshi says. She understands that while many were initially shocked by her new style, once they listened to the actual songs they discovered that her signature melodic style remained. Even with the progressive presentation and Debussy-inspired melodic lines, Funakoshi\u2019s pop sensibility provides an accessible foundation for her relatively ambitious compositions.<\/p>\n