Everyone could use a vacation at some point, and the music created by Fujin Club makes dropping everything and hopping on the next train to the coast sound necessary. It’s tough pinpointing just what Fujin Club is — it’s a group of four women, all of whom hide their faces and refer to themselves as Fujin A through D, alongside . The bio goes they live on an island (Sado Island), and are all housewives who got together to take part in a pop art project. The only known contributor is producer Nozomu Sato, who crafts their windswept sound. This reads like an idol concept, and you could argue this is just a clever mutation on the idea. They might also be an island PR project! Whatever Fujin Club are, the music they make is relaxing and energetic, often themed around everyday life on a far-off island that, to a city dweller, reads like sweet escape. They haven’t released a ton of music, but what they have is jaunty and loaded up with flutes and horns courtesy of Sato, who crafts music capturing the feeling of a slow life. A particular highlight is 2015’s “Gourmet Kikou,” a song about eating delicious food.
Their latest, “Tabi To Ferry,” builds on the travel theme, as it is about taking a trip on a ferry (conveyed in the video pretty clearly). Musically, though, it finds Sato making his production move at a familiarly skippy pace, coming close to something resembling the continental daydreams of Pizzicato Five, but with the Pan-Am decor swapped out for regional prefecture pamphlets (this is the point you could fashion a lot of big-picture thinkpieces). It’s a brisk number featuring pleasant vocals from the group themselves, building up to a particularly sweet hook bringing to mind Vanilla Beans or Negicco at their jazziest. Listen to that one above, at the top of the page.
