This is a mostly unknown early '80s record from Japan and has been absent for the past 30 years. When Mariah first got together in the late 1970s, their sound was largely indebted to the popular jazz fusion and synth pop of the time, but Utakata no Hibi seems to open the door to a wonderful dreamland where genres no longer exist. Sung half in Japanese and half in Armenian, the record melds East Asian and Middle Eastern tonalities, folklorish melodies with synthetic futurism, upbeat dance rhythms with meditative ambient textures, wonky New Wave, jazz structures and blissful pop ditties.
