dorlis - Swingin Street 3 6 June 2007
Dorlis embodies the nostalgic image of 1930’s big band swing and street-performing jazz musicians. In 1999, at the age of seventeen, she abruptly dropped out of school to actually perform on the street; dorlis was already a skilled classical guitarist at the time and was improving as a jazz vocalist. After three years of playing in and around Okayama she caught the attention the indie label SUPALOVE via producer Ken Matsubara and released her first album, Swingin’ Street, in 2002. The title, as with most of her albums, is a blatant reference to the earliest stages of her career. Later dorlis would sign with Victor Entertainment and continue to release albums, like the one I’ve chosen to upload—admittedly an arbitrary decision. Throughout her albums dorlis has toyed with jazz fusion and you can hear some of that on Swingin’ Street 3.As an aside, the album contains a remix by one of my favorite musicians: Yasutaka Nakata. He formed the group Capsule with Toshiko Koshijima in 1997, and has been the producer and song-writer for the J-Pop group Perfume since 2003. And he’s worked together with so many other pop musicians that if you listen to J-Pop then odds are you’ve heard his work whether you realize it or not.