井上陽水* – 氷の世界

I really enjoyed this album. It was a random LP received in a box with a bunch of stuff I'd never heard of. Despite barely understanding any of the lyrics, I really liked Inoue's energy and playing style. Many of the songs feature some world class guitar playing, especially A3 (which seems to be channeling some sort of gorgeous acoustic Led Zeppelin) and B3 which has some great acoustic blues riffing. No wonder he's a mainstay of Japanese music!
Because I enjoyed the album so much, I did some digging. After doing a bit of research, I was not surprised in the least to discover that It debuted at number one on the Oricon album chart and remained there for 35 weeks, staying in the Top 10 for 113 weeks (THAT'S MORE THAN 2 YEARS IN THE TOP TEN FFS!). It became the first album in Japan to sell over one million copies.
It's influence is still felt to this day, having significantly helped shape the Japanese rock landscape. In fact, as recently as 2019, a of 50 critics and writers from the Music Magazine ranked it 51st in their “50 years of Japanese music: Top 100”.
Seriously. If you haven't heard this album yet, give it a listen... but make a commitment and listen as it was intended. Start at the beginning and go straight through. Don't just preview 10 seconds of each track and for pity's sake don't skip anything or you'll miss out. : this was written in the early 70s and features a very different mindset for creating music: many of these songs have great musical structures and changes (not only stylistic changes but time and tempo as well). Many of the songs start of one way and end up sounding quite different by the time they're finished; they don't remain locked into a similar vibe all the way through the way lot of modern music does.
A++