Kosuke Kindaichi is like lots of rap fans: he has bad dandruff, he struggles speaking to women, he’s often seen wearing a bucket hat. He’s also the main character in a series of 77 Japanese detective novels by Seishi Yokomizo, which Yokomizo wrote from 1946 until his death in 1981. With ample material to work from, the Kosuke Kindaichi stories have been made into a number of television series and movies. A late 1970’s series based on the books gifted the world with an exceedingly rare soundtrack, 1977’s The Adventures of Kosuke Kindaichi, by the creatively named Mystery Kindaichi Band.
I can’t pretend to know much about the making of The Adventures of Kosuke Kindaichi; unless you’re one of those who both own incredibly expensive copies of the LP (or shockingly rare CD copies) and read Japanese, information on those who made the album is nonexistent. One doesn’t think of Japan as the place to look for boogie and funk, a television soundtrack even less so, but The Adventures of Kosuke Kindaichi delivers. The television show’s reportedly ghoul-centric theme resulted in some spectral synth work to go with the Mystery Kindaichi Band’s bass slapping and some wild, driving breakdowns. In its softer moments, The Adventures is strummy, smooth boogie, the stuff of fuzzy-lensed nostalgia montages. An excellent listen whether you’re going to solve a murder mystery, or just wanna smoke some weed and sample it for a rap instrumental.
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Mystery Kindaichi Band – The Adventures of Kosuke Kindaichi
