It’s been a frantic six months for visual kei diva Kaya. After a three-year break from his solo recording career to focus on Femme Fatale and Schwarz Stein, he broke his silence last October with the single Perfana. Produced by fellow Mana protege KAMIJO, a further two singles were promised, but these plans were scrapped when Kaya left KAMIJO's CHATEAU AGENCY a month later. However, the chanteuse hasn’t left fans wanting. In February, he released the surprise single Fleeting Beauty with Schwarz Stein, and this was followed on March 8th by his solo effort Yumeji.
From the outset, it’s clear Yumeji is quite unlike anything Kaya has produced before. There's not a synthesizer to be heard between the piano and strings that drive this gentle yet stirring ballad's melody, set against a soft tribal backbeat. This unobtrusive instrumentation allows Kaya's vocals to dominate the piece in a way Hora's synths rarely do.
This change in sound is directly attributable to the song’s composer Suzuki Yume, an anison singer throughout the '90s who revived her recording career in 2010. She previously wrote Frosty Rain for Kaya, another ballad that was the bonus track on limited editions of Perfana. That song also appears here as the B-side, albeit as a duet with Suzuki with the grandiose instrumentation stripped back to just a piano and violin.
As if wary that some fans may interpret the contents of Yumeji as a sign that he was abandoning electronica altogether, Kaya opted to end the single with an EDM remix of the title track. It’s unlikely this alternate version will be finding its way onto any future best-of compilations, but fans can take it as reassurance that the diva’s future solo output won’t be a synthesizer-free zone.
