Kahimi

Guestposting time again - Sky on Japanese babypop princess Kahimi Karie:

Kahimi Karie’s career began in 1992, with the release of her EP Mike Alway’s Diary, a tribute to the legendary founder of Él Records. Muse and lover of Keigo Oyamada a.k.a. Cornelius, she was already an icon of Tokyo’s hip Shibuya district, when she met Nick Currie a.k.a. Momus in 1994, who didn’t become her lover („If you want to know whether I fucked Kahimi, I have to say, alas, no“, he told me a few years ago) but wrote her first Top-5-Hit: Good Morning World, an intertextual baby pop monster including a sample from prog rockers Soft Machine’s first album. He also wrote and produced her transnational masterpiece I am a Kitten, recorded at Montmartre’s Studios de la Seine in 1995, accompanied by French electrolounge wizard Bertrand Burgalat on bass and piano. Kahimi has become more and more artsy since then, but will always remain a hyper-erotic version of Claudine Longet or Vanessa Paradis, combining hentai (perverse) and kawai (cute) like no other Japanese chanteuse. Read more (in German) here.
Kahimi’s 1995 EP Leur L’Existence features two versions of a song named Sérieux Comme Le Plaisir, credited to Serge Gainsbourg. Unfortunately, it’s probably not a Serge song. He appeared in a 1975 movie of the same title, though the film’s soundtrack was composed by Michel Berger. Anyway, both versions of the song (in fact entirely different tunes) are irresistable. The male singer on the second, longer version is Monsieur Kamayatsu, vocalist of legendary Nippon 60s beat band The Spiders.

Kahimi Karie - I am a Kitten

Kahimi Karie, Sérieux Comme Le Plaisir (1) (took a while to put this online, internettroubles)

Kahimi Karie, Sérieux Comme Le Plaisir (2)