It’s impossible until it happens

Months ago, I stumbled upon some old posts on X. They dated back to May 2018 and were from Japanese users, sharing my song “The Things” from Small Music From Broken Windows. That was unexpected. After some investigation, I discovered that one of my favourite artists — Mr. Yukihiro Takahashi — had played the track during a radio show on NHK. Quite flattering. I was not aware. I did talk with Yukihiro a bit, a few times — in 2014, he’d ‘almost’ guested on my album Dime Novels. I’m a nobody but he was very kind… in true Japanese fashion he never declined my offer, never accepted it either. It didn’t matter. We stayed in touch, and when Small Music came out, I sent him the promotional video for “The Things”. He responded, said that he liked the song. Well, little did I imagine that he enjoyed it to the point of including it in his playlist. I was able to trace the recording and got very emotional when I heard him talking about the track and mentioning my name.

Fast forward to December 2023, I get a message from Steve Jansen, with whom I have collaborated a few times (most recently, he appeared on my album Dormiveglia). To my surprise, Steve wanted to involve me on a demo track that he recorded in 1982 with the Yukihiro Takahashi band, during a break from their tour, and that was left unfinished. I jumped on the occasion. Yukihiro made music that is very dear to me, and I thought this would be a wonderful way to honour his memory. I’m going to share Steve’s words about the song and its history:

Recently I mentioned that I had a cassette tape from over 40 years ago when The Takahashi Band of 82 made a demo track for a potential TV commercial. The track was only worked on for a day or two and then abandoned. I think we all had a busy year and for whatever reason this recording was discarded.

I also talked about sharing the recording one day just for nostalgic reasons, however the mix was a very basic end-of-day progress mix and no vocal part was conceived. Sharing it in this form would not do the potential of the work any justice.

The track began with chords and synths that Yukihiro Takahashi recorded, the basic building blocks of his composition. I added the drum part. Having been intensively rehearsing and performing Takahashi material this triggered a distinct blend of my own style as might appear on tracks such as ‘The Art of Parties’ and Yukihiro’s style on tracks such as ‘Glass’. Haruomi Hosono added his brilliance on bass, as well as Masami Tsuchiya overlaying guitar parts and Hajime Tachibana adding a saxophone solo.

Fast forward over 40 years….

At the end of 2023 I sent the demo to singer/songwriter Marco Machera, someone I’ve collaborated with a few times in the past and whose vocal style I felt would compliment the music. Yukihiro also enjoyed Marco’s music, including it on his own radio show. I asked Marco to consider adding a vocal which he was happy to do, also composing lyrics too.

I used an AI program to break down the stereo mix of the original cassette recording into individual tracks (this is a relatively new technology and although the quality struggled it allowed for a little bit more flexibility with the mixing and blending of new overdubs). The performed parts were retained, and to which I recorded some additional instrumentation as well as joining Marco on the chorus vocals. I made a new mix of the track. So what we have here is the finished piece: “Impossible Until It Happens”.

Marco and I share this as an homage to Yukihiro who passed away this time last year and is greatly missed. We can feel the essence of Yukihiro’s writing style in this track and we hope that you enjoy it.

So, I’d say it truly is “impossible until it happens”. It’s like coming full circle, in a way. I hope you enjoy the song. And of course, I want to thank Steve for presenting me with this incredible opportunity.

Yukihiro lives on! Listen to the track here.
You can read the song lyrics’ here.