Mainichi Daily News - Friday, June 17, 1994
Jones' CD "Different Skies," released last month, and two singles from it are comfortable on the charts, proving more popular than both her and her independent record company ever imagined.
The album's sound is for the most part ethereal, romantic and largely original, punctuated by smooth melodic vocals combined with a contemporary-sounding array of instruments.
Few foreign musicians in Japan have produced albums here, and fewer still can boast of albums with the kind of popularity of "Different Skies." In J-Wave's "Tokio Hot 100" earlier this month, the single "Far Away" was snug at the no. 51 position, and "Those Were The Days," a remake of the Gene Raskin song, was 59.
Apart from music, Jones, who has lived in Japan for the last three and a half years and speaks proficient Japanese, is a well-known radio personality among Tokyoites, with a couple of regular DJ gigs with J-Wave and Bay-Fm. The native Philadelphian's resume reads like an overachiever's dream: Harvard degree, graduate fellowship from Tsukuba University, and numerous TV and radio work, in addition to her musical endeavors.
Jones' chance to have her songs recorded came last November, when she was introduced to her record company, Samson Records. The company, which is actually a licensor of imported music, at the time had only one original recording project under its belt by the unit Nadege.
The project's success convinced the company to try its hand once more at putting together an album, but this time of a single artist. Enter Cara Jones.
They liked her bedroom demos, so she was introduced to Nobuhiro Makino, a musical arranger. Two studio demos were recorded in December, and by the time Jones returned to Japan from a New Year's holiday, the project to produce an album/CD was given the green light. A group of musicians was recruited, then studio sessions got under way from the end of January. "Different Skies" went on sale May 12.
The album's overall sound came about somewhat accidentally, according to Jones. Originally she had intended to create a collection of acoustic-pop tracks, although the record company saw her as a potential dance artist.
"It's not exactly what I would have done if I had 100 percent artistic control," she said in an interview this past week. "But I think it was a really good compromise between what I wanted to do and what the producer wanted to do."
And compromise is what appears to have made the project work.
"We started out completely at opposite ends of the spectrum, and then as we started working together, they realized that I wasn't a dance artist, and I realized that I could do more than just strum a guitar and sing, and we just sort of melded our own different perceptions of what the music should sound like."
Westerners tend to look askance at DJs who try their hand at musical careers. But Jones, who presents "The Essential Love Collection" on J-Wave and Bay-FM's "Sunrise Cruise," sees no incongruity between Djing and singing.
"Both convey a meaning, a message through the tonality and personality in your voice."
That DJs in Japan can be accepted as radio personalities and vice-versa is a reason why Jones decided to live and work here.
"I really like Djing, but I wanted to do my own music, and I didn't want to be a starving artist, so I came here where I could do both."
Roles for artists and entertainers in the U.S., she points out, "are unnecessarily strict."
