From EPO’s records to an arranger’s anthology, a working life comes into focus.
Rearrange a record collection by arranger and a familiar set of shelves can suddenly look strange. Nobuyuki Shimizu is a good name with which to attempt the experiment. On EPO's “DOWN TOWN,” he shares the arrangement credit with Tetsuji Hayashi; Ginji Ito wrote the words and Tatsuro Yamashita composed. The song generally enters memory under its singer's name. Change the index and another relationship surfaces. Musical history need not always expand outward from the centre of the cover. It can travel sideways from a smaller line of print across many covers.
Sony's personnel listing for VITAMIN E・P・O makes Shimizu's work more tangible, placing him among the guitar, keyboard, and percussion players. This is not simply an abstract designer issuing instructions from a distance, but a participant capable of handling different instruments. Arrangement and performance do not constitute a hierarchy; they can explain each other within one person's practice. Knowing how material is played and deciding how material belongs together are neighbouring, rather than identical, forms of knowledge. The credits allow both kinds of work to remain visible.
Released in 2015, LIFE IS A SONG marked thirty-five years of Shimizu's arranging career and reversed the usual viewing direction. Labour normally dispersed across different singers' albums gathered beneath one name. Such an anthology resembles a bookshop briefly reorganized by editor: readers are not asked to forget the authors, but another profession involved in shaping the results becomes the organizing subject. Its interest lies less in sheer quantity than in coexistence. The same arranger has served different voices, giving the collection a structure that passes between performing identities instead of staying inside one.
Shimizu's presence consequently makes personal style a more flexible idea. Style need not mean attaching an identical signature to every assignment. It can involve a way of collaborating, an ability to respond repeatedly to different needs. Following his credits does not require finding a secret formula that explains everything. More interesting is how professional experience accumulates across works and begins again with each recording. Large print persuades us to stop; small print connects the world around it. Occasionally reversing the reading order can change the city that comes into view.