dip in the pool

Although presumably drawing their name from Roald Dahl’s 1952 short story, the art-pop duo Dip in the Pool otherwise shares scant ground with any grim storytelling tradition. Their moniker instead functions more literally, since nearly all their recorded work conveys a sense of lift and calm. The enduring partnership joins vocalist Miyako Koda with keyboardist Tatsuji Kimura; together they compose and arrange the songs while drawing on additional studio players for support. Established in 1983, the pair issued their debut album three years afterward. Among their catalog, this remains one of the very few—and perhaps the sole—titles to reach listeners beyond Japan. Issued domestically under the band’s own name, it appeared in the U.K. via Rough Trade as Silence, fully realizing their spare yet refined aesthetic in territory shared by Kate Bush, the Blue Nile, and a Yellow Magic Orchestra solo outing. From that point through the mid-’90s they added new recordings every few years, working with the Moon and Epic imprints. After a lengthy hiatus, during which Koda joined the short-lived Love, Peace & Trance alongside Haruomi Hosono, issued the solo album Jupiter, and maintained her occasional acting work, Dip in the Pool returned to activity on the Bellwood label in the 2010s. In 2016 the Music from Memory imprint brought back both the “east” and “west” editions of “On Retinae,” tracks that had earlier surfaced only on a 1989 promotional 12-inch limited to fifty copies.