The room › Artists › Noriko Sakai
Where to start with Noriko Sakai
Start with ミーハー — GUANBARE/NORIKO PartII, 1988. That is the track sitting closest to the centre of all 23 Noriko Sakai tracks in Zubissou Sounds — a listening room of 14,971 tracks placed one at a time by hand, not an algorithm.
This page is not a discography and not a ranking. It describes exactly one thing: the 23 Noriko Sakai tracks that one person put in one room, and where they sit relative to each other. The starting point above is chosen by a rule you can check — of the 23 tracks, it is the one nearest the average position on the four knobs the room runs on, and where two sit equally close the one on a named record wins. Nothing here calls any record better than any other.
It is spread thin and wide — 23 tracks across 12 different records, which is a browsing history rather than a shelf of favourites.
Every track is filed under city pop; nothing here crosses into another genre.
The energy knob swings 55 points across these tracks, the widest of the four — it is the axis this artist actually travels along in this room.
Three ways in
The one track, if you only play one
ミーハー — GUANBARE/NORIKO PartII, 1988. Of the 23 Noriko Sakai tracks here, this one sits closest to the average of all of them across the four knobs the room runs on. It is the least surprising thing in the collection, which is exactly what an entry point should be.
If you want the ambient end
STARDUST WAVE — Lovely Times/NORIKO PartIII, 1988. The lowest energy reading of any Noriko Sakai track in the room (19 out of 100). This is as far towards ambient as the collection goes.
If you want the driving end
TELEPATHY — My Dear/NORIKO PartV, 1989. The highest energy reading here, at 74 out of 100 — a 55-point swing across the collection towards driving.
Where Noriko Sakai sits in the room
Zubissou Sounds does not have playlists or genres you click. It has knobs. Every track carries a position on each one, set by hand when the track was added, and you find music by setting the room to a state rather than by searching for a name. These are Noriko Sakai's average coordinates and the range they cover.
| Knob | Average | Range | Low → high |
|---|---|---|---|
| mood | 64 | 36–73 | melancholy → euphoric |
| energy | 58 | 19–74 | ambient → driving |
| density | 56 | 39–63 | sparse → wall |
| head · body | 59 | 21–76 | cerebral → groove |
All four run 0–100. They are placed by a person, not derived from audio analysis or from any streaming service's feature data.
What is here, record by record
| Album | Year | Tracks |
|---|---|---|
| Lovely Times/NORIKO PartIII | 1988 | 6 |
| GUANBARE/NORIKO PartII | 1988 | 3 |
| GUANBARE | 2017 | 2 |
| 男のコになりたい | 2017 | 2 |
| ノ・レ・な・い Teen-age | 2017 | 2 |
| Sweet'n Bitter/NORIKO PartVII | 1991 | 2 |
| 夢冒険/NORIKO SPECIAL | 1988 | 1 |
| My Dear/NORIKO PartV | 1989 | 1 |
| Blue Wind/NORIKO PartIV | 1989 | 1 |
| 夢冒険 | 2017 | 1 |
| ファンタジア(Fantasia)/NORIKO PartI | 1987 | 1 |
| あなたが満ちてゆく | 1993 | 1 |
Every Noriko Sakai track in the room
| Track | Album | Year |
|---|---|---|
| お願いダーリン | ファンタジア(Fantasia)/NORIKO PartI | 1987 |
| DON'T STOP GENKI | GUANBARE/NORIKO PartII | 1988 |
| ミーハー | GUANBARE/NORIKO PartII | 1988 |
| 土曜だけはシンデレラ | GUANBARE/NORIKO PartII | 1988 |
| 1ページのAugust | Lovely Times/NORIKO PartIII | 1988 |
| 1億のスマイル -PLEASE YOUR SMILE- | Lovely Times/NORIKO PartIII | 1988 |
| STARDUST WAVE | Lovely Times/NORIKO PartIII | 1988 |
| ウィンクに染めて | Lovely Times/NORIKO PartIII | 1988 |
| ビート・パレード | Lovely Times/NORIKO PartIII | 1988 |
| ファイト! | Lovely Times/NORIKO PartIII | 1988 |
| 夢冒険 | 夢冒険/NORIKO SPECIAL | 1988 |
| Dream Call | Blue Wind/NORIKO PartIV | 1989 |
| TELEPATHY | My Dear/NORIKO PartV | 1989 |
| すこし本気・・・ | Sweet'n Bitter/NORIKO PartVII | 1991 |
| 幸せにいちばん近い席 | Sweet'n Bitter/NORIKO PartVII | 1991 |
| 言えないひとこと | あなたが満ちてゆく | 1993 |
| Bタイプが好き | GUANBARE | 2017 |
| GUANBARE | GUANBARE | 2017 |
| ノ・レ・な・い Teen-age | ノ・レ・な・い Teen-age | 2017 |
| 恋のスタイル | ノ・レ・な・い Teen-age | 2017 |
| 夢冒険 | 夢冒険 | 2017 |
| ワガママ・シンドローム | 男のコになりたい | 2017 |
| 男のコになりたい | 男のコになりたい | 2017 |
Near neighbours in this room
These are the artists whose average knob position sits nearest to Noriko Sakai's in this room. It is a coordinate match, not a claim that they sound alike.
- Where to start with Yu Hayami — city pop, 36 tracks
- Where to start with Yukiko Okada — city pop, 10 tracks
- Where to start with Mako Ishino — city pop, 11 tracks
What the open databases say
MusicBrainz lists Noriko Sakai as a solo artist, from Fukuoka, Japan and born in 1971. Its contributors tag the artist j-pop, burned and idol kayō. These are the open database's facts, not mine — you can check them against the MusicBrainz entry.
Questions
How many Noriko Sakai tracks are in Zubissou Sounds?
There are 23, across 12 albums. 23 of them carry a date, running from 1987 to 2017. That is the whole of what this room holds — it is one person's collection, not a discography.
Is this a best-of, or a ranking?
No. Nothing here is ranked and no track is called better than another. The starting point is picked by arithmetic — the track closest to the centre of all the others on four measured axes — and the rule is printed above so you can disagree with it.
Where do the knob numbers come from?
They are set by hand, one track at a time, by the person who added the track. They are not audio analysis and not a Spotify feature. Mood, energy, density and the head/body balance each run 0 to 100. All 23 of these tracks have been read individually — nothing on this page is running on a default.
Can I listen to these here?
Not yet from this page. Zubissou Sounds is in private beta — the room itself plays through Spotify, and 23 of these 23 tracks are matched to a Spotify ID and ready to play the moment you are in. The waitlist form is at the bottom of this page.