DJ Sharpnel’s Special Interactive Set
On September 27, JEA has announced something quite interesting for the X-treme Hard Nano Edition party that happened recently in place of the 15 Years of DJ Bug event.
Basically, with your DS, you had the ability to request pretty much stuff from Sharpnel’s collection via the chat function prior to Sharpnel’s set. And he basically offered SRPC0001 to SRPC024 to begin with – though the list that he compiled has other things too, like SRPC-C001 and SRPK-0001 and SRPC-H003 plus the remixes he did for things like Veil, BPT and even his remix of Sayonara Revival by Saori@destiny. (The full list is available on mixi and on the official Sharpnelsound blog)
Jea Sharpnel was basically willing to play any song that he produced if people wanted. That’s around 400 songs in total. How often does an artist on the scale of Sharpnel open up their entire collection for people to request from?
It also shows how large Sharpnel’s actual amount of produced material there is. Granted, not all of it is good but there are good things in there. I mean, come on. 400 something songs is no light number.
(If you’re wondering about why use the DS’s Pictochat function – the function is very much a well accepted way of communication between parties on the handheld device that doesn’t require much fuss in Japan. Groups of people stayed connected via their DS at Comiket – and it’s pretty clever since it’s not as expensive as a mobile phone and it’s easy enough to see what a group of people are doing.)
I miss Nobuchika Eri.
Between sickness and long periods of sleepness nights with shitty internet, I found myself playing Pokémon Pearl while listening to my music collection.
Interestingly enough, the CD that kept me company the best was Eri Nobuchika’s somewhat eponymous album of nobuchikaeri.
For those of you who might not know who Eri Nobuchika is, she was an artist who auditioned to Sony and was successfully signed to the label and coupled with producer Shinichi Osawa aka Mondo Grosso. She had her first single “Lights” featured in the highly innovative PSP game Lumines and that is where I first heard of her.
Shinichi’s production worked well for dear Eri while he was Mondo Grosso because she has a smooth, powerful voice that has a very unique quality to it . Mondo Grosso made her standout with the acid jazz, funky house sound that made Eri Nobuchika more than just a pop artist. It made each of her singles a delight to listen to and nobuchikaeri a cohesive collection of nicely produced songs with unusual elements (such as the flamenco inspired guitar in Voice or the horns in Kodou) and Eri’s voice soaring over them gracefully and fluidly, like the swallowtail butterfly that was Eri’s logo.
After a period of releasing several singles, vinyls, an album and a remix album with Sony, Eri went into a long hiatus in which it had been speculated that she cut ties with Sony – though this was never officially confirmed on either side.
I decided to check up on Miss Nobuchika’s work post-Shinichi Osawa and to my disappointment, neither delofamilia or her indies album hands managed to interest me. At all. After being treated to the winning combination of Mondo Grosso + Eri Nobuchika, the alternative flavoured pop that she’s come out with is bland in comparison. Her voice, was still as powerful as I can remember it but that wasn’t enough to keep my interest.
I can think of many instances in which there are good pop vocalists have crap composers. Or if not crap composers, then composers who play it too safe so the song as a whole becomes unremarkable, no matter how good the vocalist is. They have perhaps a handful of songs that work really well, and then the rest is just too bland to be of any listening value to me at the very least.
There doesn’t seem to be hope of Eri Nobuchika reuniting with Shinichi Osawa since he seems kinda busy being famous. But at least, Eri’s collection of work under Sony will stand as perhaps one of my most favourite examples of Japanese music beautifully done.
I’ve Sound have some weirdass song titles. Just saying.
Yuki over at I’ve Sound Blog posted the news about KOTOKO’s latest song. The song is the theme song for BALDRSKY Dive2 and is called… jihad.
Yes, believe it or not KOTOKO’s latest song is named after a controversial Islamic term. The short version of the song doesn’t sound bad at all, but… why that term, out of all the random wikipedia pages?
While I find I’ve Sound have always had a history of bizarre titles (The penchant for Botany related terms is something I picked up on – song titles such as Lythrum, Meconopsis, Oxisols exist plus strange things like Everything is assumed to be connected, intron tone, Vacillate, Scheherazade), this one just makes me scratch my head more than usual.
So in some sort of experiment to satisfy my curiosity, this is a meme that I plucked off livejournal which uses the Special:Random page over at wikipedia to generate an album and some songs. Will it resemble anything particularly I’ve Sound-ish? Let’s see.
Denki Groove’s Shangri-La – The Cover Song Paradox
Firstly, I’m surprised by the number of Jpop fans who don’t know who Denki Groove is. I’m not the biggest fan of theirs (I have interest in what they do) but I know who they are. Anyway, a short introduction to them is needed and their song Shangri-La.
Denki Groove is a Japanese technopop in the style of Kraftwerk and YMO. The current members are Takkyu Ishino and Pierre Taki who basically produce everything, compose everything and whatnot. I’m a fan of their older stuff, especially of their A album and their songs have a very raw feel to them with pop sensibilities over very nice beats and basslines. I find that they’re sorely underrated as a group and they have gotten some popularity in Europe in any instance.
Their arguably most popular song is Shangri-La. It’s one of my favourites anyway.
The bassline in that song is to die for. It is amazing, I love this song. It’s very new wave but there is something German, something French, something distinctly European but fused with this infusion of something very Eastern as well. The melody is of course, taken from Bebu Silvetti’s Spring Rain (Lluvia de Primavera? That’s the title in Italian, though I have seen both in usage.)
Anyway, the lyrics are about this girl who is so wonderful that when she laughs, when she talks – it’s like she’s bringing Shangri-La (utopia, paradise, whatever floats your boat in terms of fictional mythical arcadia) to this guy who is infatuated with her. The days with her are sweet for him, like the spring rain. It’s a beautiful song, lyrically and musically. I would pay good money to have the original 8cm single that this was released on.
As far as I am aware, this song has been covered twice relatively recently. The first one is by the newest incarnation of formerly Konami backed j-pop group BeForU.
From this very raw new wave sound it gets turned into slick, electropop influenced… well, pop. It’s a different direction for the song, but what is with those outfits? As much as I like BeForU and followed their travails, I know this new incarnation was meant to be a shift from their old image to something sexier, but still. If I’d never heard the original Shangri-La, I would be perfectly content in thinking this song was alright, but not terribly impressive.
The other cover I know of is by electropop darling, Aira Mitsuki’s labelmate Saori@destiny, who gives a distinct definite electro twist to the song and it’s ever so slightly verging into denpa territory as well. Though this didn’t have a PV, it was released before Saori’s JAPANESE CHAOS album on iTunes as a “teaser” track.
Now that I’ve made you aware of the existence of both covers and the original, I am flummoxed by the fact that they’re both electropoppish and they’re both sung by females. It’s ever so slightly egotistical for a female to sing this because for god’s sake, it’s like they’re saying they’re the girl that brings Shangri-La upon some poor soul – which is clearly the direction the BeForU video takes it with those pajama outfits and sexy dancing.
BeForU make their cover sound very sexy and admittedly the synth that carries the main melody line sounds very cheap compared to the used in the original. It’s a decent enough cover.
Saori@destiny has sorta made covering songs in an electropop style her speciality as her first major single was a Kyogo Kawaguchi cover, and the choice of Shangri-La was certainly odd, but she pulls it off well enough with her vocals being slightly flat on the emotional aspect of the song (that’s probably just the vocoder), but nevertheless, it’s not too bad to listen to, with the vocal cutting of “Shangri-La, Shangri-La” during the bridge being one of the highlights.
What I really want, is a guy to cover this song. Admittedly after seeing a clip of Shangri-La live on youtube, if a guy were to cover this, then there’s a lot that he’d have to live up to. Nevertheless, as far as cover songs go, Shangri-La by Denki Groove does lend itself to being covered well enough.
J-Core Masterz 5: Disaster Strikes
As much as I dislike the series, I don’t believe that this sort of thing is ever justified.
Anyway, in regards to the 5th iteration of J-Core Masterz – the release seems to have been delayed due to the selfish actions of one particular person who was bored and decided to fuck around with people.
If you remember the first track of the tracklist posted here, the first track is called Ichigo 100% by a relative unknown called DJ Paper Chaos.
Unfortunately, it was spotted that Ichigo 100% was not was not DJ Paper Chaos’ own work. Having distributed the track among a circle of producers, one of them managed to spot that the track was not DJ Paper Chaos’ own work but simply a retagged version of いちごコンプリート [Ichigo Complete] by Ma15+MAKI from the ever popular Exit Trance Presents Speed Anime Best series. It was spotted but it too late as the CDs had been pressed when this bombshell dropped onto M-Project. As a result, there is much resentment towards DJ Paper Chaos from both Japanese and overseas hardcore artists because M-Project is very respected and to mess with him is a relatively unknown thought.
DJ Paper Chaos just seems utterly pathetic to do this for kicks, really. M-Project puts a lot of effort into these CDs and people actually do spend their money on them. Not to mention that due to the close knit nature of the Japanese hardcore scene, if this CD went out the way it is – this would have reached Quake Records easily and it would have been bad for M-Project and Mob Squad Tokyo as a whole.
So what’s happening with J-Core Masterz Vol 5? Well, the rumour is that DJ Paper Chaos’ track is getting removed and an extra track is being placed in with the CD being delayed to sometime October. It’s also believed that this bonus track may be “Fuck DJ Paper Chaos” but that’s probably just M-Project being pissed. (DJ Paper Chaos is now being called DJ Toiler Paper Chaos by a number of people, including me. DJ Toilet Paper Chaos down the shitter please!)
EDIT: Thanks to Mr. Anon123456doit, we now have snaps of the douchebag who pulled this stunt off AND screencaps of his myspace before he killed it off. Feel free to laugh at how much of an attention whore he is, and if you ever see him on the streets, you know what he looks like so that you can hit him. (Wait, he lives in England. I could do that!)
Shinichi Osawa or how he’s not Mondo Grosso anymore.
If you’ve never heard of Shinichi Osawa I don’t know what’s wrong with you but if you’ve never heard of Mondo Grosso, that’s kinda expected now. 
This makes me sad.
Anyway, Mondo Grosso was originally a group led by Shinichi Osawa, then Mondo Grosso just became Shinichi Osawa’s alias for his work. Somewhere along the line, he shifted to electro house and started producing stuff under his real name “Shinichi Osawa” and released “The One” (There are several released versions of The One, I’m just starting to think of a bad joke related to all of this but I will hold back)
As Mondo Grosso, Osawa was signed to Sony Music Entertainment Japan and produced Eri Nobuchika and bird. He also provided music for the highly addicting PSP game Lumines, which was the primary reason that I became highly interested in his work in the first place.
The sound that he did as Mondo Grosso was very rich and atmospheric, firmly rooted in the house/progressive house/acid house style – using live instrumentation combined with skillful editing. It was very clever, both musically and production wise. I find that the best example of this would be the Mondo Grosso album “Next Wave” and Eri Nobuchika’s album “nobuchikaeri”. Admittedly under Mondo Grosso, Osawa had a couple of production quirks that irritated me (For example, some of his tracks take forever to build up and the main vocals or main part is so short compared to the build up. Like, Shake Ya Body on Henshin. It takes absolutely forever to go anywhere and the short version of the track on Lumines is so so so so much better.)
Anyway, Shinichi Osawa decided to shift styles from house to trendy electrohouse and somewhere along the line he left Sony for avex. And he realised he was making monies from this move. So he decided to stay with this.
I don’t think it’s a bad thing that he’s decided to go with electrohouse as his main genre now, it’s just that I feel, compared to his work as Mondo Grosso – it’s less inventive and more trendy. I wish he’d go back to producing Eri Nobuchika but that’s highly unlikely.
But yeah, if Shinichi Osawa would bother with stuff like Shinin’ and Everything Needs Love once again, I would be a happy camper. (Because I firmly believe that electrohouse is not the be all, end all.)
Hello! Project 2009: Spitting On the Memory of Those That Made It Great
I used to have a strong interest in Hello! Project. This was close to the time of their heyday of the 10th anniversary and I felt that Hello!Project at the time had a lot going for it because of the variety of girls that participated in it – you had mature singers like Kaori Iida, Yuko Nakazawa and the lesbian leghumping v-u-den to counterbalance the loli filled acts Berryz Koubou, C-ute and the almost nauseating Hello!Project Eggs.
My interest in Hello! Project eventually waned when all my favourite girls came to a slow but steady decrease in their activity or was placed in the hands of bland composers and arrangers (Case point: Aya Matsuura) that listening to their current music was just unbearable no matter how much I liked their voice.
Without going into the details of my Hello!Project favourites, let’s just say that I was throwing the towel at being an H!P fan and was just taking a casual interest in the girls I liked.
And then there comes the news that every single member I ever cared for graduates in one mass exodus from Hello! Project. So there goes my interest in the group. I could have dusted my hands off Hello! Project and called it a day.
I pretty much did, until I heard the news that there was a new Hello! Project CD coming out. It’s called チャンプル① ～ハッピーマリッジソングカバー集～ [Chanpuru 1 ~Happy Marriage Song Cover Shuu~] and is pretty much a cover album of Jpop from the 70s and 80s with updated arrangements and sung by girls who look young enough to be the daughter of a male at marriage age.
My heart sank when I saw the tracklist and corresponding artists (Courtesy of Hello! Online)
Hello!Project
Chanpuru 1~Happy Marriage Song Cover Shuu~
Release Date: July 15, 2009Tracklist:
1. Diamonds – High-King
2. Ai wa Katsu – °C-ute & Erina Mano
3. YES-YES-YES – Aa! [Tanaka Reina, Natsuyaki Miyabi, Suzuki Airi]
4. Tentou Chuu no Sanba – Shin Minimoni (New Minimoni) [Linlin, Kanon Fukuda, ???]
5. Kimi ga iru dake de – Pucchimoni V
6. Heya to Y shirts to Watashi – Reina Tanaka
7. Mamotte Agetai – Risa Niigaki & Eri Kamei
8. Cosmos – Ai Takahashi
9. Mirai Yosouzu II – ZYX-α (ZYX alpha)
10. ONLY YOU – Zoku･Biyuuden (Sequel Biyuuden)
11. akai sweet pea – Tanpopo #
12. For You… – Linlin
13. Kanpaku Sengen – Berryz Koubou & Erina Mano
14. Sekai wa futari no tame ni – Sayumi Michishige, Koharu Kusumi, Aika Mitsui, Junjun
My first reaction was the title of this particular entry. My second reaction was to believe that due to the global recession and the rise of digital methods of buying music, H!P were running into hard times.
I have very dear memories of Pucchimoni and Tanpopo. My favourite incarnation of Tanpopo is Kaori Iida, Mari Yaguchi and Aya Ishiguro – their Tanpopo was mature, melancholic and featured lovely harmonies. Songs like Last Kiss, Motto and the eponymous Tanpopo were examples of good 90s Jpop. And I loved it to death.
I expect the current Tanpop would just be even more of a sham than the Rika Ishikawa led incarnation.
Pucchimoni on the other hand, were the fun loving and girlish group that Sayaka Ichi, Kei Yasuda and Maki Goto. And though Ichi was replaced with Hitomi Yoshizawa, the group still packed a punch by being cute and in your face without being saccharine.
You can’t beat that, seriously. I don’t think you can.
Again, for the purposes of being brief I won’t go into v-u-den and Minimoni’s incarnations but the point is, these groups were laid to rest for a reason. They were created with a purpose and it just seems a bit… disrespectful to the girls who made H!P great in the first place to revive their groups with these other girls who don’t have the charisma or personality to be worthy of joining these groups.
The point being, I think Maki Goto and the rest of the Hello! Project Elder Club left at a good time. I don’t think they’d be able to stand this sacrilege.
Because I certainly don’t.
MELL: Why I to this date, have a massive crush on her.
I don’t mean just physically, I think that MELL is my favourite member of I’ve sound without any doubt. And I am not ashamed in admitting that I have a crush on MELL.
For those of you unfamiliar with I’ve Sound, MELL is basically the oldest member of the collective; presumably still with Kazuya Takase before I’ve was even formed. It wasn’t until 2006 that she got her big break with Geneon and released “Red fraction” an Engrish filled melange of awesome of heavy guitars versus sparkly piano and MELL’s vibrato filled vocals made to sound menacing with a hint of distortion.
Since then, she’s released one album and a slew of singles with Geneon. She’s also performed in America at Project A-Kon and is going to perform at Otakon this year. So she’s got the distinction of being the only I’ve girl besides KOTOKO who has performed overseas.
Prior to this debut with Geneon however, MELL seemed to be the darkest out of all the I’ve singers. And I seem to gravitate towards darkness a lot of the time, I always used this comparison when describing MELL to people.
“You’ve heard of KOTOKO, right? KOTOKO’s like a mermaid, all sparkly and happy and rainbows. MELL on the other hand, is a siren singing beautifully and darkly with just a little bit of sexual appeal to entice people.”
And in terms of songs? Egen, Out Flow, Proof, Spiral… all good things. Mind you she has had some misses with songs like Fall In Love and Fly To The Top. I don’t even want to begin how getting MELL to sing cutesy is a bad idea. It just doesn’t work and sounds forced for my ears.
Which is why I wonder why she released Proof, her second single. Or rather, I really wonder how she got dragged into singing such a bland song. It’s a flat song that I’d expect KOTOKO or Kaori Utatsuki to sing that has the elements of that sort of anison pop.
On the other hand, the b-side, no vain is pure gold. I always imagine that MELL would be like “Rawr, I don’t like this Proof shit. Let be who I am!” It also has some of the most interesting bits of Engrish written like “In the world chain of pain vomit.” That’s okay MELL, I forgive you because I find it endearing rather than annoying.
Your grasp of English probably meant that you were the most likely candidate to cover Lia’s Disintegration on The Front Line Covers. And I was impressed, the opening lines were pristine. Somewhere along the line though, your Japanese pronunciation just creeps in. But other than that, it’s a spectacular effort on MELL’s part. (I am suitably unimpressed by Lia’s delayed backing vocals left there, since you can tell it is Lia. Bad SINE6.)
But, I am not here to give you a single-by-single replay of MELL’s career. I am here to tell you why I love this woman as a singer and why she should continue.
… Or not. Recently MELL’s latest singles KILL and RIDEBACK have suffered from following the same format as Red fraction (which was inventive… when it was first released. Now not so much.)
But, the KILL single’s promotional photos looked like the closest to a MELL-sama S&M fantasy.
I suppose the biggest reason I love MELL is because I could never sing like her. She has acquired a certain tone and vibrato to her voice that is very hard to imitate. I have tried singing Red fraction and not even the massive amounts of distortion I placed on my voice gave me a little bit of MELL’s vibrato. And because I cannot sing her songs, I admire her.
Did I mention she’s really hot too?
Note: I am female. Let’s get this completely clear.
Kaori Uta…who? Eh?
I’ve been an on/off fan of I’ve Sound for a variety of reasons. I can’t remember the first time I heard of them but they’ve been in the background ever since I started listening to Japanese music.
It’s only been relatively recently that I’ve have been in the mainstream with their link with Geneon. It’s also then that they reduced their line up from a veritable roster (Including a variety of guest vocalists such as Lia to name a few) to just a core group of five entitled… Love Planet Five, as the moniker from Tenjou wo Kakeru Monotachi would lead me to believe.
My on/off relationship with I’ve comes from the fact that I am not the biggest fan of their denpa stuff. Denpa is a sugary sweet, saccharine – normally fast and nauseatingly nonsensical style of music that KOTOKO (the I’ve mothership artist) is known for. It’s just… a bit too much and denpa is one of those things that I’d like to have in small doses.
This is where Kaori Utatsuki comes in. While she is one of the artists who used to be under vocalist and voice teacher Eiko Shimamiya’s wing – and I do think she has a pleasant enough voice, I find her to be out of place among the current Love Planet Five. She’s the newest addition and arguably one of the weakest.
I never really paid much attention to her until I read at 愛撫―I’ve Sound Blog― that she was releasing a new album entitled SPYGLASS. Other than knowing her existence, she was just another member of I’ve that I didn’t really take too much notice of.
But the more I looked into her, the more she seemed to stand out. I couldn’t figure out for the life of me why that is until I twigged it.
Compared to the other girls in Love Planet Five (KOTOKO, MELL, Shimamiya Eiko and Kawada Mami), Kaori seems to have very little involvement in regards to her input in songs. MELL, Shimamiya Eiko and Kawada Mami write their own lyrics and KOTOKO composes and writes lyrics. But Kaori always seems to have her lyrics written by KOTOKO.
I just feel a bit cheated, really. I always found that personally, one of I’ve Sound’s selling points was the singer writing the lyrics for a fair majority of their songs since you can get a really strong impression from them sometimes and then it becomes a stylistic thing of an artist that you being to look out for. (Case point: MELL’s fantastic English.)
Then another thing that held even more weight hit me. Most of Kaori’s songs are pop ballads, denpa pop, midtempo pop and just pop songs in general. Unless someone proves me wrong, Kaori Utatsuki doesn’t have any dark, electronic trance songs to her name which every other girl in Love Planet Five. I’ve Sound was built upon Takase Kazuya’s heavy trance beats and synth loops. I could name my favourite songs from each of the Love Planet Five, save for Kaori Utatsuki. There is a trend between all of them.
KOTOKO:
- Abyss
- Suppuration/Suppuration -core-
- Princess Bride (this is so the black sheep in this list)
Kawada Mami
- radiance
- PSI-missing
- Trill
Shimamiya Eiko
- World My Eyes
- Higurashi no Naku Koro ni
- To lose in amber
MELL
- Two face (She did such a good job this cover, I was completely amazed)
- no vain
- Spiral
They’re all dark songs with a dance beat and trance/techno elements to them. That’s the connection. And I can’t be bothered to dig through Kaori’s discography.
So, in summary:
- Every single I’ve member in Love Planet Five has at least three songs I like which have trance/techno elements (SAVE FOR PRINCESS BRIDE, that song is just… special) except for Kaori Utatsuki.
- Kaori Utatsuki is purely pop with none of this electronic music which I love the other girls for.
- (minor point, but it needs to be included) She doesn’t write her own lyrics, which strikes me as slightly odd in this I’ve collective.
So I hope someone can prove me wrong and find a dark, beat filled Kaori Utatsuki song. Maybe then I’ll pay attention to her for when she releases SPYGLASS. Call me I’ve ignorant, but my denpa tolerance does run low.
Aira Mitsuki, what in the world are you up to?
I remember when I first heard about Aira Mitsuki and her entry to the Japanese Music stage. It was an exciting time for electropop because it seemed that everyone was gripped with Perfume mania. They had released the highly popular Polyrhythm and followed that up with Baby crusing Love, then their album GAME was highly anticipated. (Even I was, I had to admit because I spent a large amount of money for two tickets for Perfume’s GAME tour at Yokohama since that was the time I was going to be in Japan. I remember posting a picture on my personal blog flaunting my tickets.)
Similarly, loads of electropop acts were cropping up due to this Perfume, or more correctly Nakata-mania. Yasutaka Nakata was on a roll – he was bringing fallen idol Ami Suzuki back into power with FREE FREE and the vocoded and auto-tuned vocals that he made heavy use of were emulated by the engineers of pop singers in their attempt to say “Hey, look at us! We can do electropop too!” as if by emulating the essence of Perfume, they would get just a little smidgeon of that popularity.
