The New Eccentric Girl

Welcome to the first post ever of The New Eccentric Girl where I attempt to bring you into my musical world… because I think it’s interesting and I find some interesting stuff that doesn’t get talked about enough.

Anyway, I thought I’d kickstart this blog with a review of the album which contains the song in which this blog gets its name from.

Lets start with the artist. Most of this description was cannibalized from the original entry I wrote for the livejournal J-tek community Stereo Night.

If you haven’t heard of ravex, it’s basically a unit made of Fantastic Plastic Machine’s Tomoyuki Tanaka, Mondo Grosso’s Shinichi Osawa and m-flo’s Taku Takahashi. Tagged with the line that the music they made was “21st Century J-Pop”, ravex is a unit to celebrate the 20th anniversary of avex trax and the 80th anniversary of Tezuka World. You know, Astro Boy. Marvelous Melmo. Kimba the White Lion, Princess Knight. Osamu Tezuka’s Star System and more make an appearance in the 20 minute special “ravex in Tezuka World” which was such a throwback to my childhood.

Their roster of vocalists is basically every single BIG artist on avex trax and its associated sublabels. Amuro Namie, Tohoshinki, LISA from m-flo, Tsuchiya Anna, BoA, Chisa from GIRL NEXT DOOR, Maki Goto, trf, Verbal from m-flo, Monkey Majik, Ando Yuko and DJ OZMA.

Star power aside, the music is electrohouse fused with J-pop and made with the whole spectrum of electronic dance fans in mind so it’s got something to appease hardcore electronic music meant to be played in clubs fans to people who like pop in general.

I think the whole concept of this project is key to understanding how this album is supposed to work.

Artist: ravex
Title: trax
Catalogue No: AVCD-23790/B | AVCD-23791
Tracklisting:
01. I RAVE U (Original)
02. ROCK U feat. 安室奈美恵 [Amuro Namie]
03. Just the Two of Us feat. 東方神起 [Tohoshinki]
04. HOUSE NATION feat. LISA
05. Bangalicious feat. 土屋アンナ [Tsuchiya Anna]
06. Believe in LOVE feat. BoA
07. NEWエキセントリックガール [New Eccentric Girl] feat. 千紗 [Chisa] (GIRL NEXT DOOR)
08. Golden LUV feat. MAKI GOTO
09. V.I.P.P. (Very Important Party People) feat. TRF & VERBAL(m-flo)
10. 1 more night feat. MONKEY MAJIK
11. 悪い子みつけた。 [Waruiko Mitsuketa.] feat. 安藤裕子 [Ando Yuko]
12. I RAVE U feat. DJ OZMA

I think that this project is pure brilliance. Though avex is known to be evil incarnate when it comes to representing the Japanese music industry, I’m willing to forgive them because they went back to their roots of dance orientated music for this project – even resurrecting one of my favourite Juliana’s Tokyo tracks (kajdasdj I will never forgive you avex, I used to listen to rave music when I was a kid because those were the CDs my parents had in their collection). The fact that they got Tezuka World to hook up with them was pretty amazing too since the story of “ravex in Tezuka World” is very Tezuka with the power of Music to bring people closer to closer being the main theme of it. They even collaborated with Uniqlo. I have a ravex shirt. ;~; They’re taking my money!

Anyways, I RAVE U original mix is based off Can’t Undo This!! by Starr Gazer vs Maximizor… aka Yasuhiko Hoshino. (just click the link to hear how the original sounds) If you’ve never heard of this track, I don’t blame you but if you have, it’s probably because Yinling of Joytoy (the Ero-Terrorist, and you wouldn’t believe how hard it is to find a work-safe image of her) did a vocal cover of it on one of the Super Trance albums. Quite frankly, this is one of the best tracks on the album and ravex keep the song’s rave feel but with updated production techniques. This song is so much fun to dance to. It’s very early 90s rave. ravex start this album off with a really good “rave” feel to it.

Sadly the album goes into a dip straight after as ROCK U is an attempt to boost Amuro Namie’s flagging popularity. As she ages, she’s losing a lot of her target market because the young girls who used to emulate her style are now all grown up and can’t really connect with her. It’s not a bad song, it’s just that very few Namie songs have really clicked with me and this one is no exception. The moment I switch to the next song, I can barely remember how this one goes. I’m willing to forgive ravex because they’ve run Namie through several thousand filters and she doesn’t sound as annoying as I normally find her.

I think I found the Tohoshinki I will ever like in Just the Two of Us because there’s something really catchy about they way ravex have cut up and harmonized Tohoshinki (Or Tohoshinking as I call them, because that is what happens to every single fangirl who jumps on the Tohoshiki ship.). You start off with a repetitive hook of “tonight, tonight” interspersed with “*verb* me” lines like “have me” and “touch me.” Again, this surely will appeal to the Tohoshinki fangirls because they can imagine their favourite boy is singing this song to them, straight to them! I like the shift from the cut up vocals of the chorus to the harmonized smoothness of the verses, though it is a bit abrupt and strange in places. I think the use of English and Japanese on this was a nice touch and Tohoshinki don’t sound awkward or strange on either language considering they’re from Korea.

You might be sick of this track, but I find it really fun. HOUSE NATION featuring LISA is one of the bounciest tracks on the album. I first heard this song on beatmania IIDX 16 EMPRESS since it was one of the licenses on there besides Shinichi Osawa’s Our Song and a House Nation-related remix of the anthemic “thunder” by Sunset In Ibiza. (Shohei Matsumoto’s group for electrohouse-y stuff when he’s not pumping out buchiage trance) LISA’s lyrics leave me wondering though, I mean…

Mama papa gave birth, to baby music
Baby music gave birth, to dance music
Dance music gave birth, to house music
Expand your mind!

Baby music went shopping, and never came back
Rumor says he’s on a mission, doin’ it!!
Giving back to planet love, house nation!!
Now babies!
Expand your mind!

I’ll leave you to ponder the meaning of those lyrics. :p

This is like the theme song of the “House Nation” series of albums spearheaded by avex. That being said, I do prefer the long version that is on the beatmania IIDX 16 EMPRESS ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK because the way LISA is cut up at the beginning sounds a lot more energetic.

The attack of bizarre English lyrics doesn’t stop just yet! Bangalicious by Anna Tsuchiya is full of oddities like “Ate seven gigabytes” and “electricute yo minds, the nasty stinger!” This is no surprise, really since LISA (yes, the same one who was on the last track) wrote these lyrics for Anna.

Again, this one of those songs that might take a little getting used to. It’s got a lot of kick to it and it sounds like an Anna Tsuchiya song that had a bit more of a beat and a few more atmospheric synths thrown in. It’s another fun song and Anna is just being Anna, which I find pretty cool. But ah, I, I, don’t care, say wha wha what you want.

(Interestingly, Anna has a song on her Taste My Skin album called “Ah Ah” which was remixed by Shinichi Osawa.)

The song that got turned into a single was Believe in LOVE featuring the lovely and ever popular BoA. I think BoA has a really nice voice, but often she gets thrown to the most generic composers and arrangers that I get turned off purely by the basis of her music. Believe in LOVE is a mid-tempo synthpop inspired ballad that has a lot of gentleness and warmth to it but it’s the sort of song that you could hear in a club and everybody would be getting warm and fuzzy feelings and start waving their hands before they start jumping about again. The lyrics are again a combination of English and Japanese with BoA pulling them off nicely. Then again, there are times in which she sounds a bit strained.

That being said, this suffers from awkward transitioning in terms of the flow of the album. You have a really upbeat and energetic track in the form of Bangalicious and then you have this really mellow Believe in LOVE track which breaks up the whole flow of the album. I mean, it’s overly orchestral in places which I find odd. Anyway, moving on.

NEWエキセントリックガール (New Eccentric Girl) feat. Chisa from GIRL NEXT DOOR is where this blog gets its name from. Now, I really don’t like Girl Next Door as it sounds like every late 90s pop-rock act that avex managed to promote and I’m a bit sick of that sound since it was abused by a lot of up and coming idol groups of the 2000s, it’s really nice to hear Chisa do something a bit more dance orientated. Granted, it’s nothing as heavy or club orientated Misono (Day After Tomorrow)’s Konomama or 11 eleven or Tomiko Van (Do As Infinity)’s Drive me nuts but it’s something different even if Chisa doesn’t exactly have the strongest voice in the business.

It’s a cute, peppy song which suits the image Chisa is portraying of well, the girl next door, haha. It’s got a lot of English words that have been katakana-ized which just adds to the overall charm of this song. It’s just a very charming and endearing song, hey hey hey eccentric love.

One of my favourite songs ever by ravex is Golden LUV featuring Goto Maki. Now if you’ve been living under a rock all this time in regards to Jpop, Goto Maki was previously a member of prolific girl group Morning Musume. and was recruited as the sole member of the group’s third generation. She is in the possession of a really nice and powerful voice which added a lot of punch to Morning Musume songs in that era (Indeed, Morning Musume’s hit of Love Machine was the first single Goto appeared on). She then went solo for a while under the banner of MM and other related acts called Hello!Project. But after Goto was unhappy with the direction of her career and not being given enough artistic direction; she fled Hello!Project and Tsunku to the arms of avex sublabel Rhythm Zone and became one of Max Matsuura (avex’s CEO)’s top priorities.

Golden LUV was the b-side to Believe in LOVE and it’s a song that starts off mellow enough with the piano loop but gets into full swing soon afterwards, becoming a really uplifting song. The song has a really nice “glowing” feel to it, which is appropriate since there are lots of reference to light and sparkling in the lyrics. It’s another song to show Goto’s versatility and I’d love to go driving around in the evenings to this song.

V.I.P.P. (Very Important Party People) featuring TRF and VERBAL from m-flo is one of the more interesting songs in this album. Apart from the fact that the opening sounds a little bit like Keiichi Ueno’s Macho Gang from beatmania IIDX, it’s like we have an m-flo party going on this album. Firstly Taku’s behind all these songs, then LISA’s there and Verbal’s here to keep the party going since he has NO SHAME IN HIS GAME. (I kid you not, he said that in regards to the ravex project)

This song has got a strong influence from African drumming and tribal house since TRF really provide a chorus and Verbal is your all mighty Master of the Ceremony. Gotta love the drums in this song, this gives the song a lot of punch. Shame that TRF aren’t given a bigger part in this song, but oh well. It’s not bad, though it is overly energetic and if you aren’t in the mood, then this song will quickly be the one to irritate you.

I’ve never really heard of Monkey Majik prior to this album, but what in the world have I been missing? 1 more night is an amazing song featuring the only set of fully English lyrics that don’t sound like they were written on crack. This is no surprise since Maynard and Blaise Plant are Canadians who live in Sendai and are fluent in Japanese as well as French and English. Talk about multilingual. Anyway, Maynard and Blaise have nice voices which go well with one another and this song is another mid-tempo song along the lines of the male version of Believe in LOVE without the grand orchestral section and a bit more cohesion all around. It’s a nice, chill and uplifting feel good track

I’m not sure what the point of getting Yuko Ando to sing 悪い子みつけた。[Warui Ko Mitsuketa.] was the best idea since Yuko Ando’s voice isn’t for everyone. There are certain kinds of music styles which her throaty, enka-inspired singing style suits very well but I think this song is a bit more of an acquired taste – firstly for Yuko’s voice and secondly for the music because it’s even more down-tempo than 1 more night. I’m not a fan of slow songs so much like this… but I think it’s a nice summery song that I’d have no problem chilling poolside with this song playing in the background.

And the album ends the way it started with I RAVE U… feat everybody’s favourite DJ OZMA! I could never take DJ Ozma seriously, and I don’t think he’d want you to take him seriously. Which is a bit the point of this song… it is an innuendo filled silly rhyming lyrics fest of DJ Ozma doing what he does best – being a cannon of stupid energy. And when I say stupid, I mean it in a good way. I do prefer the instrumental version of this song but I can’t help but laugh every time I listen to this song. The PV makes it so much better to – referencing Ozma’s past antics. It’s a shame he’s retiring.

Meanwhile, the verdict:

Ignore
Digital Copy
Physical Copy

I think this is an album you’d be glad you had a physical copy of. Sure it may seem like a patchwork of artists brought together in a strange way, but it works. And that’s how it was meant to be.

Tags: Ando Yuko, BoA, DJ Ozma, Fantastic Plastic Machine, Girl Next Door, goto maki, m-flo, Monkey Majik, ravex, Shinichi Osawa, Taku Takahashi, tohoshinki, TRF, tsuchiya anna

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 28th, 2009 at 5:23 pm by kannazuki and is filed under avex trax, reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.