New Home

HELLO I AM A LINK AND YOU SHOULD GO TO ME.

Basically, guys, I’m sorry, but I’m kind of over writing 1000+ words about why Japanese idols disappoint me. It was fun and exciting when I was doing it, but that entire year of 2008 was really hell on me for personal reasons that I’m not about to go into here, and I pretty much lost all interest in Hello! Project in the process. I still keep up with them, obviously (seriously, idols are drugs you cannot quit), just I’m not really as into it as I was.

Anyway, for those of you who have always enjoyed my music reviews, that link up there is to the tag I have at LiveJournal review community (formerly an uploading community) Ongoing Melody. I had to send in an application and all that fun stuff and it happens that the owner, Victoria, accepted me as part of her new review “team”, which was an idea I suggested when she was discussing putting an end to her uploading business there. I’m one of four members of the review team, and BTW, their reviews are all excellent as well, so I highly recommend snooping around there and reading theirs.

…of course, it’s kind of obvious that I’m no longer very focused on idol music. Out of everyone there, I pretty much handle all the electronic music reviews. As I put it in my application to Victoria, my top five favorite artists nowadays:

1. capsule
2. RAM RIDER
3. Goto Maki
4. Fantastic Plastic Machine
5. Perfume

So yeah. There’s some idea of what I’ll be reviewing over there! Like I said, if you’re interested enough, please go give it a look.

Here is some Ram Rider for your time.

Momusu Is Flirting With Me

LAZYgunsBRISKY review? Really? Man, screw that, I’d rather wax philosophical on Morning Musume for the umpteenth time. There’s something captivating about their latest single, the big 40th, “Nanchatte Renai”, that I feel it’s necessary to not only review the song itself…but to take a good look at the PV(with screenshots)!

If The B-52’s Mated With a Japanese Rock Band…

They would be LAZYgunsBRISKY. No, I’m not kidding, this is a real J-rock band. A real J-rock band. Not your little sister’s Stereopony, or your brother’s SCANDAL. They’re made up of Moe, Lucy, Azu, and Izumi. And they fucking rock.

This is my review of their first full-length album, aptly titled quixotic. Tomorrow (which is the 2-year anniversary of my blog, wow!), I’ll be reviewing their first mini-album, Catching!. Now, Stereopony and SCANDAL do rock, but I find myself more enamored with LAZYgunsBRISKY because they’re just so out of left field and very far removed from the pop vibe that the other two groups have. The singing of Lucy, their vocalist, often sounds like an incomprehensible blend of English and Japanese, and she has a voice that distinctly throws me back to The B-52’s. She does her share of wailing and vocalizing on most of the tracks. The rest of the band pitches in with their instrumental talents and composition, while Lucy seems to handle most of the lyrical value of the songs.

This is a band my father would probably like.

Pictures Can Change a Thousand Minds

I’ve been doing basically nothing but music reviews lately. I consider myself an extremely casual blogger, anymore — not really worth getting caught up in the old whirlwind like I used to. Sure, I can still sit here and wax poetic about Kanna leaving and what her role in °C-ute exactly was and get all pissed about the fact that Berryz is actually more fair to their individual members than their Kids counterpart is nowadays, but what’s the point? I’m not even getting pingbacks on my latest updates, lol (not like I mind, but I used to write those pseudo-philosophical posts for the sole reason that I wanted to get my thoughts out…to people who would read them).

Thing is, Hello! Project just doesn’t cut it for me anymore. It stopped cutting it for me…around the time I began to pay attention to the newest releases rather than the antique grooves of the past (remember, “Go Girl” was my first Momusu song, and that was quite a while ago) and found the former to be drastically insignificant when pitted against the latter, unfortunately.

Good Thing Nakazawa Yuko Wasn’t In This Album

…it might’ve actually been pretty darn good.

This is a quick and sloppy track-by-track review of the latest cover album from Hello! Project, Champloo ① ~Happy Marriage Song Cover Shuu~, slated for official release on the 15th this week. Which I find it to be quite interesting how a marriage album comes out on the heels of Fujimoto Miki’s marriage! I think it’s kind of cute, almost like H!P is trying to recognize that one of their most esteemed idols has finally tied the knot.

Hydrangeas In Bloom

I’ve been on a kick with random Japanese artists/bands lately. Call it restless ear syndrome; I’m trying to discover something in a broad genre that can entertain my imagination moreso than Morning Musume or Perfume are right now. I’ve been semi-successful, nothing about what I’ve found truly grips me like Morning Musume did a few years back. So my focus has turned to sort of “J-rock” artists.

…J-rock is a kind of doomed subgenre for me. I either really, really love it or it’s tolerable yet undesirable. There is no inbetween. Why did I decide to download Stereopony’s new album, then? Because I’m crazy and like to take up hard drive space. (Okay, no, that’s not it. I thought the cover was pretty.)

I Love Taiyou & Ciscomoon More

I haven’t done an album review in a pretty long time. I still have last year’s GAME album review backlogged to hell and back, so whenever I have a spare moment on my hands (which is going to be, like, never?), I think I’ll have to venture back to that frame of mind and complete it.

Today, I’d like to cover a four-piece idol group that most of you should be pretty familiar with. No, it’s not SPEED (although I do now have their first album), but Hello! Project’s antiquated Taiyou to Ciscomoon! *applause* Certainly a classic album in H!P’s discographic roster, their first album TAIYO&CISCOMOON 1 is what I will be covering on this humid, foggy Florida evening before I fly on a plane back to frigid Ohio to freeze my ass off instead of write blog posts. Oh, the sadness.

I Might Cry, Though On Second Thought, Maybe I Won’t

It’s been a lengthy absence and it’s going to continue to be one. I find little time in my days to sit down and put some serious thought into a good blog topic, and if I can’t produce something of quality, then I figure I might as well just not produce anything at all. But, seeing as I’ve been on vacation for almost two weeks now (and it’s fixing to end; I return to my hush-hush silence on January 5th, with some regrets that I didn’t immediately focus my ideas on blogging), it would be a damn shame to not write a little something, if not anything, in here. And what better than for it to be relevant to everybody else’s conscience?

I downloaded a “Naichau Kamo” radio rip a day before it was officially Wednesday in my time (the Wednesday where Tanaka Reina would be playing the first official radio broadcast of “Naichau Kamo” on FIVE STARS). I…really was not expecting anything spectacular, and anything spectacular is definitely not what I got.

A Notice

First of all, I’m horrifically sorry that I haven’t updated at all for at least a month or so. Circumstances in real life have come up with a startling ferocity and even as I type this, I’m not on my own computer (hasn’t been set up yet). I’m not going into details and I’m not answering questions pertaining to my leave of absence, but you can ask about the status of any of my series, or my Sudou Maasa worship blog (separate from this one, you can find the link in my blogroll). I will tell you this, though: I am not closing down yossha yossha YOSSHA! or ceasing all blogging activities. Just that at this time, I don’t have the means to sit down for an hour and make an entire, fleshed out entry with pictures and thoughtful subject matter, and if I can’t deliver that to you, then I’d rather not try to at all. If things ever settle down, you can expect me to come back in full force.

Don’t fret.

Miyoshi Chinatsu? YEEEH!

I often find myself shaking my fist at all you young whippersnappers who can’t stop gushing about the disgustingly LQ cellphone video of High-King’s new PV or excitedly discussing Kusumi Koharu’s upcoming single for that anime disaster she voice acts in. Maybe it’s because I’m not old and I find more value in old things. Or maybe it’s because, back in Hello! Project’s heyday (Christ, how long has this company been around?!), they actually employed singers who could sing decently, and had songs that weren’t total crap. Don’t even try to defend your precious Sugaya Risakos, your “Resonant Blue” singles, because I’ve heard it all and my judgment remains the same.

Recently, I’ve come into possession of the music of some really obscure Hello! Project artists whom I have admired from afar. Sheki-Dol is one of these artists (their PVs are on YouTube, and I encourage curious parties to go check those out), but today, I’m going to discuss Miyoshi Chinatsu. This means reviewing each of her singles (and her short-lived career). She was, by no means, any Fujimoto Miki or Matsuura Aya, but if she’d stayed, I think she would complement them nicely (and them likewise).