There are some new songs from Fukuoka prefecture art-rock band PolkadotStingray (yes, it really is one word run together), the first one here is ELECTRIC PUBLIC posted last Sunday and rapidly approaching half a million view in just 6 days. That is the opening song of their 1st Mini Album Great Justice, which will be released on April 26th. The next track is the mermaid from their first E.P. release last year, Boneless E. P., and I almost put a pretty interesting Google Android commercial they did for an app that would let you search for photos of yourself. The song on that one is great, but I can’t see posting a commercial.
Hello Sleepwalkers has a new mini-album that came out this week, and the first track is the song Sundown from that release. After that is Rollin and New World, also both from the new release. They have another recent mini-album called Unplugged Demos full of acoustic tracks, but I couldn’t find any of them that had permission set to stream in North America.
Tessa Violet gives us her take on gaining skill sets that have a serious learning curve, in this case the Japanese language. The bottom line is recognizing when your performance at a given task isn’t the performance at all, but just the practice you need to graduate to the next learning plateau. After that, a cover of one of the songs by the band she is currently being the warm up act for on her first tour of England.
I have been ranting about how good ONE OK ROCK is since 2011, and they have gotten nothing but better since then. I finally had the chance to see them live on October 6th, 2015, in a tiny little club in a major East Coast city, and unlike most bands I have heard they sounded even better live and in person than they did in the studio recordings. That was the same tour when everyone in the US became aware of them, so I don’t need to rant any more, or even speak, really. Here are two of their best recent tracks, American Girls (pretty much the opposite of Guess Who’s American Woman) posted on February 1st, and We Are posted on January 6th.
The wonderful voice of Yūko Suzuhana has been driving the Wagakki Band for years, a band blending traditional Japanese musical instruments and Western rock in ways never heard before. This past November, she finally got her first solo mini-album, Cradle Of Eternity, with a different musical sensibility but that same powerful voice. Here is a taste of each, first the song Cradle Of Eternity from the album of the same name, then the track Strong Fate from the Wagakki Band, and finally the more mellow Wagakki Band track Okinota yu, just posted Tuesday. Enjoy!
Earlier this week I mentioned the upcoming North American theatrical release of Your Name, and included the main theme by RADWIMPS. I thought this was a good opportunity to share a few other of their many songs, the first of which is the 2017 version of Iin Desu Ka, AKA Is That OK?, recorded just a few weeks ago. The next track is Kigō to Shite or As a Sign from December of 2015, the third is their 2009 song The Mind, the last is 2011’s With You and Sheep and Blue, or close to that. The band’s been around since 2001 and got their first major record deal in 2005, and have released a lot of music over the years. If you like what you hear, there is a lot more of it to track down and listen to.