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Flow: United Sparrows

Flow has been doing music for Anime for a long time; they started playing together in 1991, and became FLOW in 1998. So far they have released 11 studio albums, 5 compilation albums, 5 Extended Play discs (averaging 6 songs each), 37 singles, and a handful of collaborations. With almost everything they have done being used as opening or closing songs for anime series, with the rest ending up in games tied to anime series, any Otaku reading this should already know them. On December 15th their new 6 track EP Dice comes out, with the 4 vocal tracks being the theme songs for 3 different new Anime series. The two instrumentals tracks on that EP are the Karaoke versions of two of those songs, which really increases sales in that part of the world; it certainly increases my desire to add it to my collection.

The first track is the TV-sized version of United Sparrows, the ED theme to Back Arrow, while the second is the full sized version of that same song. The 3rd piece is Dice, the OP for the 15th Anniversary Code Geass Lelouch of the Rebellion. For those curious, the other two anime-related tracks on the upcoming Dice EP are the themes to the game versions of Symphonic Psalm Eureka Seven HI-EVOLUTION and BanG Dream! Girls band party!. Since they are variations of the themes they did for the anime’s of each of those franchises, they should sound pretty familiar.



Radwimps 2021

It’s time to revisit Radwimps and see what kind of interesting music they have been coming up with in 2021. If their website comes up in Kanji, the first thing you can click on that isn’t the homepage will be the languages subfolder where you can set it to English. The first track is their new song Summer Daze, and yes, the first part is sung in English, with Closed Captioning when they switch to Japanese. The song was posted two weeks ago, and is just shy of half a million views at this point. The next song is called Utakata song by Google Translate, was posted 3 weeks ago, and managed to get 1.5M views in that time. For comparison, the final track included this time around is Is There Still Anything That Love Can Do? posted 2 years ago, with over 88M views.

POLKADOT STINGRAY 2021

POLKADOT STINGRAY’s new song Aoi is the ending theme to the TV Anime Series “Godzilla Singular Point”, was posted last month, and is the first track in tonight’s assortment. I have to admit to being a little confused about why a music video for a song for a Gojira series is so obviously based on the 1987 Wim Wenders’ masterpiece Der Himmel über Berlin (called Wings of Desire for the English version). Or maybe it’s based on the 1998 American remake of that film, City of Angels but either way it was a treat to watch. The 2nd video is the Anime version of the same song, while the third is both live action and anime of their song Kenshin from their 3rd full album. The last video is the acoustic version of their song Pose, or at least as acoustic as something recorded with an electric guitar can be.

All of these tracks were posted by the band in the last 90 days. Like so many of the bands I have listed here since I migrated to the new server, I have lost their blog entries from the last few years, but still retain some older entries you might enjoy checking out.

Belle and Millennium Parade

Belle herself, voice actress Kaho Nakamura, sings in Millennium Parade’s song U in Mamoru Hosoda’s latest masterpiece Belle. The film opened at the Cannes festival on July 15th, where it received a 14 minute standing ovation! It opened in Tokyo the following day, immediately taking the number one spot at the box office. The second track here is a song from the film just posted online yesterday by Toho Studios, and the third is one of the trailers. It made me smile to see the Beast to this Beauty was a dragon this time around. While I don’t know the opening date for North America, I do know it will be in the hands of G-Kids, who I trust when they say it will be coming soon to theaters here. After all, it has to play before we run out of December in order to qualify for the next Oscar nominations; and considering the reception it received at Cannes I would say Hosoda is an even more serious contender to bring home a bunch of Oscars than he was when his last film Mirai was nominated for both the Oscars and the Golden Globe Awards.

Wagakki Band

Wagakki Band continue to create amazing music using their blend of traditional Japanese instruments (the literal translation of the word Wagakki) and modern rock tools. The first track is Aria of Life, their theme song for the Anime series Mars Red, while the second, Starlight, is the theme for the Japanese TV drama “Ichikei no Karasu”. Their music certainly lends itself to TV and Movie production with its unique sound, so they have been getting a lot of work in between recording albums and doing world tours.

Cowboy Bebop’s “The Real Folk Blues” feat. Yoko Kanno, and other tunes

This stuff is golden! After a 2 year wait, we are finally at the ragged edge of having a Live Action version of Cowboy Bebop! And we didn’t have to do anything to get more, because Netflix already verified the second season was funded and green lit!

But for those who have forgotten what this means, a song or two to bring it front and center again! The songs in this set were done as part of Seatbelt’s 2020 Virtual Sessions, not one of the previous year’s postings. But they were all composed by Yoko Kanno, they were all part of the original movie and TV show, they were all performed by Seatbelt! And even scarier, watching how they did their musical collaborations while in Lock-down, you get a much better understanding of just how world class this collection of singers and musicians is! And for those who didn’t already know her, the one in the space suit helmet is Yoko Kanno herself!

To start us off, the Lock Down version of Space Lion:

Then two different versions of the Real Folk Blues, one with the original Seatbelts mix, and one where Yoko Kanno gets to run rampant all over the musical arrangement. Both versions are totally amazing!