The name of the first track from Hysteric Lolita is Distress, their second single which is also off of their upcoming first album Not Equal which will be released on February 3rd. The second is Emotional Girl from their 2014 debut single Despair of the Spiral. I really wanted to post their brilliant new track Voice for Voice, but they haven’t released an official full length video of it yet. If you like their music you can buy it on iTunes, they have all 7 of the singles available now, or you can wait for February 3rd and get the entire 14 track album.
The group Band-Maid are 5 girls playing some excellent hard rock out of Japan while wearing terminally kawaii maid outfits. The first track is Real Existence from mid-2015, the second is Thrill, which was their first single from 2014. The final video almost looks like an audition session they did while looking for a new drummer, but the music is great even if the video is a bit linear.
The band METAFIVE was formed around Yellow Magic Orchestra’s Takahashi Yukihiro early in 2014, as I mentioned when I posted their video for Don’t Move last month. This time around we have the video edit version of Luv U Tokio, posted on line 3 days ago, and the studio live version of Maisie’s Avenue posted a few weeks ago on December 26th. This band just gets better with each new track I hear from them. Their very first album, META, which includes all of these tracks and many more, hits the shelves in just a few days on January 13th. You can pick it up from your favorite Japanese online music outlet as an import for 2,800 Yen, but sadly it is not coming out in the US at the same time. Locally you can get their track Split Spirit, featured in the Anime Ghost In The Shell: Arise from the iTunes store.
The best music of 2015 has to include the Ulfuls, who had several killer releases this year, with Sporty Party at the top of their list. Did I mention that 2015 was the year of One OK Rock, when after a decade of working their collective tails off they finally broke into the US market with a major record label giving them full distribution across North America? They are the last few tracks in today’s group, truly the best new music of the year.
More amazing music that I consider some of the best out of 2015, including Ore Ska Band doing Hands Up Girl back in September (did you know they played Live at Otakon this year?). Next is Wake Up!, an amazing collaboration between Asian Kung-Fu Generation and Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra, two of my favorite bands out of Japan, which is why I kept it in even though it happened in 2014. Sense Clown did A-Han this past June, and Singapore’s Indi Fusion group In Each Hand A Cutlass released Satori 101 back in April.
There was a ton of new and amazing music in 2015, like My First Story with Alone and the Wagakki Band with Ikusa. Then there was Superfly with White Light and Passepied with Tokinowa. One of the groups that surprised and delighted me this year was The Full Pledge Munkees, an amazing Ska band out of Singapore, represented here by their song Positif MV. And that really only covered the first 4 months of the year, and didn’t even mention One OK Rock, who finally had their big breakthrough in North America with their release of their first US album this October. Like most such events, their overnight success came after a decade of working their tails off to get there.