Art Rock band The Oral Cigarettes have put together some tasty tunes over the years, so I wanted to share a few of them with you. The first one is their track Hey Kids, which was the 2nd OP song for the anime Noragami Aragoto (the first Noragami OP was Hello Sleepwalkers). The second song is this year’s hit Amy, and the third is 2014s Star Get. I think this band has a lot of promise, and I can’t wait to see where they go from here.
Noragami means something like Stray God in English, and the slacker stray god at the heart of this story doesn’t have a clue how to grow his worshiper base. Yato is a minor god without a single shrine and with no divine weapon, but he wants to make it big. Then he meets a girl named Hiyori who changes everything in and about his world. I like the music and the animation style in this one, and look forward to seeing many more episodes; hope those episodes get created!
The band METAFIVE reminds me of David Byrne and Talking Heads more than anyone else ever has. That seems kind of appropriate, since the band was formed around Yellow Magic Orchestra’s Takahashi Yukihiro early in 2014, as those of you who saw his interview earlier this year on J-Melo already know. Don’t think he is carrying the younger members of the band, though; it is a bit of a super-group, with 2 heavy hitter veteran musicians, a singer/songwriter who already had a long list of chart climbers under his belt, and one each famous producer and equally famous DJ. This track is the studio live version of their song Don’t Move, and it is quite impressive. It is also very different than the studio version that will be released on their new album Meta coming out this January 13th. My only regret about the album is I still haven’t heard any of the other 11 songs, unless the few tracks Takahashi played on that J-Melo episode were from it; even if they were, he played by himself, so I have no idea how they would sound with the whole band playing together. Guess I will have to wait until January 13th along with everyone else to find out.
The band’s name is Frederic (or フレデリック if you read Asian text), and they have some amazing music. The first here is Owarase Night, the second is OddLoop, and they are both quite good. The band is a 4-piece from Kobe the twin brothers Kenji Mihara and Koji Mihara put together. Take a look and see if you don’t like them, and let me know what you think.
I first came across RIP Slyme as the song Super Shooter embedded in the anime Gantz, and liked them for being brave enough to be associated with it. Of course, the song was perfect for the show, so it made sense they wanted to be part of the project. After about the third other song I heard from them I began to like them as a band. Sadly, it looks like they signed with Warner Music about 5 years ago, and Gantz was done 6 years ago. So far I haven’t found an official version of that song I can include here because of that change of contract. Here are a few tunes for you to check out that I am allowed to post, so you can make your own decision. Let’s start with their latest release JUMP featuring Chay, which came out on September 30th as part of their 10th album. The next track is Star.
Nothing I can say will help you understand how amazing this band is live unless you have seen them for yourself, but at least a few of the videos should give you the general idea. The first one on tonight’s group is The Way Back, the Japanese Version this time. The next is C.h.a.o.s.m.y.t.h., and the one after that is from their A-Sketch days, Liar. I heard that when they signed with Warner they cut a deal so all their A-Sketch tunes had the rights grandfathered back to that distributor; if true, that indicates an ethical attitude pretty much unmatched these days, and I like it. Finally, the track they still play as their closing song, even after the last decade of changes; No Scared! I will do my best to stop ranting and raving about them now, but I suspect I will not quite succeed. Because they really are that amazing live and in person, as I learned myself this past Tuesday when they played in my town; enjoy!