The playing field is wide open; Bikini Warriors? Ghost In The Shell? All of the options are open, including Survive Said The Prophet: Ashes, Ashes. The track below is Radical Radio from their first full album All the World’s a Stage, doing the song The Guide of Rock. Check them out, and let me know what you think.
No, it is not a joke; the new Ulfuls song has Muppets, and it is a treat to watch! They had meant the name of the group to be Soulfulls, indicating the style of music they wanted to go for, but somehow it didn’t work out that way. And because one’s too many (and a hundred ain’t enough) I figured I should include a few more tunes from the band, so I just had to add 2014’s near-Beatles track, 2008’s hit Samurai Soul, and finally another 2014 song One Mind; Enjoy!
Another Saturday, another great band. This time we take a look at Survive Said The Prophet, a Japanese Indi rock band who sing in English as often as not. The first track is Subtraction from their new 8 song EP Course Of Action, which was just released on April 15th. The second tune is If You Really Want To, which was posted online back in May of 2014 but is also on the new EP. They got together in Tokyo in 2011 and released their first single Let Us Party that same year. They have done tours and festivals across Asia since then, and you can find their music on iTunes Japan.
This is the latest track from Passepied entitled Tokinowa. Normally you would get a bit more animation with a Passepied song, but you are seeing it out of context here; check this page to get the full effect. Tokinowa is the ending theme of the new animation of Rumiko Takahashi’s original Manga Rinne of the Boundary, officially subtitled as Circle of Reincarnation. The song becomes available on April 29th, in about a week and a half, although the Anime started airing in Japan on April 4th. Viz licensed both the Manga and the Anime for hard copy release, and you can watch it stream on Crunchyroll, where it is currently on the second episode.
While I am not generally a major Trance/Electronica/Synthpop fan, there are a few bands who always catch my attention and have me listening for anything they put out there. One of them is Perfume, a Japanese band who also co-hosts one of the top 3 music shows out of that country (at least in my opinion), Music Japan. The first track is their latest, Pick Me Up from earlier this year, the second is Dream Fighter from 2013 (posted online) or 2008 (album released). Listening to them now it is hard to believe they started life playing Shibuya-kei, but even that jazz-based art form with influences from Samba, Wall Of Noise, and Ye-Ye, had enough of the House and Synth flavor to foreshadow where they could end up.
A Crow Is White just released their third mini-album in January, called Himitsu, and the first video here is the title track. The next one is their 2013 song Sunny Side Up, and the third one is Hi-speed Muteppou. They are an Art-Rock band from Japan, and they have put together quite a number of quality songs, of which these are only a few.