From February of 2015, the band Rose Windows doing the christening of the new live studio at listener supported KEXP in Seattle. I think they broke up about 6 months after this recording, but they left three very interesting albums as their legacy.
I really enjoy Yukihiro Takahashi’s new project MetaFive, they are amazing. The band member who is their primary singer is Leo Imai, and he used to be with a band called the Kimonos. The first track is MetaFive’s Maisie’s Avenue, the second is the Kimonos Soundtrack To Murder, and the 3rd is Kimonos Almost Human.
There do not seem to be any new genre films this week that I can find. There is a new documentary that I have been waiting for: The Beatles: Eight Days a Week – The Touring Years covers the band from 1963 to 1966, and was put together by Ron Howard from a ton of clips, interviews, and found footage. It got 100% Fresh at Rotten Tomatoes, and is the first film I have ever seen with that score. I am looking forward to seeing this one on the big screen, it should be fun.
The Power Punk/Doujin band Story of Hope burst on the Indi scene in April of 2013, selling CDs in the back of the halls where they played. In 2015 their Historia EP was released nationally and immediately outsold everything they had done to date, earning them a small but intensely devoted audience. The first track here is from that release, Your Colors, Your Feelings, a Screamo anthem featuring Ryuto Ajima, the second track is Forever from the Alethea full album released in January of 2016.
Just Chronicle is a fairly new Pop-Punk Band from Japan, with their first national release mini-album Million Falls coming out this past December. The first track here is the first track from that CD, Fire, the second song is the first track from their single released six months earlier, both the song and the disc being called Glitter. Apparently a Single in Japan can have up to three tracks on it because this one does, while a mini-album is anything from 5 to 9 songs (Million Falls has 6 tracks on it, most of them fairly tasty), and starting at 10 songs the CD is an entire album. While this may be their first national release, they had another First Mini-Album back in 2012 called Shake The World that had some good tunes, but no longer seem to be available.
The Balconies are a Canadian Alt Rock band (emphasis on the Rock) operating out of Toronto these days. Their first album was released in 2014, and they have put out quite a few good songs in a fairly short span of time. The first track was posted a few weeks ago, Money Money, the second is War from last April, the 3rd is 2014’s Boys and Girls. And yes, you can pick these up at the usual places.