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.
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.