VICTORY ROAD TO THE KING OF NEOVISUAL ROCK - CD Cover
Let me start off by saying that this was the very first time I heard miyavi’s music. And I feel lied to. I’ve listened to music by Dir en grey before, and had a basic assumption that J-Rock was like music by that band. miyavi didn’t sound at all like Dir en grey. Well, ok, it sounded a bit like Dir en grey, but it seems like it’s a lot like music by Gackt, but less varied.
VICTORY ROAD TO THE KING OF NEO VISUAL ROCK is miyavi’s second compilation album, containing songs from all of his singles from mid-2004. It was released on April 22. 2009 and is apparently the last release by miyavi under the label PS COMPANY.
The album begins with Rock no Gyakushuu -Super Star no Jouken-, in which miyavi starts off with some laughter and growls. To me, it’s a great example of what miyavi’s voice is capable of. 21 Seikigata Koushinkyoku follows, with an awesome melody and fast paced instrumentals.
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The compilation then continues with Freedom Fighters -Icecream wo Motta Hadashi no Megami to, Kikanjuu wo Motta Hadaka no Ousama-. What a mouthful. Freedom Fighters -blah blah blah- is a rock-pop-then-again-rock sounding song, with some interesting lyrics. Next is Kekkonshiki no Uta ~Kisetsu Hazure no Wedding March~ -with Band Ver.-, another mouthful. This is a more peaceful song with some very good acoustic guitar sounds. The actual song stops at 3:45, but the track continues for another minute, in which the music acts like a mini encore to the actual song.
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Set me free／Sing a Song! Cover
Hello everyone. Sorry for not updating in well, ages. See, after reviewing Zeitakubyou, I found nothing interesting in any of the new Japanese music releases, so I decided to wait it out. I kind of drifted away from reviewing and started redesigning KanaQuest, which I think turned out rather well. If you’re trying to memorize kana characters, you should check it out. But now I’m back, and ready to review!
Set me free／Sing a Song! is Aya Hirano’s ninth single, released last week on April 29, 2009. As the title suggests, it has two songs on it, coincidentally both with a length of 3:43.
Set me free: For this song, it took a few seconds for my brain to begin to register what I was actually listening to. But I ended up really liking it. It isn’t like anything I’ve heard for a while, although it does include the basics of what I always listen to: guitars, drums, and vocals. 4/5
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Sing a Song!: It seemed like a ONE OK ROCK song was starting at first, but Sing a Song! turned out to be pretty similar to the latter. In other words, it was just like Set me free, so there isn’t much to say about it. 3/5
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But overall, I liked the single. It was fast paced, used positive rock themes, and had whatever else you would want and expect from Aya Hirano.
Single Score: 3.5/5
Liked the excerpts and disagree with me on the review? You can listen to the whole thing and pick up the single at YesAsia. Until next time, sayounara!
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I decided to squeeze in one more review before I get my hands on some April 22 releases, and have decided to go with Zeitakubyou by ONE OK ROCK. But why Zeitakubyou? That was released in 2007! Well that leads me to another thing I’m establishing on this blog. Every so often, I will do a “Time Machine” review of an album or single, most likely a single, that wasn’t released recently. I’m doing this because the past is the only reason the present even exists, and because I’d like to talk about songs I’m familiar with, rather than ones I’ve just listened to. Hopefully I can keep up with doing one review per week.
The album in question, Zeitakubyou, was released on November 21, 2007, and was their debut album. But I don’t think many people took much note in that. See, ONE OK ROCK’s release timeline is the most peculiar I’ve ever seen. First, they release a four-song mini album. Then they release another four-song mini album. Then they release three consecutive singles. And finally, they come out with their debut full-length album. To complete the oddity, they then come out with two full length albums without having released any singles. Not that’s it’s dumb, I find it pretty awesome. So Zeitakubyou is their first full album, which uses songs from their previous singles.
The album starts off with Naihi Shinsho, a solid rock piece with all the stereotypical sounds you’d expect from ONE OK ROCK. Immediately following Naihi Shinsho (sometimes I don’t even notice the songs transitioning here), is Borderline, another solid rock piece which sounds more positive than the latter. I had a few friends of mine listen to this song, and for the first time they really liked Japanese music. But they almost immediately began complaining (again) how they can’t understand the lyrics. (yes, you know who you are.)
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Saying that I really like this single would be an understatement. I utterly love this single. It’s been ages since I’ve listened to OLIVIA, and this is the best comeback anyone could make. Well, more specifically it’s a comeback to singles. She hasn’t released a single for almost three years. She hasn’t released an album for more than three years too, but did release a mini-album late last year, one that I completely didn’t know existed until just recently. *makes mental note to check it out*
The single was released three days ago on April 15, 2009, and contains three tracks. The tracks are five, six, and four minutes long respectively, making this single about fifteen minutes long.
The interesting visuals to Sailing free. Notice how it switches from some quiet eerie sounds to powerful rock music.
Sailing free: This song starts off with eerie but natural sounding…sounds. When I first listened to it, I was thinking, “ehh, that’s not bad I guess”. But only a few seconds into the song, it explodes into a fast paced pop-rock and electronic song. And I just happen to be a huge fan of both genres. Some more seconds into it, and OLIVIA begins singing. It took me a few seconds to adjust and get used to OLIVIA’s voice, but I began liking it just as much. This entire track was perfect from beginning to end. Even so, that I so wished I would have allowed myself to replay the song after I heard it the first time, instead of going on to Love Love Love. 5/5
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Love Love Love: And here comes the ballad in the single. Has anyone else noticed how J-Pop singles that have three songs always have a soft and touching slow song in them? By soft and touching, I mean beautiful and meaningful, which is exactly what this song was. I also really liked the lyrics in this peace, especially the parts when OLIVIA sings “love…love…love……”. I absolutely loved it. 5/5
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Distractions, distractions; always getting in the way of my writing. I’m going to try something new with this review. Specifically, I’m going to start rating songs and albums from zero to ten instead of zero to five! Yay! … Actually that’s not that new, and I’m sure many people have done it, but it’s new to me. Anyway…
I’m not sure why I got URBAN ROMANTIC. Perhaps because the artists name, Rie fu sounds French to me (although it’s completely Japanese+abbreviations). Or perhaps I loved the way the cover looked. Or could’ve even been because of the title of the album. OR maybe it was a combination of all of those unfair judgments. Again, anyway…
URBAN ROMANTIC is Rie fu’s fifth album overall, and her fourth Japanese album. It was released earlier this month on April 8, 2009, and contains 13 tracks, of which a few are completely in English. This no doubt has at least someting to do with Rie living in America for a part of her childhood, and studing in an English university. Let’s look at this track by track.
Something In My Head: This was the first time I would be listening Rie fu, so I had no idea how she sounded like. But within the first few seconds of the song, I knew I would love it. Possibly even before she started singing. And I was right. It was also quite nice to hear that this song had all English lyrics, although that’s not the point of J-Pop. 10/10
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Sunny Days: I really liked listening to this song at first, but it got old pretty fast. It’s nice and everything, but it’s very repetitive. It’s the second shortest song in the album, but it honestly feels like the longest. 5/10
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April 18th,2009
Album Reviews | tags:
riefu |
2 Comments
Like most of you NEWS fans out there, I went out of my way to watch the new music video (PV) of the latest upcoming single by the band, Koi no ABO. Unlike most of you NEWS fans though, I haven’t heard one song by them prior to this. But I’ve seen and heard NEWS mentioned often before, and I’ve always liked the sound of their band name. Yes, I judge bands by their names. Sorry, I can’t help it ^_^.
This music video is no “Scream” or “Fairyland“, but nevertheless, it’s fast, exciting and unique; basically what a soon-to-be #1 hit should be. There were some parts that I did find questionable though. Like at 0:32, I had to re-watch that a few times to make sure one of the band members wasn’t giving me the finger.
The PV is set in a dance/disco room, with a bar, dance floor, and whatnot. The choreography of the video mimics the terribly bad taste of the 1970s, but since this single is made by NEWS, it’s ok. Like using cocaine for medical purposes. It even looks like they’re making some fun out of the styles of that era. What makes this video actually enjoyable, other than the fact that it has NEWS members in it, is the set of special effects that make the scenery morph back and forth. I’ve never really seem these type of effects being used this way before. I think the constantly flashing floodlights and there being girls in almost ever scene has something to do with it too. Watch below.
Review Scores:
- Music: 4/5
- Setting: 3/5
- Style: 5/5
- Choreography: 4/5
- Outfits: 4/5
Final PV Score: 4/5
You can pre-order this single at YesAsia, or you can use the slightly cheaper but (in my opinion) shadier CDJapan. The single comes out in two weeks on April 29, 2009, so you should pre-order it before then, if you don’t want to wait for the next batch of shipments!
April 13th,2009
PV Reviews | tags:
news |
No Comments
Sorry for stalling for a few days on this review. I’m still getting used to making reviews, and I’ve been particularly stuck on this one while writing the song-by-song review. So I’m going to try something new, and write the song-by-song review a bit differently…
The Secret Code was a lot better than I expected. The only other Korean music made by a band I’ve heard before was The Wonder Girls’ 2007 album The Wonder Years. And that was just rubbish. And with the fact that this band is a ‘boy band’, which I’m not too particularly fond of, you can see why I didn’t really want to get this album at all. The only reason I decided to is because it was something new, something I haven’t heard of before. A boy band from South Korea. That’s something new, isn’t it? I just hoped it wouldn’t be as bad as Tokyo Jihen. For those of you that heard their album Variety, you know what I’m talking about. Yuck >.<. But TVXQ (or TOHOSHINKI) sounded much better.
The album starts off with Secret Game, a fast-paced jazzy song with pianos, bells, and the stereotypical boy band vocals. I could think of no better way to begin this album. Next comes FORCE, a sublime trance-ish track. It wasn’t one of my very favorite tracks, but never-the-less a decent track.
Doushite Kimi o Suki ni Natte Shimattandarou? (or Why did I fall in love with you?) is no doubt the most beautiful song in this album. It’s probably my favorite song too. At least that’s what my iTunes thinks. According to the program, I’ve played the song about 40 times now. But yes, it’s a very good song, not to mention the lyrics are just amazing. Nobody Knows, like FORCE, is a pretty average song. It is a pretty good trance song, but I didn’t find anything particularly spectacular about it.
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Beautiful You, ugh. This song starts out well, builds up momentum, then turns out to be terrible at 0:46. No, I did not like this song very much. As I was listening to the album again, I felt like skipping the track half way into it. I can’t recall if I liked it the first time I heard it, but either way, it grew old very fast on me. Wasurenaide takes a break from calling you a “beautiful woman” repetitively, and is an overall decent ballad. If you’re looking to take a break from normal music in general and want something mystical sounding, then 9095 is for you. But for the rest of us, this is a pretty average song.
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April 11th,2009
Album Reviews | tags:
tvxq |
4 Comments
Now here’s something I didn’t expect. A collaboration single by Kumi Koda and misono. Not only because this seemed unlikely, but because I had no idea Kumi even had a sister. Much less a sister also in the music business who releases albums like this. But that probably has something to do with me not being much of a Kumi Koda fan. The only other thing by Kumi Koda I’ve listened to was her album Kingdom, and I only liked “anytime” from that. R&B doesn’t appeal to me. But I really liked this single. Let’s have a look at it song by song.
It’s all Love!: Surprisingly, I like this song a lot. But not immediately; it took a bit to get used to it. But it’s a very good mix of pop and rock as well as Kumi and misono. The only thing I hate about this song is that like many other J-Pop songs, I have to look up the lyrics to find out what lyrics are English. And as a (mostly) native speaker of English, I should be able to tell that the first line of the song is “You ready? M to the I to the S, O, N, O Yeah! I’m misono”. People should do what Ayumi Hamasaki did with “EnergizE” and stop muffling it. But not all of their English lyrics are muffled. For example, you could easily hear “damn” at 3:46, heehee. 5/5
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DISTRESS AND COMA is actually the first release I’ve heard by the GazettE, and so far, I’m pretty impressed. And I guess that’s good since I’m not much of a visual rock fan. Anyway, let’s look at it song by song, shall we?
DISTRESS AND COMA: At first this track didn’t even sound like rock. More like some sort of experimental electronic… stuff. But I liked it. All my favorite bits of this genre were in this one: the awesome rock bits, the English you don’t realize is English until you read the lyrics—or is that just me? Honestly, did anyone else understand Ruki when he said “I’ll show you what distress means”? Either way, this is an excellent song. From my short list of visual rock/J-Rock songs I’ve listened to (assuming Gackt isn’t J-Rock?), this is my favorite one. 5/5
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With it being two weeks since NEXT LEVEL’s release, I realize it’s pretty late to be making a review of it, but it’s one of the main albums I’m listening to right now, and I really think it’s worth talking about.
Containing ten new songs and fourteen songs overall, NEXT LEVEL is Ayumi Hamasaki’s tenth album under the Avex Trax label. The album is pretty different from other albums by Ayu in the sense that it contains quite a bit more electronic, dance, and pop-rock elements. While I awaited it’s release, I anticipated an album much like MY STORY, (miss)understood, and Secret; basically reverting back from her darker rock sounds in her previous album GUILTY. I was quite surprised with the new themes Ayu used in her music.
Bridge to the sky: This is a nice introductory piece with some dance elements and provides some hints as to what the rest of the album holds. 4/5
NEXT LEVEL: Among others, this is a pretty ordinary Ayu song. The lyrics themselves are pretty amazing, but the actual song sounds a bit repetitive of itself as well as other soungs by Ayumi. 2/5
Disco-munication: This…is probably the best interlude piece Ayu has ever done! Wait, I take that back; I don’t think Ayumi could top herself interlude-wise after having released “Prologue” in A Song for ××. Nevertheless, it’s a very good interlude and caught me by surprise after “NEXT LEVEL”. 5/5
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