Music from Japan

[blkmage]

This is an excuse for me to talk about the Japanese bands that I've discovered over the past year or two, many of which actually have nothing to do with anime.

I'll start with some bands that I had the great fortune of seeing live a few months ago at a show called 'Next Music From Tokyo' in Toronto. I was pretty excited, because two of the four bands that were playing were bands that I was a huge fan of already, but there was one band that I discovered there who were pretty awesome. I went with my non-Japanese-music-listening friends and they thought the show was pretty awesome.

susquatch
susquatch is the name of the band that I discovered. They were super fun to watch performing, especially their bassist who was having a blast on stage. susquatch is really neat because of their main quirk, which is that their lyrics are entirely in a made up language. The story goes that the main guy on guitar and vocals really liked English but didn't know enough to write songs in it, so he just made up some gibberish that sounded like English. I'm not sure how to describe their sound, but it seems pretty melodic compared to a lot of other rock.

susquatch - Ghost (from In This World)

sgt.
sgt. is one of my favourite bands because they do instrumental post-rock. More than that, their songs feature violin prominently for the main melody and I love violins in rock. In this case, the violin really adds some classical flair since it's not relegated to the background like in a lot of other bands.

sgt. - Apollo Program (from capital of gravity)

MASS OF THE FERMENTING DREGS
MassDre is really awesome. Why? Because their lead vocalist is also their bassist. How awesome is that? If there's something I like more than violins, it's bass and female vocals. They are also super intense, especially live. Their high-energy songs are definitely their best, but they've got a few (also excellent) instrumental tracks on their various albums as well.

MASS OF THE FERMENTING DREGS - Zero Comma, Irotoridori no Sekai (from Zero Comma, Irotoridori no Sekai)

Okay, talk about Japanese music.

[Kaori]

susquatch: The music isn't bad, but the made-up nonsense language drives me crazy. I can’t listen to it and not try to figure out what in space that singer is saying, even while knowing that it’s nonsense, because it sounds so much like English. That’s just my reaction, though.

MassDre: That their bassist is their lead singer is pretty cool, but other than that, the song didn’t stand out to me very much. Nice guitar solo at the end.

sgt.: Awesome. Love the sound, and the way that the Japanese text and the images in this video told a story was really fascinating.

I have a lot of Japanese music in my collection (even a little bit of traditional Japanese music), but most of it is anime-related, and there are other threads for that. I also listen to a lot of Sakamoto Maaya and a little bit of Utada Hikaru, but there’s no point in talking about them here because they’re so well-known that probably everyone has heard of them a million times already. I also like Arisaka Mika, who might not be quite as well-known as the previous two, but her songs that I like are from anime, so moving on to less well-worn topics:

BEGIN: Everything that is beautiful and good about Okinawa is distilled into this one song . . . but I don’t think that anyone who hasn’t been to Okinawa will have the same reaction. Either you will like the sunny, folksy sound, or you won’t, I guess.

Natsukawa Rimi: An Okinawan singer with a nice voice. She sings some songs in Hogen (Okinawan language, not Japanese), but I couldn’t find a video of it; this is just standard Japanese.

What I like about a lot of Japanese pop music is that it tends to be eclectic and often blends together different sounds and genres in ways that Westerners wouldn’t necessarily think of. But there are also some Japanese bands that are exact copies of Western genres—for example, there are some excellent Japanese melodeath bands.

That’s basically all I’ve got that isn’t either soundtrack music or traditional Japanese music.

[Nami]

I really need to listen to this stuff!! D: I need to get to the library. I am constantly on the hunt for more Japanese music. I really am a fan of Dir-En-Gray's old stuff, that is to say, before they stopped being Visual Kei. Because, their lyrics were better. Now sadly, I can't enjoy them when I know what they are singing.

I listen to random Japanese music without much knowledge of the bands, so this is a great thread! It'll help not only myself, but others who want to learn more about Japanese music!! Thanks Blk and Kaori! ^_^

[blkmage]

It's funny that you should mention Maaya Sakamoto and Utada Hikaru, because I've been listening to them recently since they've both released new albums in the past few months. Well, in the case of Utada, it's more like her second single collection, which wouldn't have been that interesting if it weren't for her five new songs on there.

Maaya has the more substantial new album and the bonus live CD was pretty neat too. She also put out a single compilation album, which was nice, because I really started exploring her older stuff only recently.

[ShiroiHikari]

I'm a big fan of Gackt and L'Arc-en-Ciel, but I've been looking to expand my Japanese musical horizons, so later when I have time I'm going to check out some of the links in this thread. :3

[Kaori]

Maaya has the more substantial new album and the bonus live CD was pretty neat too.

Yeah, I should get that [SIZE="1"]and also the other half of her discography which I don't yet have.[/SIZE] I think I had heard that she came out with a new album, but I haven't gotten around to picking it up yet.

She also put out a single compilation album, which was nice, because I really started exploring her older stuff only recently.

Just took a look at the track listing, and that looks like a good collection. Some of them are already on her other single collection albums, but most of my favorite songs of hers that weren't on the earlier two collections are on this one (Birds, 紅]Easy Listening [/I](the same in Japanese: イージーリスニング). It's consistently enjoyable and has some songs on it that are favorites of mine, most notably "Birds."

Also, seems I left someone out of my previous post: Ceui. Basically, she's a singer-songwriter who reminds me a lot of Sakamoto Maaya. I have her album Glassy Heaven, and the only minor complaint I have about it is that most of the songs sound fairly similar to each other and aren't extremely memorable. She has a very pleasant sound, though.

[blkmage]

Yeah, I used to listen to a lot more pop, which is why it was kind of nostalgic going back and listening to all the old Utada Hikaru stuff after watching that live farewell concert of hers not too long ago. Other than Maaya and Utada, the only pop artists I still follow are Nana Mizuki (I like her voice) and YUI, mostly for her acoustic stuff. I've just been more into discovering independent bands and doujin music in the past while.