This is a pretty amazing little animation. It’s actually a music video from Denki Groove, but the story conveyed through the pictures almost distracts you too much from the music. In any case, it’s really fascinating to watch especially if you’re a guitar player.
It just goes to show that hard-core guitarists the world over share certain things in common. Have a look at the video and let us know what you think in the comments. Don’t blink, or you’ll miss it! Read the rest of this entry »
Daisuke Asakura (浅倉大介, Asakura Daisuke?, November 4, 1967, Asakusa, Japan -) is a male Japanese pop artist.
His childhood consisted of piano lessons and the expectations to follow the family trade of plumbing.
Asakura began his career with landing a job at Yamaha right after High School. While under Yamaha, Asakura worked on the EOS synthesizer; he was also featured in the home-instructional video for the machine. His talent was discovered by Tetsuya Komuro of TM Network and Daisuke was pulled from Yamaha to work under Komuro as his protégé. Daisuke played Bass Synthesizer during TM Network’s 1990-91 Rhythm Red tour. Then Asakura met Hiroyuki Takami in 1990 following Rhythm Red and eventually in 1992 broke away from TM Network and formed access (or AXS) with Takami on vocals and lyric. The duo received enormous acclaim and a firm influence in Japanese popular music. Notably, access is also famous for their on-and-off-stage fan service.
Takami and Asakura’s early musical relationship was often a rocky one, however. Both men are reported by even newer fans to have been “at each other’s throats” constantly in Access’ later years until finally the duo disbanded in 1995, much to the dismay of their fans and supporters.
Despite this blow, the infamous break-up left Asakura to pursue new ideas that included producing and composing songs for new artists; one of the most successful acts he created was with J-pop idol Takanori Nishikawa under the title of T.M.Revolution. In mid-1996 Asakura started a three-man unit titled Iceman which brought Kenichi Ito(guitar) and Michihiro Kuroda(vocal) to the spotlight. Iceman, although not as popular as Asakura’s previous project with Takami, was met with considerable acclaim from Asakura’s loyal and growing fanbase. After several years Iceman ended activity due to conflict between Michihiro Kuroda and Asakura, however. During and after his years with Iceman Asakura built his wealth and reputation as a composer taking after his idol and teacher, Tetsuya Komuro. He produced singles and albums for many jpop vocalists who now reside in obscurity. Examples of Asakura’s past projects includes vocalists such as Sakanoue Yosuke, Kinya Kotani, Daichi Kuroda, Akiko Hinagata, Yuki Kimura, FayRay, Takashi Fujii and groups such as, Onapetz, Pool Bit Boys, Lazy Knack and The Seeker. He also composed a few songs for visual kei J-rock band, Shazna. Most of the above listed, as well as a group of school boys under the name D.A.N.K., were included in a project called Cherry Garden which amounted to literally nothing in the end instrumented the demise of Asakura’s musical ‘Family’.
The year 2001 was a great year for Daisuke, however. He produced his first solo album in seven years as well as working with Iceman guitarist Kenichi Ito in Mad Soldiers; a sort of comedic spin-off from Iceman in which both men’s ’sinister’ alter egos ‘Scorpion’ [Asakura] and ‘Snake’ [Ito] produced music for Kotani Kinya and performed officially unrecorded cover versions of famous songs such as ‘Lemon Tea’ by Sheena and the Rockkets and ‘Hungry Like the Wolf’ by Duran Duran, one of Asakura’s speculated favourite bands. Much to the joy of Asakura’s older fans, in 2002 he reunited with Hiroyuki Takami and reformed access. With the reuniting of Daisuke’s favoured vocalist, Takami, T.M.Revolution was dropped from Asakura’s projects possibly due to Nishikawa’s rude comments towards Daisuke’s true intentions as a musician, claiming that he had a ‘black stomach’ [synonymous with 'black heart']. In recent years Nishikawa has reportedly made efforts to contact Asakura and send him flowers, but such efforts have been ignored.
Asakura also went off on a solo project in 2004 titled “Quantum Mechanics Rainbow”. In which he released multipule CDs for a year, and each CD title name had to do with a color and math property.
Currently, Asakura focuses on his career as Keyboardist and support vocalist for access; now celebrating their 15th anniversary in the year 2007. In 2006–2007, Asakura produced two singles for new jpop idol Kimeru, hit the road with TM Network for 2007’s TMN TRIBUTE tour and is now currently creating new songs for the popular dance-step game, Dance Dance Revolution’s newest version.
In November 2007, access released a memory/ discography book, alongside much coveted access plushies, to commemorate their 15 years together (the 7 year interval apparently didn’t count to them). It is said to be a continuation of another discography/memory book they produced titled “Sync-Beat.”
In 2008, he has revealed a new musical project, entitled “DA METAVERSE ~100 songs for 1000 DAYS,” where he will release 100 new songs over 1000 days exclusively through iTunes. The project was launched on June 25th, 2008.
Do As Infinity is a popular Japanese band which debuted on September 29, 1999 with the release of their first single, “Tangerine Dream”. Their name is sometimes abbreviated as D.A.I., revealing that Do As Infinity was named after the band’s guitarist and composer, Dai Nagao. With the release of their A-side compilation album Do the A side, Do As Infinity disbanded on September 29, 2005, after a career which spanned six years, six albums, twenty singles, seven compilation albums and eight live DVDs. The band reformed on September 29, 2008, and reportedly will have their first new release in spring 2009.
Dolly is a Japanese rock band formed in 2005. They are signed under the Marder Suitcase label.
Dolly was formed in 2005 with an original lineup of Mitsu, Masa, Yuina, Hachi and Takashi. The played their first concert in October 2005 at Takadanobaba Area and released their first single, “Screen of Indoors” shortly after as a DVD single.
In 2006, their first CD single, “Pumpkin Carriage Parade”, was released on January 13. In March, they released another single, “2 Ripped Sweets”, followed shortly by Takashi’s departure. Tsuguki quickly replaced Takashi and Dolly released their first EP, Cynical Closet, on July 26. In November they began a three-single release campaign with Ussetsu Drop, Suisai Palette, and Shinshoku Rosetta, all bearing the “Tricolor Opera” title.
Dolly’s first single of 2007, “Karmaison”, appeared in stores in June. In September, they released their first full album Jewel’s Drip containing previously released singles, as well as eight new tracks. After a short break, due to Mitsu’s health problems and brief hospital stay, Dolly continued their “Jewel’s Drip Parade” tour.
Miz (Watanabe Mizuki, 渡辺みづき) is a Japanese pop/rock singer born in Kitami, Hokkaidō, Japan. She was born on March 6, 1981, and currently juggles music careers in Sweden and in Japan. Though most of her music is released in Japan, she chose her central location for recording as Sweden, a little island called Gotland. She mainly does promotional videos, photo shoots, and recording there.
At a very young age, Miz has expressed a great interest and talent in music. She always wanted to become one of the singers she hears on the radio, but living in such a rural area as Hokkaidō, there were very few opportunities for her. One of Miz’s biggest hobbies during her high school years was going to a local beauty salon. And since she was a regular customer, she had become very good friends with the salon manager.
It was at that time when there was an idol audition being held, and posters were being put up in over 20,000 beauty salons all over Japan. Miz had kept looking over the poster, and the salon manager realized this. So she decided to suggest that Miz enter the contest. Hundreds of people competed, but in the end, Miz was the winner.
Immediately postponing her other plans in life, she decided to chase after her musical dreams. After graduating high school, she moved to Tokyo and soon after that, she was signed under Universal Victor. Under a stage name, Mizuki Watanabe, she released I WILL, her debut single. Following that, she also released another single called Ambition, but she wasn’t asked to release anything else after that. Both singles are now out of print in most Japanese CD stores.
After the release of Ambition, her brief career ended. However, she would not give up. She kept taking singing lessons at a studio, and eventually made a demo tape with the help of a writer. Soon, she was introduced to a producer named Tord Backstrom.
Tord Backstrom was looking for someone to perform a song written by a Swedish writer and upon searching, he found Miz. Immediately, he knew Miz had what it took to become a star. In the year 2003, Miz was on her way to Sweden to meet her creative team. They were very surprised once they met her, and they weren’t even sure whether she was Japanese or not. This was because she spoke English very well, better than most common Japanese people, and she liked to give hugs (normally, Japanese women like to keep to their own space)!
First, they had planned to release some music in Sweden. Her Swedish debut single, Waiting, hit charts soon after and debuted at #8. Soon enough, an album was also released. Story Untold emerged on the scene on September 22, 2004 and contains 10 all-English songs.
By that time, she had also released some other music. Her Japanese re-debut single New Day came out that same year. At that time, most of the biggest names in J-Pop were high-pitched, nasally singers. This was not the case for Miz. She was a fresh new face re-appearing in Japan, and people fell in love with her rich, strong voice. New Day debuted at #20 on Oricon charts. To promote her first Japanese album, Say It’s Forever, Miz was invited to a Channel V-hosted concert in Taiwan along with other local and foreign artists, she performed 3 songs, New Day, Waiting for, and Say It’s Forever. Also, she attended a show AIUEO to gain more publicity in her short visit, the host was apparently her friend before she made her major debut in Japan. She became one of the most popular Japanese artists in Taiwan that year.
Since that day, Miz has been steadily releasing her music up to today. She writes most of her original Japanese lyrics, and is becoming quite fluent in English, that pretty soon she could be writing her own English songs also.
After releasing her second album Mizrock in February 2006, Miz disappeared for a long while. In May 2007, however, her official website was updated with news of a new release coming in July. Other websites such as ORICON and Tower Records confirmed this news, listing a mini-album titled Good bye, yesterday to be released under the name “Mizrock.” It is also with this album that Miz moved from Victor Interactive to Nayutawave Records.
In June 2007, “Good bye, yesterday” from her “Good bye, yesterday” album was used as the second ending song for the popular anime, Romeo X Juliet.
October 2007 she released a new single, “Best Friend” and in February 2008 she will release another single titled, “Thank You”.
Check out Miz’s English debut song written by Swedish composer, Jan Johansen :)
Aural Vampire (オーラルヴァンパイア, ōraru vanpaia?) is a Japanese electronic band which consists of Exo-Chika (vocals/lyrics) and Raveman (music). They hail from Tokyo, Japan and compose mainly electropop, darkwave, and synthpop music with occasional industrial elements. Aural Vampire has toured Europe numerous times and been featured in magazines such as Astan Magazine and The Dose. They are currently under an indie record label. Aural Vampire released their full-length debut album, Vampire Ecstasy, in 2004. Since then they have only released one online single, which is available on their website, and a few tracks and remixes on compilations, but they remained active as a live band. Their song 湘南族 -cannibal coast- was featured on Beatmania IIDX 15: DJ Troopers; although, their name was misspelled as “AURAL VAMPIER.”
With a name like that, I they better give good aural to their fans. :)
Leah Dizon (リア・ディゾン, Ria Dizon?, born Leah Donna Dizon on September 24, 1986) is a model, singer, actress, Gravure idol and TV personality in Japan, born in Las Vegas, Nevada, US.[1] Her ethnicities include Chinese, Filipino and French. In 2006, she moved to Tokyo, Japan after being accepted by a Japanese talent agency for her modeling. Soon after, she began her music career releasing Japanese language songs.
Leah Dizon was born in Las Vegas, Nevada. Her parents were casino dealers. Her father was a business man in one of the largest cities in California. She has two older brothers, an older sister, and two younger brothers. She says she grew up listening to Rock and R&B music. She took dance lessons and was in her high school theater. Dizon dreamed of pursuing a career as a singer.
Bonnie Pink, real name Kaori Asada (浅田 香織, Asada Kaori?, born April 16, 1973 in Kyoto, Japan), is a Japanese singer songwriter. She lived in New York during 1998 and speaks English (many of her songs are entirely in English). She writes and composes all her songs, and plays guitar and piano. Kaori Asada has said that the name Bonnie Pink is random and that she thought the words were cute together. There is no special meaning behind the name, she chose it because it was easy to remember.
Bonnie Pink was quite famous in her early years during the 90s and the early 2000s but she slowly drifted out of popularity. However, in 2006 her hit single A Perfect Sky went to the top of the charts and brought her back into the J-Pop spotlight and her latest albums have become very popular and major successes for the 35 year old singer.
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