[J-Music] Dirty Old Men (band introduction)

Artist: Dirty Old Men
Formed in 2003

Official website: DirtyOldMen.jp

I discovered Dirty Old Men by accident. When I tried to use Last.fm on my iPhone for the first time I listened to AJISAI radio station and the first song played was "rain show" by Dirty Old Men which I started to love directly. So I started to look for more music of this band and in the end they became one of my favorite new discoveries.

The band was formed in summer 2003 by Nobuyuki Takatsudo (Vocal&Guitar), Masamitsu Yamada (Bass) and Shinichi Notaki (Drums)  in their high school days. Actually it was planed to break up after their graduation, but they received many great responses and won in a band competition and so they decided to continue. In 2006 Takumi Yamashita joined and they started to be a 4-men-band.

By now they have released two albums ("bud" in 2008 and "guidance" in 2011) and a certain number of mini albums. Their music has a unique style with very heartful and pure songs. Each song is telling a story or kidnaps you into a wonderful dream.  

  

I hope I will be able to hear a lot more music of this great band - and wish them to find more and more fans!! (^0^)~ ♥

Members: 

Takatsudo Nobuyuki - Vocals, Guitar

Yamashita Takumi - Guitar, Chorus

Masamitsu Yamada - Bass

Notaki Shinichi - Drums, Chorus

[J-Music] Yellow Fried Chickenz - All My Love / Your Are The Reason (single)

Artist: Yellow Fried Chickenz
Single title: All My Love / Your Are The Reason
Release date: 28 December 2011

The single "All my love / You are the reason" has been released on 28 December 2011 by Yellow Fried Chickenz, shortly YFC. YFC is a project of the famous Japanese musician Gackt which he built in 2010 with some changing members. At the current YFC you find Gackt and Jon (fade) as vocals, on guitar there are Chachmaru, You and Takumi, on bass we have U:zo and on drums Luna Sea's drummer Shinya.

Both songs of this single has already been performed on YFC's European tour in summer 2011.

"All my love" is a touching ballad dedicated to the victims of the great Tohoku earthquake and tsunami which hit Japan on 11 March 2011. At live concerts the charity project "Show Your Heart" which was founded by Gackt was promoted by singing the following line with the crowd in repeat:

"Close your eyes, feel your soul. All for love, show your heart!"

Unfortunately these lines are not included in the studio version. Actually I personally prefer the live version, maybe it's just because of the emotions I remember when I've been to the concerts.

In difference to the first song "You are the reason" is a more uptempo one, but also really great. Especially at this song the voices of both vocals mesh with each other very well, in my eyes.

There is a special versions of every song. Each have a "minus g", "minus j" and "minus g+j" version. So if you like karaoke you can sing either with Gackt or with Jon or totally alone. Instead of this I would have preferred versions sang all alone by Gackt or Jon and not with one singing only his own part and the other lines are missing...

All in all it's a really nice single and I'm glad that my dear friend Haruna-chan gave it to me ♥

 
Tracklist:
01. ALL MY LOVE .jp

02. YOU ARE THE REASON .eu

03. ALL MY LOVE .jp minus G

04. ALL MY LOVE .jp minus J

05. ALL MY LOVE .jp minus G & J

06. YOU ARE THE REASON .eu minus G

07. YOU ARE THE REASON .eu minus J

08. YOU ARE THE REASON .eu minus G & J



Official website: Yellow Fried Chickenz
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[music] Yoko-chan's Japanese Christmas songs playlist

Hello everyone!!
Because it will be Christmas tomorrow, today I want to share my Christmas playlist with you!
For sure I know that not all the songs have Christmas as basic topic, but anyway they arrange a Christmas or winter like feeling. I hope you will have a wonderful Christmas time with this songs!

Merry Christmas everyone!! メリークリスマス！ (^0^)~ ♥

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Yoko-chan's Japanese Christmas songs playlist
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(arranged alphabetically)

Ayumi Hamasaki - Carols
Ayumi Hamasaki - Itsuka no Merry Christmas -Live Version-
Ayumi Hamasaki - Powder Snow
B'z - Itsuka no Merry Christmas
Dirty Old Men - Merry
Dream - Everlasting Snow
EXILE - Last Christmas
Flumpool - Snowy Nights Serenade
Gackt - 12gatsu no Love Song
Gackt - December Love Song
Gackt & Ayumi Hamasaki - Itsuka no Merry Christmas -Live Version-
Gackt & Ayumi Hamasaki - Silent Night -Live Version-
Gackt & Namie Amuro - Itsuka no Merry Christmas -Live Version-
Glay - Winter Again
Hikaru Utada - Can't wait 'til Christmas
Koh Otani - Silent Night
L'Arc~en~Ciel - Hurry X'Mas
Lisa Ono - The Christmas Song
Luna Sea -  Happy Christmas (War is over) -Live Version-
Luna Sea - White Christmas / In my dreams -Live Version-
Mika Nakashima - Amazing Grace
Mika Nakashima - Yuki no Hana
Namie Amuro - White Light
Tackey & Tsubasa - Heartful Voice
Tenchi Muyo - Jingle Bells
Yoko Watanabe - Last Christmas

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HANABI SEKAI moved to BlogSpot

Hello everyone! \(^0^)/
My blog "HANABI SEKAI" now moved to BlogSpot. I think it's easier to design and leave comments here than on LiveJournal. I hope you guys will like the new design and will look here from time to time.

First thing I've got to do now: copy my reviews from LJ to my new place here (^-^)v


Hope you spent a nice 4th Sunday in Advent!
Yoko-chan ♥

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[J-Music] Versailles - Holy Grail (album)

Artist: Versailles
Album title: Holy Grail
Release date: 15th June 2011

I know Versailles since they have started in 2007 and liked their first EP "Lyrical Sympathy" very much. Unfortunately I loosed my interest in them because I was busy with other stuff and started to love a lot of other bands. While looking around in the internet I suddenly saw that they released a new album in June and so I listened to it and really think that it is pretty great!

Versaille's new album "Holy Grail" was released on 15th June 2011. It is starting with the string & choir intro of the song called "MASQUERADE" fading into a kind of up-beat number. More powerful songs are following. Including strong choirs, great guitar and bass playing and simply a great atmosphere.

Surprisingly for me, there are a lot of ballad-like songs at the album. For example "Remember Forever" and "Destiny -The Lovers-" (with strings and piano). But the song I most like is "Love will be born again". It's a very emotional ballad sang totally in English - and it gives you a kind of melanchoilc feeling. It's simply beautiful. And for sure another awesome song is "Faith & Decision" which has a length of over 16 minutes!! First I thought it is only an instrumental piece with awesome guitar playing, but suddenly at nearly the half of the song Kamijo begins singing. Great song!!

All in all I'm totally amazed of this album. I haven't listened to Versailles for a while and I'm really happy that I found back to them and their music!


Tracklist:
01. MASQUERADE
02. Philia
03. Thanatos
04. Flowery
05. Remember Forever
06. Destiny-The Lovers-
07. DRY ICE SCREAM!! [Remove Silence]
08. Threshold
09. Judicial Noir
10. Love will be born again
11. Vampire
12. Faith & Decision
13. The Theme of Holy Grail

The limited edition contains a bonus DVD with a music video, and the deluxe box edition contains a bonus DVD with music videos featuring each members and music video making-of. This edition also comes with a poster and a 100-page booklet.

PV of "Destiny -The Lovers-"

[J-Music] BLUE PLANET JAPAN (band introduction)

This time I want to introduce "BLUE PLANET JAPAN" to you. It is an charity project and band by Japanese Visual Kei musicians for the Great East Japan Earthquake from 11th March 2011.

The project was started by the bands “DaizyStripper”,”A” and "FEST VAINQUEUR”. Since then many members of other visual kei bands have joined to raise money and bring hope to disaster areas. All togehter they made a new song which is called "Hitotsu dake ~we are the one~" (ひとつだけ~We Are The One~). All profits of this song will be donated.

Their first performance was on 25th June 2011 at Shibuya O-West. Here is a video of the live:

Members:
DaizyStripper (whole band), A (whole band), FEST VAINQUEUR (whole band), heidi. (Yoshihiko), Versailles (Teru, Hizaki), amber gris (Temari), Dolly (Mitsu), aicle (Emiru), Kiryu (Mahiro Kurosaki), ex.Wizard (Hiro), DASEIN (Ricky), Lips (Suzuya), and more...

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[J-Music] GLANZ ZEIT (band introduction)

Artist: GLANZ ZEIT
Formed in 2009
Official website: Glanz-Zeit.com

Yesterday I discovered this band by chance because while I’m German I thought the band name is pretty interesting. So I listened to some of their songs on YouTube.com and totally fall in love with them.

GLANZ ZEIT was formed in 2009 with its members Masaki (vocal), Nori.H.Hikaru (guitar), Hiro (guitar), Nari (bass) and Zen (drums, special member) - band leader is bassist Nari. This band is mainly operating outside of Osaka and has a range of interesting and fun songs, a great stage presence and a lot of promise and hopefully a bright future.

While this band is still very unknown I can't find much information about them. Hopefully soon there will be more!

Here is a live from May 5th 2011 which the band uploaded on YouTube.com. I hope you like it (^-^)




Have fun everyone with this new band ♥