Album

The Next Piece of Evidence Supporting My Hype for Shihatsumachi Underground’s Upcoming Album

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You guys. Remember just around the historical corner when I completely lost consciousness over a minute-long clip of a song off of Shihatsumachi Underground’s month-plus-away album? Despite having passed out in awe, I remember it well! So well, in fact, that it’s all I can do to keep it together for another one:

Oh, that’s so good. I have a group of friends who are enormous fans of a certain French indie pop band that’s had some immodest hits this side of the pond who are going to love the crap out of this.

Anytime There’s New the mishmash, I’m Here for It

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The mishmash! I was practically giddy when this showed up in the ol’ video queue. Despite not getting nearly as much love from other quarters as I wish they had, the mishmash (formerly just “mishmash”) were among my personal favorite debutantes from last year, with a kind of maturity and understated comfort zone that just doesn’t exist much in a field dominated by try-hard teenagers.

In not even three quarters of a year since their debut in the springtime, the mishmash has had a pretty good rise, and it’s culminating in their first album, due on the 13th. And with albums come what? Videos! Here you go:

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If This Is What We’re Getting from the New Shihatsumachi Underground Album, I– *passes out*

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Man, you guys, we’re not off to the most rip-roaring start to 2019, but I’ll be darned if there aren’t some really great releases coming together already. That Zenkimi single? Have mercy. And now to follow up on an item that started as a Weekender throwaway just a couple of weeks ago, then grew into something that arguably should have become a full-blown post but OH HERE WE ARE, Shihatsumachi Underground, the announcement about whom included that they’re going to drop an album, are now in the process of fully teasing out said album, and here’s a chunk of a track that’s currently looping because I am a weakling in the face of it:

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Rip Roarin’ New Melon on the Way!

/ Homicidol Maniac

Well, “on the way” is relative I guess, because it already arrived on Soundcloud yesterday, and “new” is true in the absolute sense but not for long because *trumpeting herald* Melon Batake a go go’s first major-label album, IKASUZE IDOL 1.2.3!! is literally right around the corner. However, the point of the post is that Melon gave us yet another track from it as a preview, and yes, it is indeed rip roarin’:

I love how Melon’s average track length is shorter than the time it takes me to write a typical Maniac sentence

If you like this, or you consider yourself a Melon fan, you need to go get this album when it’s available. It’s a major — we can help a beloved chika darling rise and break out if we support them on their big-time label! And wouldn’t it be neat if a group of idols dressed like superheroes roleplaying as interplanetary, uh, heroes performing horrorcore takes on surf rock and the like were the breakouts to prove the rule!

Get MELLOW with O’CHAWANZ

/ Kerrie

The new O’CHAWANZ isn’t loud at all. O’CHAWANZ, in general, aren’t that loud. But I don’t care. They dominated my personal best-of last year and they’re ready to do it again in 2019.

It got me wondering. If EPISODE V was full of hype songs, and MELLOW MADNESS is going to be, well, mellow, would that mean MELLOW MADNESS is the night to EPISODE V’s day?

This Is the Very Full Trailer for Q’ulle’s New Album

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I hope that everybody was looking forward to Q’ulle’s upcoming album release, their second under Avex, at least half as much as I have been. Arguably the finest purveyors of idorock left alive, the former dance troupe is always at least good and has an upper echelon that most idols, frankly, can only dream of trying to reach. Plus, unlike a lot of projects, they didn’t have to change what they were doing when they went major! They just, like, did even more.

Give this a quick spin:

That’s a lot of previewing to do! Granted, there’s enough music that you’ve heard before (because you are a Q’ulle fan, like all smart people are) that it’s not totally fresh and surprising, but there are some new moves here that I wasn’t prepared for. Yakko’s death growl, for instance.*

The thing released today, so go get it!

*May or may not have happened

Make Sure Not to Skip over This REGiNA KiSS Song

/ Homicidol Maniac

Goodness gracious, will REGiNA KiSS ever stop putting out videos for iDOL SHREDDER? They did say that they were going to be releasing an MV for every song on the album, IIRC, and at this rate they’re getting very close to that. Have mercy.

Anyway, I drooled a little over the last track that they videoed, but this one is the hands-down best and might top their entire catalog to date:

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At Long Last, a Full-length Zekkyou Album

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And it’s a long one!

Yesterday, Screaming Sixties, half still thriving in the afterglow of having visited the UK as part of the glorious round of international idol work in 2018 (and meeting Kerrie!), made it official: There’s a full album on the way, there will be 18 songs on it, and it’s coming in March:

Okay, so there’s a lot there that we’ve heard before. This is Zekkyou that we’re talking about, though — the Hardest Working Idols in Showbusiness, Queens of Collaboration, winners of musical reality shows. Just the fact that they’re finally putting out a full-length that’s all theirs, that is sans collaborations, feels like a triumph.

And we only need to wait two more months!

Hey! You Might Like to Get Ishido Natsumi’s New Album

/ Homicidol Maniac

The world of idol is a vast and terrifying place, often all the moreso at moments of uncertainty about how you feel about the world at the moment. And a lot of people are feeling down right now! Yesterday was a bloodbath! So in addition to regular ol’ sonic therapy, let’s prove just how easy it can be to find good things and embrace them.

Ishido Natsumi! I feel like there are maybe five people in the whole of Western wotadom who’ve come across her in the past. Is it because she’s new? She is not new! Is it because she’s bad? She is not bad! Is it because she’s particularly obscure? Not unless you consider being from Nagoya and being as regular a performer as it gets obscure! Well, actually maybe the Nagoya thing hurts her a little bit, what with Tokyo getting the lion’s share of the lion’s share of attention and only total nerds being marks for other local scenes (Osaka ftw).

Anyway, it’s been a long while since we last looked in at Natsumi, so now feels like a good time, especially as … she just released a new album and very helpfully put a trailer online! Continue reading →

Start the New Year Right with REGiNA KiSS

/ Homicidol Maniac

I’m gratified, gang, to see that an increasingly long-term occasionally requited affection for emergingly premier idol+band project REGiNA KiSS is starting to bear fruit, and they’re getting (some more of) the attention that they deserve. Frankly, it’s a meme that I’d like to put to bed, forever, save for its usefulness at pointing how how, ha ha, look at the silly ignoramuses who are not yet on board with this never-not-good thing, and look at how smart I am for supporting them! It’s humblebragging of the most hipster-lite quality, and frankly I should be ashamed.

So: Hi, have you not been paying attention to the fact that REGiNA KiSS has been unaccountably killing it for, from our outside perspective with its own timeline and sense of scale, several months now? The release of iDOL SHREDDER promised a reckoning with the painfully obvious potential lurking around the band’s sound going back to when it was just idols, and there were more of them, and things were always good and never acknowledged enough except by the coterie of nerds (hi!) who gestured furiously at photos of REGiNA KiSS every time discussions about “what next” came up.

Here’s the latest: Continue reading →