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Your Homicidols Weekender #117

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Good morning! Did everybody have a good week? Idol went and flexed good and hard on us, didn’t it? Plenty to enjoy. And now the inevitable break that, because I for once don’t have anything else to do and could maybe enjoy just bumming around the house a little bit, will surely be ruined by a string of awesome MVs and a graduation that’ll make your head spin. This week’s huge personal loss is Dots, of course. Still trying to process that one.

Let’s all do our best to do our least for a little bit this weekend, okay? Relax. Reflect. Appreciate that this is easily the most boring time of year, and you owe it to yourself to embrace that spirit. I mean, by all means play the Fun, an excellent entry by our most Supreme Nothing, but otherwise let the magic of the Weekender take you to a happy place.

Serenity Now!

WHAT HAPPENED TO CHIITI!

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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.

The Renewed PIIIIIIIN Has a New Single Cooking

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One of the nicest surprises that you can get when idol-diving is something that you didn’t notice at first but tripped over while looking for something else. Like, I completely missed that PIIIIIIIN had dropped a new track the other day until I happened over to Soundcloud to find another track, and there it was, like the very best kind of slap in the face.

“Jumping” comes to us from their new single, due in a month. If this is what we’re getting from the ostensible A-side, I can’t wait to see what they do with its partner!

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Rip Roarin’ New Melon on the Way!

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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!

Your Homicidols Weekender #114

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Good morning! I have to say, 2019 is shaping up to be maybe the roughest year in idol since I started following back in 2014. A lifetime ago, practically! It feels like a blessing in a way to be so, well, goshdarned upset about the rash of graduations and breakups in these early weeks of January, because it means that I got to cross metaphorical paths with people who left an imprint on me, and that matters. So yeah, you may be losing an oshi (possible plural at once!), and you might not get to see that person and the work of theirs that you prize, but your life is richer for having them having been part of it, and thank the gods for it.

And, you know, it’s idol. You’ll find another favorite or 10 again in no time!

I’ll admit that this isn’t really my favorite time on the calendar, and not just because it’s a time of high turnover — it’s also a time when, I guess because of the academic calendar, the business of idol slows a bit. There’s not as much stuff, and the first big run of debuts for the year is still a few months off, so you need to find ways to amuse yourself. Like, for instance, deranged fan faction!

A giant-ass winter storm has been ripping through the country the last couple of days, and heaven help the poor souls in New England about to get snowed under. An excellent excuse to explore your artistic side while playing the Fun, and then ripping through a halfway quality Weekender!

Halfway Is Better Than No Way

Ex-oshi seems to be taking well to life outside of idol:

Meanwhile, every tweet from Shidare is like a dagger to the heart:

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Your Homicidols Weekend #113

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Good morning! How’s winter going for you guys who don’t live on the planet’s underside or somewhere in the tropics? It finally really set in here in the past week, so it’s cold and going to snow and I couldn’t be happier. Yeah, it makes it hard to do enjoyable outdoor things, it can be hazardous to life and limb and all the jazz, but man, I’m a person who just plain needs the turns of the seasons to be happy. This is the time of year to blast some black metal and contemplate mortality as our ancestors did of old (well, minus the black metal part), to get philosophical and weird. I’m sure that I’m going to be very fun to be around in the coming weeks!

This week in idol sucked. Period. I don’t just mean the graduations (but also the graduations) — unless you live under a rock, you’ve heard by now about an assault scandal that’s really rocking, well, everybody. More on that to come, mostly just to sum up. The fact remains, bad week. Like, emotionally bad. Did stuff happen, though? It did, and I think I got about half of it in as round and enjoyable a summary as could be managed. I’ll be damned if somebody’d be like, Weekender? More like Weakender!

Anyway, unless you’re tremendously busy today, sit down and have a cup of something warm, play the Fun and get into this look back.

How Old Are You, Anyway?

Read what you will into this video greeting from BURST GIRL by Chaotic Harmony!

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These NEO JAPONISM Songs Are Good

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I am not kidding! For no particular reason save for that it’s a nice thing to do and we deserve it, NEO JAPONISM went ahead and dropped three new tracks the other day. I urge you to listen to them if you like nice things, which of course you do, you are reading this. And then after listening, I want you to help me remember how it was that NEO JAPONISM didn’t come up for 2018 debutante awards, like at all, despite being very good. Is it that our memory is that bad? Did they actually slip their debut live into November 2017? WHO KNOWS! All that matters is that a ball was dropped. If you’d like more evidence than, say, the last time they did a really good thing, here are the other good things:

You want lyrics? Of course you do! Continue reading →

Your Homicidols Weekender #112

/ Homicidol Maniac / 3 Comments

Happy new year! I know it’s the 5th, but spare me your malcontent recriminations — we can wish each other well all the time, not just in the immediate afterglow of balls dropping and the people you spent a couple of weeks rounding up for a surprisingly affordable private party in a very accessible location all deciding within 10 minutes of each other that they really should get home, it’s late, and you realize how old you’re getting and how amazingly lame your friends have become, so you drag yourself and your partner, your lone holdout, halfway across town (“it’s on the way home!” you tell yourselves) to another neighborhood where no private parties, per se, are to be found, but instead lots of well-lubricated revelers and “specials” that can only be described as such in a context akin to “I feel really special when I’m singled out for larceny” and a very friendly bartender who insists on doing shots with you, all within a 15-minute window because there’s a last train that you absolutely must catch. It’s pretty simple!

The first week of the year was a good one for idol. I actually skipped a couple of posts on account of working for a bona fide lunatic whose conception of “catch up back in the office” is actually “let’s very quickly find plural projects that must be completed within 48 hours,” but I hope to be able to make it up. That’s right — what you see here before you is actually real-deal legit Weekender material! Correct, no need to cheer, Weekender stuff is the fill-in! Yeah!

We had an amazing first Fun of 2019, too, so go play it, then take all this in stride, do what you need to do on account of it being time for a nice ol’ break from the slog of modernity, even if for a few hours, and look ahead to what the gods owe us — a year that doesn’t make just about everybody want to scream in existential agony!

Chipper

You’re wrong if you aren’t totally excited about the double A-side from Zenbu Kimi no Sei Da:

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Your Homicidols Weekender #111

/ Homicidol Maniac

Happy Saturday, friends! Has everybody had a good wintertime holiday season? We’re dang near through it all, and New Year’s Eve looms large at Maniac Mansion this year — much revelry is expected. I thought maybe I’d managed to dodge those bullets by hosting some friends last weekend and going all out on the Christmas traditionals, but I guess some people just like to keep those expectations high.

In case you couldn’t tell, this is basically my favorite time of the year. It helps that my cultural background is well-steeped in the terror and romance of winter, so this whole harvest-turns-to-solstice-to-newness thing, it’s like happy breathing. And you get to eat lots of gingerbread and roast lots of meat and drink lots of spirits! Could be worse. It’s also usually a pretty good time of year for idol, as late-year releases line up with the second big festival season for a good couple of months of action, which is to say nothing of all the new year’s events and the sublimity of Idol Christmas. All is merry and bright indeed! Yeah, it’s a good time of year.

Is this a great Weekender, though? It’s not a bad one! I wish there were more in it, but, like, basically three days were lost to the holiday rotation, and then I lost track of the things that I was trying to hold in reserve, like a jerk. Let’s also be honest here: When you Weekender, do you ever spend time with everything? I barely do!

So play the Fun, tour around in here a little, and then do whatever it is that people do in the holiday off-weekend. Buy party hats and cheap champagne, I’m guessing? Fantastic.

How Dare You Insult the Honor of Korbel!

Could there be any better way of reimagining old-school prog rock than by xoxo EXTREME?

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I May Have a New Favorite Melon Song

/ Homicidol Maniac

DEAR IDOLS, STOP RELEASING COOL THINGS WHEN I’M TRYING TO NOT DO IDOL STUFF FOR A MINUTE. LOVE, MANIAC.

Jeez louise, you guys, can somebody please send a memo to Japan that this isn’t the time to be releasing or teasing or even suggesting the possibility of existence of new stuff? Give it a week! But no, I jest — foolish indeed is the idol fan who bemoans receiving the goods at any time, and Melon’s been on a roll as they prep for their first major (I know!) album release, Ikasuze Idol 1,2,3!!, next month.

The last couple of entries were right in the usual Melon Batake a go go theme of “throwback rock and -abilly even and stuff that goes right into our anachronistic theme of space alien superhero girls and monster movies and stuff,” but this one, you must hear to believe, throws that concept right at a wall of latter-era rock sound and forces you to hold on, and it’s great! Continue reading →