Okinawa Electric Girl Saya Is a “Black Angel”…

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Okinawa Electric Girl Saya’s new album “Black Angel” is finally out, and she’s been working overtime doing shows and publicity to promote it!  Not only is she consistently interesting and daring with her musical choices, but with a non-stop succession  of live performances and a highly active social media presence, Saya has also emerged to be easily one of the most tirelessly committed artists on the scene right now. I’m really not sure if she actually sleeps or has a battery pack hidden under her black clothing.

The avant-garde idol from Okinawa is also quite prolific, releasing a steady stream of experimental CDRs nearly monthly along with her regular output. A few of those works are even on Bandcamp, which we covered here a months ago. Her new album is a crowd-funded effort, featuring quite a number of collaborative guests helping this unique vision come  out in what’s certainly her biggest push on the edge of the envelope yet. Saya already released one MV last week, and now a second one has already arrived! Here’s the most recent, a video for “Black Flower”…

Saya wrote the lyrics and participated in the songwriting herself on this track, and the guitar work comes from Yuki Uozumi, who was an early member of LoVendoЯ, Tanaka Reina’s band project! This is pretty classic Okinawa Electric Girl, with intensely emotional vocals over evocatively artful backing tracks. I still have yet to hear this album, (Which is a situation I need to correct soon.) but if this is an accurate indicator of what to expect, then I think it’ll be a real pleaser to fans of Saya’s work.

For a compare/contrast opportunity, I’ll share the previous MV that came out only a week ago here as well even though it was already featured in the most recent Homicidols Weekender. This title track from the new album didn’t grab me as easily as the newest video and took me a few listens to appreciate it. I think that strangely enough, I found it a little too conventional sounding at first, whereas I was invested in the album being this wonderfully strange avant-garde spectacular. I have to say however, that after a few follow-ups listens, this tune started to really click and grow on me and I think I was completely wrong to have any reservations. It’s really rather terrific! 

So there you have two tracks to introduce you to “Black Angel” and the bold new world of Okinawa Electric Girl Saya. And don’t forget there’s plenty of very cool footage of Saya’s highly emotional live performances to check out. It seems like she’s experimenting with new aspects of self-expression constantly and her evolution as an artist is something that we can enjoy watching unfold!