SAKA-SAMA Think You Are The Coolest!

/ supremenothing

It’s been a very active year for SAKA-SAMA! The current duo incarnation of Kokone and Mizuho seems to be a line-up that’s really found it’s stride since TRASH-UP!!! Records conceived of the group back in 2016. Aside from a darn-near perfect album released back in  February (“DAYDREAM”), as well as a couple of terrific EPs, Kokone recorded her delightful solo EP and Mizuho’s project (Which is basically a solo act right now.) ATOMIC MINISTRY finally brought us a cool single that flew in low-key under the radar.

Now it’s December, and as the year draws to a close, here comes another album by the lo-fi dream-pop twosome. It’s a double-disc, 28-track track opus entitled
“You Are The Coolest!”! TRASH-UP!! was kind enough to share audio of the title track, so take a moment and give it a listen if you haven’t already…

No doubt you may recall that in 2019, TRASH-UP!! took it’s first step out of the idol realm and released an EP and album by the legendary Boris, who even played on a couple of bills with the label’s idol roster. I’ve been wishing ever since then that hopefully the heavy drone masters would  go all in and do an actual collaboration with SAKA-SAMA, and lo and behold, it’s finally happened! Here’s a cover of the 2007 D-Day song “Heavenly Blue”, with vocals by Kokone and Mizuho, accompanied by Boris. It’s a nice n’ dreamy pop number that fans of both the idols and the band will appreciate. Maniac also posted this in the weekender and related the sound to “SAKA-SAMA but like being played on a Walkman in an empty cathedral”, which may be mostly because it’s a low bit-rate YouTube preview, but even if not I’m cool with it because that’s totally my kind of sound aesthetic…

And since I love the opportunity to compare and contrast, here’s D-Day‘s exquisite original version of the song. The pieces make lovely bookends to each other I believe…

Oh, and  just uploaded last Friday, here’s another new song from the upcoming album! The title translates to “Same In The Morning And At Night” Once again it’s another tune written by previous SAKA-contributor Daisuke Adachi of Emerald Four. I love that guitar with the marching-beat rhythm and how they juxtapose it to the sing-song vocals…

The 28 songs of this album will cover a lot ground, and they’ll be especially nice to any SAKA-SAMA completist. In addition to new tunes, there will also be rerecorded versions of earlier numbers and some tracks that have been known to appear only in live venue CDs until now. As a matter of fact, the songs from the  album “Daydream”, which was a live-or-mail-order only release, will be included here, along with the great “Songbook” EP series. I believe there will also be some different mixes thrown in as well. One gets the feeling that this could be seen as something of a retrospective, but I certainly hope this prolific output keeps going for a bit longer.

Since it’s closely related, I think I’ll also share this embed of “BIG LOVE” by ATOMIC MINISTRY. (Maniac posted this in the weekender back when it was first uploaded, but I want to encourage more listens.) This single, by the way, is available via iTunes and the major streaming outlets, including it’s B-side “Electric Sheep”. (Presumably a Philip K Dick reference.) which has lyrics described as being “stream of conscious”. (This is available on streaming platforms if you look it up.) Wild man…

More power to you, Kokone and Mizuho! I hope it stays an ATOMIC-SAKA-SAMA-MINISTRY world for a long time…