PiGU

We Interview Idol Producers: Spiritwalker’s Keisuke Hirayasu

/ DAEMON

Today we feature our second guest column from BobIsRandom who, when not hanging out on the Homicidols’ Discord server, is busy bugging idol producers for interviews that we are happy to publish. 

By BobIsRandom 

It’s an amazing time we live in. I can be a fan of creative people working locally thousands of miles away, but I can even interact with them, without knowing their language, and all without leaving the house. For instance, I’ve recently become a fan of REBEL REBEL. Being the fanboy that I am, and wishing there were more fans, I recently decided to write and submit an article about REBEL REBEL here on Homicidols. Whether that article succeeded in gaining REBEL REBEL any more fans, I have no idea, but it did hatch a crazy idea in my head. It just so happened that, even before the article was written, the producer of REBEL REBEL had followed me on Twitter (likely because the majority of my scant few tweets are about REBEL REBEL), and the crazy idea in my head was that perhaps this article could afford me an opportunity: maybe I could leverage this article and DM him asking for an interview?

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Homicidols Investigates: How soft are the iTunes J-Pop charts?

/ chris

Congratulations to REBEL REBEL!  Their producer tweets:

Tweet by @richy259: REBEL REBEL's "ZUGZWANG" ranked 43rd in the iTunes Store (UK) "J-Pop Top Albums"!

Wow!  I love REBEL REBEL, nice to see them get some success!  Strange though, despite some efforts from this site, you don’t really see much chat about them from overseas idol fans.

And the iTunes Store?  Who still uses that?  Who purchases albums when you can get the choice from millions of songs on a cheap or free streaming subscription?

Well actually, I still do.  Not because of any altruistic desire to give those producing the music more money, although that’s a nice bonus, but because of the horrifying thought that the music I love may just disappear from the service one day.  You know what I’m talking about, BILLIE IDLE fans!  Plus I like to listen to all my music offline, along with a bunch of stuff that was never on streaming, idol and non-idol.

But hundreds of “Your Spotify Wrapped” tweets on my timeline every year shows that I am in a very small minority here in still using the iTunes store.  And the amount of J-Pop fans in the UK using the iTunes store must also be quite a small number.  I did buy that REBEL REBEL EP but given their relatively low profile it seems conceivable that I may be the only person in this country that did.  Is it possible that one sole purchase is enough these days to get something into the top 50?

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A Welcome Surprise from No Suprises

/ Homicidol Maniac

So as mentioned in the Weekender, after a long and butt week in idol in which very little of real interest happened, engines started to warm up a little bit yesterday, and we got something that those of us who are pro-POPiD could be excited about. Yes, it should come as … no surprise (haw) that the Idol Formerly Known as PiGU, called (ahem) No Surprises now and having none of the old PiGU membership but definitely having inherited their Twitter account, dropped their first single, “proof”, the other day (venue-only?), and along with that came this MV:

This post-PiGU project was, of course, going to be carrying over quite a bit of PiGU, and every little bit of what we’d seen from them so far suggested the same. Here, the best evidence yet, delivers in a way that … surprised (heh) me. There’s that little maturation in the sound — which, yes fine, it’s one song, but bear with me, until they turned dark, all of OG PiGU’s punk work was on the brighter end of that spectrum, and no I’m not buying this as “emotional blues rock” just yet — but moving with it is a complete makeover in the group’s look. It’s a good move, frankly, an aesthetic shift without needing to be revolutionary.

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Yeah, PiGU Will Rise Again!

/ Homicidol Maniac

I think Chris spoke for all of us (who were previously enormous marks of that bizarre Osaka-based cosplay cafe group that couldn’t ever decide on a sound and definitely couldn’t ever decide on a membership for more than a month at a time) when he tweeted this yesterday:

What he was so excited about? What he so earnestly wanted to share? That PiGU’S GONNA AT LEAST KINDA COME BACK INTO OUR LIVES YEAH!

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Say Goodbye to PiGU

/ Homicidol Maniac

Frick and frack, you guys. I’ve largely been spared the personal worst of disbandments so far, but along comes the demise of one of my favorite Osaka groups. PiGU, one of the neatest of rock idols (regardless of the flavor they embraced at any moment), are being brought to an end by POP iD:

I’ll just go ahead and let Chris explain it all: Continue reading →

The Power of PiGU Compels You

/ Homicidol Maniac / 1 Comment

It seems like the time is right to come back around on the (incredibly hard to follow!) series of PiGU releases from the past month, as I am nothing if not devoted to getting more people to listen to PiGU and their (usually excellent!) music, regardless of style variations (currently doing 80s revival!), and consider getting out to Osaka when they’re visiting Japan to see what the POPiD cafe is all about.

I was just going to throw these two you-can-get-these-EPs-from-iTunes announcements into the Weekender, but let’s have a quick look in instead:

Actually, let’s talk about whether anybody who finds themselves riding a pastel-colored unicorn bareback through space needs more injections … Continue reading →

You Keep Doing These Nice Things, PiGU

/ Homicidol Maniac / 3 Comments

Oh for the love of Pete, PiGU, how long ago did you first start to show us “Bye Bye Honey”? And now you send us an MV? Diabolical.

That’s really nice though! I’ve enjoyed the song in all of its various by-membership iterations, and it sums up PiGU’s somewhat new neo-80s style very well (Roots Rock iDOL, they call it). Continue reading →

Would You Like a Preview of PiGU’s New EP?

/ Homicidol Maniac / 2 Comments

You should! PiGU has established themselves as nothing if not a solid good time, and like a miniature membership soap opera to boot. I’m quite literally shocked that they didn’t get even more love for one of the most twisted MVs of the year, at the very least. But heck, it’s been a tough one for Osaka’s cosplay cafe house idols — membership turmoil and the like limited their releases to a mere handful in 2017. And there’s still time to get in one more!

It’ll be out next week. If you can get it, you should buy it. Continue reading →

Just a Little Taste of PiGU’s Future

/ Homicidol Maniac

Man, this one’s a few days old, but I wanted to do something with the video that’s actually below the jump, and that just invited the use of the draft that I started all the way back on Friday, so here you go.

Hey, look, it’s a PiGU preview!


Surprising darkness

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Never Miss Another Episode of Spiritwalker TV

/ Homicidol Maniac

While I do still fantasize about GWAR’s Slave Pit TV being real and occupying some of the useless channel space in my directory, I’ve never really had a whole lot of interest in idols’ live broadcasts of anything other than performances (and auditions, but whatever). They’re on at terrible times, very rarely involve anything important and chew up attention span that I need for more important things.

The answer is because I can’t Japanese

Nonetheless, YouTube as a venue has keeps getting smarter and better, and idols are catching on to all of the ways that the medium can be leveraged. Yes, it’s limited, but it beats the crap out of SHOWROOM and stuff, which are butt interfaces. I’ve caught a few Dotscasts on YouTube, for instance, which were inexplicable-but-not-a-total-waste-of-time.

This brings me to PiGU — or, more appropriately, the whole dang Spiritwalker / POPiD family — who launched their own live broadcast … about two hours ago. You can still watch, though! Continue reading →