I have an oldies Japanese recommendation: Sawada Kenji/沢田研二。AKA Julie.

Always entertaining

Anyone else have oldies recommendations?

Nuriko Wrote:Anyone else have oldies recommendations?

Flower Traveling Band (early 1970s)

Jarvik7 Wrote:

Nuriko Wrote:Anyone else have oldies recommendations?

Flower Traveling Band (early 1970s)

Thanks!
Did Hendrix and Yoko Ono have some love children we never heard about?

I'm more into instrumental musics rather then vocal ones (About 98% of my collection is purely instrumental, give or take a few) but I do happen to have a lot of Japanese artists in my collection. Most of these artists works can be downloaded through Muzie (A Japanese indie artist site).

First off, Takajii. If I had to rate the best of guitarists (all in IMO of course), it would have to be between Guthrie Govan and Takajii. He does fusion, metal, jazz fusion, rock, hard rock, ballad, and possibly a bit more I have missed. Go look at his youtube profile and listen to his songs if you like them. For an example of his taste go take a listen to Blurry Dawn.

Next is Mintjam's guitarist, a2c (or was it d-suke? I need to go back and check later). They have made quite a number of albums (to my knowledge they have made about 9) and personally I thought their 5th Gig Drive album was their best. This song is not from that album, but it's a good example of what this band can do. Available in HQ. Crying Moon.

Another guitarist (Starting to sound like a broken record here) that I just need to put in this list here would be Godspeed. He appears in many, many doujin music albums and I consider him to be the next guitar king next to Takajii. Also you'll notice that in his videos, compared to the original files, does play a bit on improvisation, much like Guthrie Govan. He mainly dabbles in rock, hard rock, and fusion, although he does occasionally go into orchestral (He also plays piano) at times. All three guitarists mentioned above appears in G5 Project and this is one of Godspeed's contribution: Spirits. Here's his official website for those interested http://www.vivix.info/

Now we break away from the barrage of guitarists and go into a different path. Masato Honda plays many, many instruments fluently, some of them including Trumpet, Alto Sax, Keyboard, Guitar, Flute, and many others. Not only does he do it fluently, he does it good. As a fellow fusion jazz lover, I would happily link to one of his song, Athlete.

Now, I'm not really a fan of OSTER Project, but I can't disagree that their Blue Rose song is just incredibly good. Fast and furious jazz trio and a roller coaster ride from start to finish. The sound quality on this is poor so it might be better off if you download their music from muzie.

There's some artists I just can't find in Youtube, so I'll instead list their names here, what type of genre they play, and some names of their works.

F- Mainly plays laidback fusion and jazz. Some of my favorite songs are Talking Colors and Vibratile. My words would not do this man justice.

Takayuki Nishioka- Creates fusion, although those fusion I like are mostly his jazz fusion. He occasionally works on other stuff, such as pure piano stuff. Examples can be Tokyo Straight and Extra!

T&K Collaboration- Plays progressive music consisting of rock, hard rock, and metal. Very good stuff there. Out of the few created, there's Black Bird and Magic Power.

Astlyde Project- Eh, I don't know if I can define to a short list of genres. Ok, so he creates orchestra, fusion, jazz trio, jazz fusion, piano, and, out of the blue as god has intended, rap (Although I really do like the rap music he created, one of the very few vocals that gets into my collection). One of the fusion created by him is Android With Purple Eyes.

That's it for today, I have a slight more and when I feel the mood to do another batch I might just want to take a crack at it. Only if I'm bored, that is.

Edit: On the other hand, I found this long piano video to be extremely good. I just can't think on how much time that person spent making that video compared to me just typing out this wall of text. http://dic.nicovideo.jp/v/sm6188330

This one's a total oldie too (1953), sound quality is really poor but man, that VOICE ! Btw. she was only 16 at the time.
She was actually declared "living national treasure of Japan" lol
Hibari Misora - Tsugaru no furusato :

A band that I've recently got into is Pistol Valve.

They are a 10-piece all-female brass band (with a DJ).
Instruments include violin, trumpet, trombone, euphonium(you don't see these every day :-), and sax(baritone, alto, and tenor).

They have been together since 2005 and released many singles.
Their first full Japanese album "RATATATTAT!" was released in 2008, I think.

Very unique mix of brass band with pop overtones. I really loved "Zutto Zutto" "OEDO-808" and "PLEASE MR.POLICEMAN" among many others.

Their music is incredible to say the least. Their songs flow very well and changes constantly throughout. So it's not like hearing the same repeated notes for 5 minutes.
In a way, some of the songs remind me of the "Cowboy Bebop" soundtrack.

Check out the youtube video of their 2007 SHOOT DOWN concert (

). These girls can definitely play.

Lastly, the 30-second UNIQLO commercial they made with the Black Bottom Brass Band(from Osaka) is amazing. (

)

Thanks for that Flower Travelling Band clip, never heard of them and I thought that song was excellent. Spent many an afternoon in that ampitheatre too.
This is a nice fusion of Japanese and Indian percussion,

I mostly listen to jpop, but I stumbled across a young enka singer, ジェロ, that is really good.

ジェロ - 海雪

I don't know much Japanese music. The best stuff I've heard so far is Asian Kung Fu Generation (by far my favourite Japanese band) and Happy End. Also heard Nightmare, FLOW, Ripslyme and Orange Range, but none of them are quite as good as the first two.

Any recommendations for stuff similar to AKFG or Happy End?

Here's some J-hip-hop recommendations

Zeebra
Rip Slyme
Wise
Home Made Kazou

Here's some other non hip hop groups

L'arc en ciel - fan girls go crazy for the lead singer
Sambomaster - a big guy with a great voice
High and Mighty color - lead signer who is easy on the eye
Dir En Grey
X Japan

This is my favorite song at the moment.
アゲハ蝶（あへはちょう） by Porno Graffiti

I listen pretty obsessively to Rappagariya. Love all of their albums.

Howtwosavealif, I am bugging on your music on LastFM now. FYI, I am "bjgnome" over there.

I'm pretty much all Jpop. Which seems to be the total opposite of this board. Doubt anyone will match my last.fm.

etpan Wrote:This one's a total oldie too (1953), sound quality is really poor but man, that VOICE ! Btw. she was only 16 at the time.
She was actually declared "living national treasure of Japan" lol
Hibari Misora - Tsugaru no furusato :

Thank you very much, etpan. I like this kind of music.

I don't like modern noisy music which I don't know what it's called.

Just discovered okinawan music, what took me so long?! Great melodic stuff. If you are using last.fm just try "okinawa" or "okinawan" tags. "enka" tag is also worthwhile.

Wow, thanks Doorknob for posting the link to OSTER Project ~ Blue Rose. I really enjoy jazz, but don't know any artists. Please post anything else jazz related.

Yeah, I whole-heartedly second High and Mighty Color. I can't believe it took until the second page for someone to mention them! They're probably my favorite Japanese band at the moment.
I also really like YUI. She's more poppy than a lot of what's been mentioned though.

I am quite liking "Maximum the Hormone" at the moment, some catchy stuff there.

http://[video=youtube]http://www.youtube...9s[/video]

What sort of things would they play on the radio in Japan? Most radio streams I run across are anime songs and stupid jpop. Can anybody give us a radio stream that doesn't suck?

alyks Wrote:What sort of things would they play on the radio in Japan? Most radio streams I run across are anime songs and stupid jpop. Can anybody give us a radio stream that doesn't suck?

Listen.jp is a japanese music site. While it doesn't have a radio or anything, checking the "currently popular artists" and such gives you a pretty good idea on what is being played on normal mainstream japanese radio.

王様 Osama.

Obscenely good, often hilarious covers of western rock classics in Japanese. The bulk of their covers are from the Beatles' catalogue, but they do the Stones, Deep Purple and others as well.

Well uh Keishi Ohno's jk-soul

(watch in high quality) is really good, sadly I haven't found much more of them yet. Mostly though I just wanted to say THANKS to doorknob for that superpost of wondernmentsical music. Dang I just got back in the groove with a bit of western music because I wasn't progressing much musically from all the generic j-pop and was worried I'd get stuck. This made my month. HUGE thanks to you.

I second the nomination for School Food Punishment.
Recently discovered them and love their sound. A shame they're not more popular.

Does anyone have recommendations for swing/jazz/big band Japanese music? There's only Morning Musume's Mr Moonlight, but personally I find it awful. I found so many awesome ones while I was in Japan but I didn't buy any CDs =(.

Has anyone else noticed the enormous size of the classical music sections in music stores in Japan?

ambassadog Wrote:王様 Osama.

Obscenely good, often hilarious covers of western rock classics in Japanese. The bulk of their covers are from the Beatles' catalogue, but they do the Stones, Deep Purple and others as well.

Thanks, I had seen a video of his, but never wrote down the artist name. Somebody made a study list over on smart.fm based on this guy's video:

http://smart.fm/lists/26407-fuka-murasak...ple-medley

edit: bummer, looks like they took the video down, but the study list is still there.