As a supplementary post to the Aquarion EVOL releases, let me post some information about AIKI, who would be performing beside AKINO in the ED theme to the new series. AIKI is the youngest of the siblings, and is the only other member of the vocal band to have a single aside from AKINO. His single is a song entitled “Heart Prints”, which accompanies a book he wrote about losing a friend of his to drugs. It’s quite lovely, here’s the song’s sample:

And with bless4 (he’s the one on the leftmost):

Mazingaaaaa Z!!!

I thought some of you might be interested in this I’d have to apologize though since I can’t find the track list, but it just says “many songs from the movie” in the descriptions.

Release Title: Band Score: Macross F Movie ~ Sayonara no Tsubasa ~ Sheet Music
Price: Y2800 (Y2940 Tax incl.) USD 35.81
Purchase from CDJapan.

Ilaria Graziano, vocalist for songs from “Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex” and “Cowboy Bebop”, has an exciting new musical project with vocalist/guitarist Francesco Forni: “From Bedlam to Lenane”.

Taken from their Facebook page:

Francesco Forni and Ilaria Graziano met at the beginning of their careers. Since then, they went across to each other in different projects and after a while they created an acoustic duo which can transform in a quintet or sextet with the collaboration of some of the best Italian and international musicians. They performed all around Europe and in the United States. The sound they give life to is full of different influences, included folk music and blues. They like to connect the tracks they compose with traditional folk, coming from the South of Italy or Eastern Europe as well as from the American music treasures. Original tracks from Francesco’s and Ilaria’s solo albums as well as from her well-known movies soundtracks are among their repertoire.

Francesco’s and Ilaria’s performance together is a very interesting mix of languages, from Italian to English as well as Southern Italy’s dialect, with some influence from Eastern Europe too. The result is a continuous game and role exchange between the soft, warm and fascinating sound of Francesco’s guitar who sometimes seems to be close to catch fire and the evocative voice of Ilaria which could as well be coming from another time and space, hypnotic as it is. To live one of their performance means to go through an experience that can hardly be forgotten and, on the contrary, holds on one’s heart and mind for a long time. And leaves you surprised for its originality and uniqueness.

Like “From Bedlam to Lenane” on Facebook, and visit their website www.reverbnation.com/frombedlamtolenane.

Contributed by Neo_skywalker

Let’s all give our warm welcome to Yyrkoon, who will be helping me with news and updates starting today. As most of you have noticed, he always gives us news anyway (and more ), and I am so glad he volunteered to help keep the site updated for everyone Again, a warm welcome!

-mai

Production I.G. key animator Satoru Nakamura and storyboarder and episode director Koudai Kakimoto attended this year’s AnimeNEXT 2011. To quote from Reverse Thieves whose writers went to the convention:

As could be guessed there were many more questions about Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex than anything else. Nothing could be better than the second, and biggest, surprise of the event when Mr. Nakamura and Mr. Kakimoto leaned their heads together then unofficially announced more Stand Alone Complex is in the works.

So, there’s the possibility that Kanno will be working on this one. I read previously that Satellite (Kawamori’s studio) tries not to use Kanno on consecutive projects and just made the exception for Macross Frontier after doing the original Aquarion series. After hearing that she was not announced (…yet?) as composer to Aquarion EVOL, fans could just conjecture what it means. Maybe this is THE next project?

And what could be better than working on Aquarion EVOL? Working for GITS:SAC of course! And if Cyber Bicci is an indication, she really has a soft spot for this series and wants to work more with at least one of its main singers

This August, the OSTs and singles released from the first Aquarion series will be re-released in CDJapan. It does surprise me a bit that they are not priced-down re-issues. Maybe they serve as reminders for EVOL, or maybe August will give us an announcement on when the TV series will air?

Check them out here:
OST 1
OST 2
Sousei no Aquarion Single
Go Tight! Single