This you guys HAVE TO HEAR.

Click the image to go to the official H&S page and watch the videos. All four videos have different snippets of the song, so better watch all of them.

The singer is Hajime Chitose, and her voice sounds very synthed in this performance but who cares, it’s good stuff. (For a while there, I thought that the product was “Head and Shoulders” because it’s by Procter and Gamble, and the initials are well, H and S.)

I’m not going to describe the song, but you really have to hear it. This has to be one of the most recent CM works of Kanno’s that are worthy of a release. I WANT IT. (more…)

Let’s have a bit more Aquarion shall we These are from Japanese fans, because most of the covers are from Japan anyway. I listened to every single one and now present those which might interest (and inspire) the rest of you.

For solo acoustic guitar:

Violin accompaniment (distracting mask!):

Violin and Piano:

Four-piece Recorder Flute: (more…)

It’s really a interesting to hear singers’ normal speaking voice. AKINO has one of those full, thick voices associated with RnB singers.

AKINO makes a pitch for her solo album and other live performances. She’s so genki!:

And now here’s the live performance of Sousei no Aquarion, with Bless4:

And the live performance of Genesis of Aquarion, with Bless4. You get a sneak peak at a Backstreet Boys cover at the end (more…)

The January issue of Animage has announced that the series is slated for April 2008!

The full scan comes from kresphy from Macross World. He also translated the article and listed the descriptions of the characters along with their seiyuus. I cropped and boxed out the part of the scan that contained the date of release for reference:

The Macross Official Website has also announced a 27 minute special Director’s cut of the first episode to be aired on (more…)

“Hey, have you heard?”

It’s been a long-running, years-long issue that Yoko Kanno has been copying themes from other artists, and the longest discussion I’ve seen about it is in YKDB (the thread has been alive for three years now!). Recently, a comparison between Angelit’s Garkit and Torukia came up, and based on the online samples, the intro to Torukia was pretty much similar to an interlude from Garkit.

So I attempted to contact Angelit, and got a reply from the composer for the song Garkit, named Kimmo Kajasto. Here is his reply to my query:

Hello,

Thanks a lot for your concern about plagiarism of the song “Garkit”.

My name is Kimmo Kajasto and I am the composer and one of the arrangers for the song. It was very interesting to hear some similarities between our song and the song “Torukia” you kindly sent us, but I did not find them so closely related that I would use the word “plagiarism”. The intro of the song bears the closest resembleance, the mood is exactly same, but when the sung melody part comes in it is at least for my taste completely different song.

I am always more concerned about the melody lines than how closely some sounds and rhythms are alike. In this case I think the similarities fall more to the later department.

Anyway, I include as attachement the whole song “Garkit” so you can poke the Yoko Kanno community if you like. Of course the accusations you pointed out should be taken seriously every time, that´s why I am very grateful you sent us a good sound exemple and let us be aware about Yoko Kanno`s song. (more…)