The success of popular anime The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya proved to be an equally enormous boost for seiyuu and musician Aya Hirano, who provided the voice for title character Haruhi.
The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya follows the story of high school student Haruhi – and her reluctant partner Kyon, who is dragged into Haruhi’s quest for bizarre and supernatural phenomena. More Inside »
With a new single due this week, PUFFY fans are also in for a treat when a new covers album of PUFFY songs gets released in July.
The album PUFFY COVERS will feature cover versions by a wide variety of artists including Yoshii Kazuya, Saito Kazuyoshi, OKAMOTO’S, The Birthday, Spitz, Guitar Wolf and the pillows. More Inside »
ARASHI have a live DVD scheduled for release later this month and have issued a promo video with details. The DVD features footage shot at their 2 day concert at the National Olympic Stadium last September.
The concert featured the boys playing to an audience of over 140,000 fans and one of the highlights was the launch of 1,300 fireworks as part of the performance.
More Inside »
If you’ve been inspired by K-Pop or J-Pop to launch your own music career then you might want to make yourself available for an audition being conducted in London next month by YG Entertainment (home of 2NE1 and BIGBANG).
The auditions call for people aged between 11 and 19 to show their stuff at the Korean Cultural Centre in London on 19th June 2012. Similar auditions are being held in Germany and the USA. This could be your opportunity for stardom 
An application form and all the info is available here: http://www.yg-audition.com/
A phrase such as ‘idol group’ will conjure up particular images and ideas in your average J-Pop fan that are not going to be that dissimilar from the many acts dominating the contemporary Japanese charts.
So it’s a refreshing surprise when an outfit comes along that appears to be taking a very different approach to the idol group concept. Enter BiS (aka Brand-New Idol Society)… More Inside »
With the forthcoming release of SHONEN KNIFE’s new album POP TUNE, here’s their new video of the title track.
POP TUNE is due for release on 6th June 2012.
Multi-talented electropop artist Sputniko! has won an Honorary Mention Award at Ars Electronica 2012 in Linz, Austria.
The Award was for Sputniko!’s Menstruation Machine video which was originally unveiled in 2010. “What does Menstruation mean, biologically, culturally and historically, to humans?” queries Hiromi Ozaki (aka Sputniko!), “Who might choose to have it, and how might they have it? “. More Inside »
During our K-ON! WEEK we ran a competition to win a copy of the K-ON! Complete Series DVD. The comp featured the following question:
What keyboard does Mugi usually play in the series?
The answer was, of course, that Mugi didn’t usually play any keyboards during the series as she was too busy eating cake with the rest of the band. Unfortunately, due to silly legal reasons, we’ve been told that we have to provide a proper answer, so for the sake of argument let’s just go with Korg Triton Extreme 76-key.
Congratulations to Thomas Weatherill who wins the DVD set and thanks to Manga Entertainment for sponsoring the competition.
The K-ON! WEEK was a very successful event (and also lots of fun) so this is also a good opportunity to extend thanks to those people who helped, contributed and supported which includes: Kat Kourbetti, Finny Attridge, Amy Bernheit, Lizzie Ooi, Lisa DeBell at Fetch Publicity and Jerome Mazandarani at Manga Entertainment.
As we previously reported, L’Arc~en~Ciel are due to release both a tribute album and also a special live DVD.
The details and track listings for both releases are now available which also reveals that the album (which is simply titled TRIBUTE) will also feature bonus tracks from artists such as POLYSICS, Hemenyway and TOTALFAT.
The LIVE TWENITY DVD will feature the best of L’Arc~en~Ciel’s recorded concert performances across their career up to their most recent 20th Anniversary tour. In fact the band recently played London to an enthusiastic response. More Inside »
HEAT, the new album from May’n, is due for release via iTunes in the US later this month alongside her 2011 release If you….
May’n is probably best known for her contribution to Macross Frontier when she became the singing voice for the character Sheryl Nome back in 2007. Her recent 2012 album HEAT reached the Oricon Top Ten on its release and includes the anime themes Brain Diver (Phi Brain) and Scarlet Ballet (Aria the Scarlet Ammo), plus Giant Step from her collaboration song for Kamen Rider Fourze. More Inside »
