Soutaisei Riron

There's nothing better than waking up to a knock on the door and seeing the postman holding a package with moonrunes all over it. Today's delivery was three albums by Soutaisei Riron, a Japanese band I'm quite fond of. The first time I heard them I was some 12000m above ground level idly flicking through the various CDs on Qantas' in-flight entertainment system. I liked what I heard over the roar of the plane's engines, jotted down the name of the band, and promptly forgot about them. Some weeks later I was hooked on the Tatami Galaxy ED and, in between replaying it over and over, found out that the singer (Yakushimaru Etsuko) was also the lead singer of Soutaisei Riron, that band I faintly remembered from the flight. The rest is history.

If you're going to listen to any of their albums, make it this one.

The band itself has a fairly minimal sort of sound with the focus being on Yakushimaru's vocals, which are described on wikipedia as "moe", and are very flighty and acrobatic. If you've heard the Tatami Galaxy ED or the Arakawa OP then you've got a pretty good idea of her unique sound. If not, then I'd highly recommend you watch The Tatami Galaxy (seriously, it's a great anime) then get back to me.




Tracks to try:
Shinagawa Number - halfway through Hi-fi Anatomia, this track is my pick of the album - though not by much. Yakushimaru's vocal dexterity complements the fairly simple guitar riff perfectly, resulting in a great sounding track. But yeah, I really could have said the same about half the album.
LOVE Zukkyun - this track is from their first album and has much more of a lo-fi sound to it, with the guitar being noticeably more prominent than on the later albums. This doesn't stop it from being damn catchy. The video on the youtube link is either the actual PV or a weather report.
Peperoncini Candy  - This is from their latest album Synchroniciteen, and is extremely cute. I don't really think much more needs to be said here.

I wonder if I could safely assume anyone reading this is going to be able to read at least some Japanese? I'd feel more comfortable posting track names etc. in Japanese rather than having to hit up Wikipedia and other sites to find the standard translation. Anyway, sorry for starting this off on a decidedly non-anime-related note, but it was fresh on my mind.

Back to watching Nico Nico Live then.