I realised I never said anything on here about Kalafina’s 2011 LP After Eden, despite going into the official shop in Shibuya and picking up a copy on release day. It’s a really nice record with some standout tracks, but looking back it sounds like it was trying too hard. It came out only a year after their previous full-length effort, so with that in mind I suspect that they were over-reaching themselves a bit and were suffering from the notorious ‘third album syndrome’.
Two years later, with their first European appearances under their belts, where do they stand with their fourth record? While AE took a few listens to get into, Consolation endeared it to me from the get-go. Quite honestly I don’t think they’ve sounded better – the songs on offer here are easily of the standard they set right back in ’09 with their debut Seventh Heaven.
There’s always that nervous feeling when you hear any new material from one of your favourite bands for the first time. If it’s different from what’s gone before it may clash with whatever expectations you may have had, and of course there’s the worry that the sound loses the special something that made you love it to begin with.
I wish it were easier for us overseas listeners to sample the eclectic and inventive independent Japanese music scene. We often have to rely on the efforts of bilingual fellow fans and/or word of mouth, which was how I discovered the instrumental five-piece mudy on the 昨晩 (the kana segment of their name is pronounced ‘sakuban’). Thanks to the wonders of the internet I was impressed enough with their full-length debut Pavilion to import the CD. Who says online music file-sharing is bad for record sales? ^_^
I first heard the songwriting of Yuki Kajiura through the soundtrack to Koichi Mashimo’s Noir but for me her style became intrinsically linked to a certain visual aesthetic after the haunting Portrait de Petit Cossette. Kalafina, her current project, is best known as the vocal group behind the soundtrack to the Kara no Kyoukai films; my love for that series aside, the ‘Kalafina sound’ is instantly recognisable yet hard to categorise.
In the space of a year or two I’ve grown to appreciate the sound of instrumentalists Mono, mainly because I’ve been a long-standing fan of experimental guitar-driven soundscapes. My initial reaction to their Gone compilation – the first time I’d listened to them properly – was a fanboyish exclamation of “Holy shit, a J-rock Mogwai!”, although in retrospect I was selling them short. It’s easy to lump bands together when something as obvious as the lack of lyrics is one thing they have in common, after all.
I’ve had a .flac version of Seventh Heaven on my HD for a while now but when I was in Akihabara I was able to pick up the legal version (I decided against the limited edition since I was worried about spending too much…). It has the prettiest CD inlay booklet I’ve seen in a long time but above all else it’s the neatest way of getting Kalafina’s best material on one shiny disc. In fact the only disappointing omission here for me is the Lacrimosa single and its B-side Gloria but it does include all the major vocal numbers from the Kara no Kyoukai movie series, plus a track or two that you won’t find on any of the OSTs.
How do you go about appraising the talents of a vocal artist who technically doesn’t exist? I’m not sure if Shoji Kawamori expected the arrival of the Vocaloid software way back when he made Macross Plus but it was a neat bit of foresight in envisaging a future when it is possible to not only synthesise a singing voice, but a scenario in which the said technology becomes a music phenomenon on its own. Time will tell as to whether Hatsune Miku’s great-granddaughter will be gracing music stages in holographic form or otherwise, but as a music nerd the idea of creating a singing voice from scratch with little more than typing in the lyrics and melody is spine-tinglingly exciting. 
I know it’s a bit pre-emptive nominating a contender for Album Of 2009 when we’re only three months into the year but in recent days I’ve become so entranced by Mono’s latest effort Hymn to the Immortal Wind I’m pretty confident that we may already have a winner. It’s their fifth studio effort but apart from the EP compilation Gone this is the first time I’ve had chance to properly check them out…and I absolutely love what I’ve found.
Many moons ago a now-absent AUKN forum-goer sent me an mp3 of the Dir en Grey album track Garbage. I was hooked on their sound from that point on, soon realising they’re one of the most innovative hard rock acts that the Land of the Rising Sun has to offer. I use the term ‘hard rock’ quite tentatively though because while Diru consider themselves to be an experimental metal band and have their roots in the visual kei movement they purposefully avoid pigeonholing themselves in those neat little boxes that the contemporary music industry is so fond of. They instead pride themselves on creating a dark, heavy and uncompromising sound and opting to express themselves through the music itself, rather than their image.