Not much to discuss today either. Lots of new music on the web though, so let’s pick five!
The Sunny Street: is this a comeback? I don’t know. But here is a track of the most wonderful band The Sunny Street covering The Bats’ “Up to the Sky”. You can’t imagine how happy this has made me, hearing them again, Delphine vocals and Remi’s thoughtful music. Can I hope for more?
Melt: this Jakarta, Indonesia, band released their digital single “RRAD” last January and it sounds great! This shoegaze ensamble is formed by Irfan Muhammad on guitar/vocals, Abba Gabrillin on bass and Rinaldy Shofwan on drums. This band sounds very promising to me!
Blankenberge: superb! the song “Right Now” by the Saint Petersburg, Russia, dream pop band have released last January are really great! As a “B side” of the digital single we find “Radiogaze (éntha Remix)” which it is not exactly my taste. But it definitely feels like Russia has a very exciting guitar pop scene these days, every couple of weeks I discover a new band. Blankenberge is formed by Danlil Levshin, Yana Guselnikova, Dmitriy Marakov, Sergey Vorontsov and Dalan Alziatov.
Mini Dresses: the Boston band is back with a tape album called “Heaven Sent” that will be released on March 22nd. 10 songs will be included and at the moment one of them is available for preview on Bandcamp: “Rand and File”.
Fog: and lastly another shoegaze band. So there shoegaze bands today. Those are the trends I guess. This one hails from Seoul, South Korea, and their latest is a digital single with two songs, “Shine” and “DreamingDreamingDreaming”. These two songs were written by one of the members, Gyungwon before the band had formed. it seems that now, as a unit, they are recording new music which will soon be released as an album (or singles?).
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The last few posts about Japanese bands have been focused on the Left Bank label. That because I know very little about the label and the releases they put out. I only own a few of them, and everything I’ve heard has been of great quality. So it makes perfect sense to keep digging their treasures.
The 9th release on the label was a 7″ by the band Trans Alphabet. It was an EP titled “Brighter than the Brightest Star” and it came out in the year 2000 (LBRD-09). It included 4 songs, on the A side there was the title song “Brighter than the Brightest Star” and “Sweet and Sour Love Song” while the B side had “Tomorrow” and “Dreams in Stereo”. I’ve only listened the last one. Hoping to listen to the rest sometime. According to Discogs there were only 1000 copies made.
It seems it was a one-man band. The person behind it was Katsuya Hozaki. He produced, composed, arranged and performed the four songs. The songs were mastered by Katsunari Owa at Studio You. The art for the record is credited to Shie Kutsuna while there is a direction credit for Masaki Yamaguchi from the Left Bank label. Mayumi Hozaki, maybe family of Katsuya, is credited for playing flute and doing backing vocals.
Then on the back of the sleeve there are a bunch of thank yous, to bands, labels and friends. There is a link to a fan site for the band and also for Sunny Spring Day. Is this another band that Katsuya was involved with? We’ll investigate.
But first the compilation appearances. In 2000 the band contributed the song “Dreams in Stereo” to the “Minty Fresh Japan Compilation Vol. 1 A Small, Good Thing” CD. It was released by Minty Fresh Japan (MFJ-1002) which I suppose was sort of a franchise of the US label (?).
5 years later, in 2005, the band contribute a song in Japanese, “恋の花”, to the “Guitar Pop Crazy! (Bluebadge Compilation Vol. 3)” CD comp that came out on the Bluebadge label (BBCD-009). Lastly, on the TKO New Music Corporation CD “Boys (& Girls) Wonder Shibuya-K Indie-pop Collection Vol. 2” (TKOK-002) that came out in 2007 the band contributed the track “We Can Fly Together”.
I found a Soundcloud page for the band. Sadly there are no tracks nor information. But something that caught my attention. The band was based in Tokyo.
Sadly I couldn’t find on Discogs any band by the name Sunny Spring Day. There is a song by Three Berry Icecream with that name though. I do know that Trans Alphabet played some gigs with that band too. Aside from that Google only gives me lots of links to the band’s record on various sites in Japan that sell it. I couldn’t find any worthy bit of information. We know a little about the band. But I find it odd that they only recorded 5 songs. There must be more. Also, what other bands did Katsuya play on? It can’t just be his solo project? Does any of my Japanese friends remember Trans Alphabet?
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One Response to “:: Trans Alphabet”
Do you still have this? I’ve been looking everywhere to listen to it. I’m very interested in TRANS Alphabet but there’s not much info.