May 4th news

[Site news]  The AJMR is happy to announce that we've begun to upload our flier collection to Flickr. It'll take us a while to get them up all up and tagged, so please keep coming back to it!

[US & Canada]  Shonen Knife has announced a big tour and a new album called Pop Sound. Pop Sound's album art, designed by Mami Saitou, will feature a different color scheme for each release in China, Japan, and America/Europe. The American release will be done by Damnably, a label in the UK; it goes on sale June 6th both as a CD digipak and digital download. Shonen Knife's North American tour will not only bring them to both the US and Canada, but to cities and states normally ignored by Japanese touring artists - Alabama, Montana, upstate New York, and Maine. After that, they leave for Europe.

More news under the cut:




[Internet]  Joey Carbone has been interviewed by Japan Today about his career as a top producer and composer of Japanese hits. It's a great interview, check it out!

[San Jose, CA]  Anime convention Fanime have announced their first musical guest - the vocalist of Sendai Komatsu, Igaguri Chiba. Sendai Komatsu is the gag band of the visual-kei group Nightmare, meaning that Igaguri Chiba is better known by his stage name of Yomi. This is to promote Chiba/Yomi's solo activities. He'll be performing on May 26th as part of their Saturday MusicFest event. Press release, and Fanime's website.

[US]  Golden Bomber has announced that they will be releasing their upcoming best-of album "The Golden Best" on June 18th in a variety of countries simultaneously (USA, UK, Germany, France, South Korea and Taiwan). Each CD features its own cover displaying the flag of the relevant country. Information on its contents and distribution are not yet available. Sources are here and here.

[New York]  Jazz artist JUJU performed in Manhattan for MTV Unplugged on May 2nd. She played a long set list of 15 songs to 40 lucky fans drawn in a lottery done through MTV Iggy. This is only the second time a Japanese artist has performed on MTV Unplugged, the first being Ken Hirai. Go girl go! Source.
 
PS: The BBC radio, World Service, is going to be talking about L'Arc-en-Ciel for about five minutes or so on May 10th at 5:30 BST. We're still working on pinning down which program it will be. The AJMR doesn't normally talk about European activity, however, The AJMR assisted in editing the content for the show so we're giving it a little promotion.