Refraction

LOVE (aka Fukiko Nakamura, ex-COS vocalist) will release a single in October.

Yay! ♥

… a work term report.

So, I walk into a store looking for a DVD of Howl’s Moving Castle and end up buying Vienna Teng’s Warm Strangers album instead. And for significantly less than that time I saw it at HMV. (Sarah, let me know if you want to hear these two live tracks that only came out on the re-release: “Hope on Fire” and “Boy at the Piano”.)

I have also received my new mp3 player (which, so far, is working just fine) and my massive CORE OF SOUL order.

I’ve also been listening to LOVE’s (Fukiko Nakamura, ex-COS) first release and while it’s not bad, it’s not quite all I expected. There’s also an mp3 floating around of one of Song Rui’s (ex-COS guitarist) new collaboration thingies (it’s in Mandarin!) and I almost like that one better. Except for the vocals part.

I’m about to spend $70+ dollars on three CDs. Of course, they are CORE OF SOUL CDs, so that justifies the cost.

I don’t want to explain to my mother why she’ll have to pay the customs fee for me, though… >_<

Today marks one year to the day that CORE OF SOUL broke up.

I’m still working on that discography. The trip to Quebec last summer delayed my acquisition plans a bit, and then there was that whole surgery thing. Of their albums, I’m still missing Natural Beauty and RAINBOW; as far as their singles go, I still need “Make Me a Woman”, “Purple Sky”, and “AGEHA”. Then there’s the DVD, of course.

And when I get there

How did I manage to stumble across this group which enjoyed only a moderate success in their home country? An mp3 rotation, of course. “FULL MOON PRAYER” and another song—likely “Angel” or “Natural Beauty”— had been offered up for download. For whatever reason, I resisted listening to them for a while—possibly, I’d had other things to do, but when I finally did, I couldn’t help but think, Why did I wait so long?

Volume 上げて歌うよ

It’s hard, even for me, to understand why COS affected me the way they did. Their music would not have been extraordinary by any music critic’s standards. It was a safe, mainstream alternative pop-rock style. I happen to be a fan of that style of music, but there were a ton of other bands that had a similar kind of thing going: Do As Infinity, F.I.R., maybe even Garnet Crow.

夜の月光と共にあなたの窓に届け

None of those groups, though, had Fukiko Nakamura on lead vocals. Her voice encapsulates youth, energy, and joie de vivre more perfectly than any other singer I can think of. From what I’ve read, the girl has a real stage presence (and I believe it!) Even though I don’t understand the songs the first time through (or the second, or the third, for that matter), she sings with such intensity that I’m compelled to translate them.

過去の罪をお許し下さい

Those lyrics have nearly always drawn me in. I’ve often found that the lyrics of the song I’m translating echo sentiments of my life at the time, so that in effect COS songs could make up the soundtrack of my life. Yes, I probably need to listen to more music, but there you go.

私から声を取らないで命を持って行かないで

There’s hope for me yet, though. Fukiko is starting a solo career under the name “LOVE”, and she’s due to release a digital single soon (or has already released it; there seems to be disagreement on a forum about this, probably since none of us are fluent in Japanese)—there’s even a preview of it up on her official site.

Sites like CDBaby.com should seriously not exist. I got there after looking up a singer I heard perform recently; now I’m addicted and just surfing and listening and reading reviews like mad.

How indie music is ♥

I am debating whether to go to HMV and buy Jean Leloup’s CD along with Regina Spektor’s for $30. Something tells me HMV will go lower on Jean Leloup. 😛

It’s snowing!

And I am procrastinating, so here’s a list of the songs that I have on my “Winter J-pop Mix”:

1. Changin’ My Life – Eternal Snow (Piano Swing Mix)
   This is a piano version (no vocals) of a lovely lovely song. This song needs to be sung during karaoke! >D
   

   雪のように　ただ静かに
   降り積もり　つづけてゆく

2. Yuko Sasaki – Pure Snow
   I could never leave this one out. It’s just too tied up in winter, despite being syrupy and angsty at the same time.
   

   Pure Snow　Pure Heart　ふたり出逢った日も　雪が降っていた

3. Ayumi Hamasaki – CAROLS
   I’m not a big fan of Ayu (never followed her too much because of her nasally voice) but I did appreciate the slightly more rockish feel she had going with her newer albums. Not that I’ve actually listened to anything since Memorial Address, mind you.
   

   白い雪が街を染める頃にも

4. Dreams Come True – Winter Song
   The only English song on the CD (and predictably, sung by a J-pop group). It’s kind of odd souding, to be honest.
   

   my love for you is deeper than the deepest snows of winter

5. Ayumi Hamasaki – Powder Snow
   Power ballad kind of thing from Ayu. Also very angsty!
   

   大声で叫んでもいい?
   雪止むまで

6. Gackt – 12月のLove Song
   He needs to make a French version. That is all. I mean, he’s sung in Japanese, Korean, English, and Mandarin… I’d be rather amused to see a Cantonese version, too.
   

   見上げた空に粉雪が舞い降りていた

7. CORE OF SOUL – 粉雪のきもち
   It’s not a CD mix from Catherine without a CORE OF SOUL song, after all. This isn’t one of my favourites from them but does evoke sitting in front of a warm fire at a ski lodge.
   

   しんしんとつもる
   しんしんとつもる
   粉雪

8. Garnet Crow – Crier Girl, Crier Boy ~ice cold sky~
   A laid-back track from this group which has been compared to COS (they’re even more laid back, though…) Also the first song where I can’t find a reference to snow in the lyrics! 🙁
   

   Winter night, ice cold sky
   星空 真冬の花火が
   咲いたスクリーンみたいで

9. I’VE – Last Regrets
   Recommended by Naddie, and fits very well. It is, however, the second song not to refer to snow. 🙁
   

   低い雲
   風を待つ静けさ
   もう 聞こえない

10. Mai Kuraki – Winter*Swear
    A lot more upbeat than most of the songs on this compilation, some light dancy-type pop.
    

    Say you want me
    I want you hold me
    同じ雪の街に

    I’m loving the English grammar in there, too.

11. Mika Nakashima – 雪の華
    Lots of versions of this exist, too–I think I opted for the original. It’s a beautiful ballad.
    

    今年, 最初雪の華を
    2人寄り添って

12. SPEED – White Love (Christmas Standard)
    A hahaha. Very old, I’m sure. More Japanese girl band pop. 😀
    

    真冬の星座から　舞いおちた白い恋
    胸の奥に　降りつもる
    心に染みて　涙になる

13. Changin’ My Life – Eternal Snow
    This song is so good I put it on twice. With vocals this time! My favourite version of this snow is the Route:L version, which is remixed to be a lot faster and features male vocals. Didn’t really fit in the mix, though.
    

    雪のように　ただ静かに
    降り積もり　つづけてゆく

14. Asuca Hayashi – snowdrop
    I haven’t listened to Asuca much lately… Anyway, for this excerpt before, I didn’t know what a だるま was, so I looked it up… and basically fell over when I saw that one of the definitions is “prostitute.” (This snow was featured as NHK’s “Minna no Uta” (Everyone’s Song) and I thought that surely, surely a song that talks about prostitution is not something that parents would want their kids to hear. Oh, and just for good measure, that bear song from Hikki? It’s also a Minna no Uta song.) Predictably, 雪だるま is something much more beneign: it’s a snowman.
    

    小さな雪だるま
    うまく作れたから

15. ZONE – 白い花 (Acoustic Version)
    We could all live in this video right now, given the weather. Assuming that you can wear a dress, sing and play an instrument in the snow.
    

    いつまでも降る雪に
    今はもう迷わない

Some French music for you all. Password is the city I went to in Quebec. 😀 Reviews and explanations to follow.

Okay, first off, a warning: This post is primarily for me to comparison shop and figure out what I’m going to buy when and how I can get it all here before May 9 (if you don’t know the significance of that date, ask me about it.)

So apparently it pays to do research before plunging into the expensive world of Japanese CDs…

HMV Japan has an English site! And not only that, they’re having a 2 CD, 20% off sale!! Which means I can probably get Natural Beauty and 3… although I haven’t factored in shipping costs yet. Hmmm. And a certain French site suggests that there might be some hidden charges, a few months later (customs or something? I didn’t bother looking it up.)

Je ne pense pas refaire de commandes sur ce site. Les frais de port élevés (vous n’avez pas le choix, ils ne proposent que la livraison par FedEx pour l’étranger) et le fait d’avoir à payer des taxes 4 fois sur 5 … m’ont décidé à éviter ce site désormais.

I don’t think I’ll order from this site [HMV] again. The high [shipping costs?] (you don’t have a choice, they only offer FedEx for international delivery) and having to pay taxes 4 times out of 5 … have [convinced me?] to avoid this site from now on.

Of course, there’s also CDJapan, which I haven’t really looked at… but I’ve heard okay things about them. Hmmmm. They don’t seem to have too many of COS’s discs still, though:

My impatience stems from Yesasia, who are still “searching from suppliers” for Over the Time, Time is Over. I hope they find it soon :depressed: So, after obsessively checking the status of my order for a week minus a day, everything is finally ready to be shipped. This is awesome :love: I will have my first actual non-bootleg Japanese CDs, complete with arm-and-a-leg price right after the Easter holiday, hopefully.

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So… the del.icio.us plugin and the new install aren’t working. Well. Grr. Oh well, it’s just motivation for me to switch over to linkrolls at del.icio.us…

I also feel irrationally giddy. I just made my first internet purchase :kawaii: (CORE OF SOUL CDs, natch. Those suckers are expensive. But I don’t work as a retail slave just for the cheap shoes.) The ETA is 16 April, so I’ll be waiting on that for a while… Which just gives me more impetus to order the rest of their discography. Ah, limited versions. How you make us fans go into “impulse buy” mode. I ordered their BEST album, along with Over the Time, Time is Over, which is still a grand album, even if it’s not as good as Natural Beauty (which I’ll probably buy with RAINBOW and 3 before systematically attacking the singles–the ones that are still available, anyway.)

I hate the last week of term. For Science students, it’s really a lull before the storm, which I suppose is nice to have, but also very distracting… especially when the weather’s as nice as it was a few days ago.

And it looks like I won’t be exploring anywhere this summer. *le sigh* Oh well. At least this means that I can take FREN 353 or work in a lab or… something in the summer.

Finally, I would like to thank Neale (you should do lunch with me and organic chem sometime! it does the body good), Sarah, and Bobby for already having changed their links! :star: (It strikes me that as time passes, my blog is read by fewer and fewer of my online friends, and instead is a kind of outpost for communication with my offline friends. Interesting.)