Tokyo's Coolest Sound

On September 15, 2012, was the release party for frenesi's album "gendai". It was held at Shibuya WWW, one of my favorite venues lately (it used to be a movie theater), and like last time I saw her last year there was a funny school theme where frenesi is the principal and all her musicians and the audience are students. :) The show was also paced with school chimes, which were actually useful to hint people at the bar that the show was about to continue.

The show's first set started with just frenesi and band member Obata Yasuhisa (PC and keyboards), the first songs had a backtrack on which frenesi added vocals and phrases played on her red shoulder-worn keyboard (Yamaha SHS-10).

Last June singer hitomitoi's new album "City Dive" was released on Billboard Japan Records. The album was produced by Cunimondo Takiguchi of city pops unit Ryūsenkei, with some tracks by Dorian and Kashif (aka Stringsburn). As soon as I had checked the video clip and album sampler on YouTube before the release, I knew this was going to be my summer album, and I was right! Plus, being released on Billboard's label, I assumed that a show at Billboard's Tokyo venue would be coming, and I was definitely going to that show.

Sunday September 2 was the day! hitomitoi played two shows in the same day, as goes Billboard's way. I went to the first starting at 16:30. Luckily a friend is a fan of hers, so I had company for my first time at this impressive jazz club located in Tokyo Midtown, Roppongi. We had 1st floor reservations and got there early, we got a center table 2nd row from the stage!

The show had hitomitoi backed by Ryūsenkei. That would be pretty much the actual album right on stage. However the album was mostly programmed by Cunimondo, with some guitar and a few other instruments added here and there, so it must have been a big deal to recreate the songs with a full band. The back band had a keyboardist (Moog, Nord and Rhodes), bass, drums, percussion, sax/flute, guitar, plus Cunimondo on a shoulder-strapped microKORG.