A new year has begun! So this is the time for ‘best of’ year lists. I joined my fellow team members at JaME for my favorite Japanese artist and releases, but I thought my last.fm stats from the last 12 months give a better overview.

Most listened artists of 2011:

1. Birdy

I’ve been listening almost non-stop to Birdy since her album came out in November, otherwise she wouldn’t have ended up as the #1 in 12 months time. I’m totally in love with the way she covers all those indie songs, her fragile voice and the beautiful piano arrangements.

2. Mohombi

Ok this is getting a little embarrassing, lol. I had honestly not expected him to rank so high. But yeah, I like his rhythms!

3. A.R. Rahman

Rahman makes the best Bollywood soundtracks! I got interested in his music through the soundtrack of Slumdog Millionaire and also found some of his other soundtrack albums.

4. The Baseballs

After seeing The Baseballs live in concert in October, I fell even more in love with them (their music, of course XD). Looking forward to new music and new gigs from the boys this year!

5. Ed Harcourt

An excellent singer-songwriter. I guess I’ve been listening a lot to his music in the first part of the year before I went to his gig in Utrecht. His 2011 album Lustre is pretty great.

6. Usher

Haaa I seriously can’t believe the artist I listen to sometimes. Uh, I believe I had this obsession with one of his albums earlier this year but right now I don’t care much for Usher.

7. Adele

Following the rest of the world, listened a lot to Adele as well. She’s got a gorgeous voice and I’m addicted to Rolling in the Deep and Set Fire to the Rain.

8. Lil Eddie

Ok ok I admit being into cheesy R&B sometimes!

9. PUSHIM

I’ve barely listened to Japanese music this year… The only one remaining was the Queen of Reggae, whose newest album Milestone I love to pieces.

10. Belle and Sebastian

Indie music like Belle and Sebastian’s music is good for listening to when writing, makes the words flow much easier!

Favorite concerts of 2011:

1. The Baseballs on 5/10 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
2. Stamatis Spanoudakis on 9/9 at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus in Athens, Greece.
3. Ed Harcourt on 4/3 in Utrecht, the Netherlands
4. Matthew and the Atlas on 20/5 in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands
5. LUNA SEA on 22/10 at Saitama, Tokyo, Japan

I got to know the Japanese indie rock band Psysalia Psysalis Psyche through MySpace around 2007. Back then they didn’t have any CDs out yet, so I listened to the songs on their MySpace account all the time. A few years later, my awesome friend got me their first EP :D

Since then, the band has released several singles, EPs and a full album. I had actually not paid a lot of attention to them in the last few years, so I went to check out their recent songs and came across a few interesting music videos.

Titan Arum – White Version

In 2009, the band released their first album “Matin Brun,” which features the really great song “Titan Arum”. There were two editions released for “Titan Arum”‘s music video, a ‘regular’ and an additional white version. The videos feature the Butoh dancer/performer Nobuyoshi Asai who is both incredibly awesome and incredibly creepy at the same time. For me this was my first encounter with Butoh and I must say I am very impressed.

I really love how they managed to make his movements and emotions even more powerful with white on a white background. I just hope the black stuff is cacao-powder, lol.

Titan Arum – Original Version

Below is the original version, in which Nobuyoshi isn’t white, but rather a bronze shade. His dancing is breathtaking in this one as well, I love his liquid movements and how he moves in nearly impossible, uncontrolled yet so controlled ways. Though, without the close ups it’s not as bold as the white version.

Their newest music video, 2.5D has a ‘full version’ music video, which includes eight minutes of uhh, a guy having sex with his guitar (including mosaic). I’m not sure if that’s actually one of the band members, some say it’s Toru… Anyway, if you’re curious, check it out here.

More information on the band can be found on their official homepage or MySpace, and we at JaME have an artist file up with Psysalia Psysalis Psyche biography/discography and an interview from 2007.

Here’s a list of the concerts I’ve been to since 2003 (or at least the ones I can remember 8D). The links lead to live reports I’ve written for JaME, 3voor12 Friesland (Dutch) or my blog.

I’m afraid my list of bands I want to see live is even longer…

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I first got introduced to Japanese music in 2001 and for the first few years of my ‘obsession’, I happily indulged myself in as many as visual kei bands as I could. Later, my taste fortunately improved a bit, heh heh. Since then, many of these bands I used to listen to, have disbanded. I can’t really bring myself to care much to be honest, I haven’t listened to most in ages and stopped following them when I started to dislike their new releases more and more, and drifted away from the visual scene. Though, when D’espairsRay, a band I haven’t listened to in the last three, four years, announced this week that they were going to call it quits and all the messages popping up on Facebook about it, I realized that I might have some memories of them after all.

In 2004 I went to see the first Japanese bands as they slowly started coming over Europe. One of the first ‘bigger’ visual bands to come to Europe, was D’espairsRay in October 2004. My friends and I bought a ticket to the gig and a train ticket to Berlin, Germany. It took ages but it was cheap, so that was good. I remember my parents being a little angsty about it, us 17-year-olds travelling to Berlin for a gig, until then I had only been to Munster, which is really close to the Dutch border.We stayed with a friend of mine whom I had met at Livejournal. Which was rather weird because that friend just locked herself up in her sister’s bedroom while the three of us piled up in her double bed.

The gig was awesome, I remember thinking it had been the best gig ever. Everyone tried to get as close to the stage as possible, and I had a hard time breathing because I was rather small and everyone was pushing forward like crazy. It wasn’t like I cared though, I managed to worm my way to the front anyway, being a crazy fangirl and trying to peek under Zero’s skirt. It was damn hot and I remember being totally happy as Zero sprayed/spit water over us, I was such a gross girl back then, ewww.  Ecstatic,  we all chanted/yelled “I WANNA DIE” along with Hizumi in Garnet. Man, those were the times (when we all fangirled without realizing how dumb we looked)! Afterwards, I came out with my skirt on backwards and had been having the best time of my life.

Two years later, I interviewed them for JaME before their show in Utrecht. The subject of this particular gig came up:

Throughout your whole career, what was the most memorable concert you’ve ever played?

Tsukasa: All of them. (He says ‘all’ in English a few times, to empathize this and is quiet for a moment before he continues) The first time we came to Germany, I don’t remember where that was.
In Berlin. (SERIOUSLY HOW CAN YOU FORGET, IT’S THE CAPITAL OF GERMANY FFS)
Tsukasa: That was very memorable for me because the audience was something we had never experienced before; it was different from Japan. So it was something that left an impact on me.

It was also where my fellow interviewer and I had first met (and later started a company together), which we mentioned because it seemed like we had some history with the band, a story to share. They weren’t impressed.

Another thing that was brought up in the interview:

D’espairsRay is still together after seven years, with exactly the same line-up. How does this make you feel when a lot of other bands around you disband, such as Kagerou who will disband in January?

Zero: Every beginning has an ending and of course it’s sad and regrettable but those are just our personal feelings. The visual scene won’t stop or disappear when disbandings happen; this scene is fascinating and full of surprises.

Well, wise words from Zero there. Let’s see what the four men of D’espairsRay will come up with next.

This was an easy one, I chose Yakushima, an island in the South of Japan. I went here in December 2008 and I really would like to go back some time. I just love the forests, the waterfalls and the sea over there.

Of course, my trip to Japan in 2008. It was a present to myself after I graduated, and I had the opportunity to see a lot of interesting sights and meet a whole lot of super nice and interesting people. It was also a month of living on my own basically and I’m really looking forward to doing such a trip again!

As you might know already, I’m quite into Japanese music ;) After a while I grow a little bored of my old favourites and move on to other artists. So once in a while I get some new stuff, and sometimes it’s good, at other times it’s bad. By chance, I stumbled across the singer-songwriter Naotaro Moriyama and I really like his music. I found some songs on YouTube, and this one, Natsu no Owari (the end of summer) is my favourite song of his so far.

Another song of his that I really like and actually got me interested in his music, is Namida (tears). I also reviewed it for JaME, you can find it here. Unfortunately the other two songs on the single aren’t too great, but Namida is simply fantastic.

(a better version, sound quality wise can be found here. Embedding is disabled unfortunately.)

I couldn’t really choose… But anyway, this was in Yakushima, Japan. I like the way the sunlight filters through the leaves.

I still had a few days left on my three-week JR pass and I wanted to make good use of it, so I wondered where to go. A friend of mine suggested I would check out some museums of artists I liked during my trip, and I thought it would be nice to visit the museum dedicated to Hokusai.

The museum ended up being in Obuse, a town about 250 kilometers from Tokyo which seemed like a good destination. So, I got onto the shinkansen to Nagano, and then on the local train from there. I had only been to the south/west of Japan before so it was nice to go up north for a change. At some point I dozed off, and when I opened my eyes again when we stopped at a station, we were surrounded by snow!

Hokusai Katsushika is known for his woodblock print series “Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji”, amongst them the “Great Wave of Kanagawa”. The museum was very interesting and I particularly enjoyed seeing the very colorful Waterfall series and a few prints from the 36 Mount Fuji views.

After a few more days in Nagoya in which I visited Osaka and Takarazuka, I went back to Tokyo. There isn’t that much tourist-y stuff to do in Tokyo (at least not a lot that I haven’t seen yet and are interested in), so this mostly consisted of concerts, (CD) shopping, parties and other fun stuff. I did go back to the Senso-ji temple in Asakusa, which was somewhat near my hostel.

Senso-ji was the same as two years before, but the first time there hadn’t been so much stands around there. I of course went to the temple again where I got my future predicted by shaking the box of labelled sticks and read the corresponding note from one of the drawers. It predicted my future would be VERY dark, but the sick person would get better… Right.