Muzie has a new look!

Remember the sites I blogged about last year about getting your hands on indie music from Japan and Korea? One of my favorite websites mentioned in the post, Muzie, recently had the site redesigned! The site is now easier to understand and navigate, especially for those who don’t much Japanese. The revamp happened not to long ago as I was on the site around a month ago. Maybe it happened a few days ago just in time for the beginning of August.

On a related note: remember vin-PRAD from the last post? She has a few new tracks on her page starting from 2007 to this year, with her latest MP3, Automatic Parachute (オートマティック・パラシュー). Previously, she released tracks in 2003, including a favorite of mine, “Believe in You”. It’s great to see new works of vin-PRAD these days. ^_^

The next Ni-Ongaku Spotlight features Jero (ジェロ), who made a strong impression among young and old Enka fans alike — even overseas. Enka is a style of music in Japan that is similar to country music in the United States. When a Enka singer preforms, he/she wears a kimono. Jero’s choice of clothes is special since he’s not from Japan. He wears everyday streetwear of what you see in popular Hip-Hop music videos. He is also the first non-Japanese–and African American– Enka singer on the scene. He became a Enka singer after a promise to his Grandmother at a young age.

The next song in the Ni-Ongaku Spotlight series are the Heartsdales featuring Soul’d Out with “Candy Pop”. Soul’d Out consists of MC Diggy Mo, the Human Beatbox, Bro Hi, and DJ Shinnosuke. They provided beats for the Japanese version of The Boondocks, and did the ending theme for the anime Yakitate JAPAN! with the song “To All Tha Dreamers”. I don’t know much about the Heartsdales, but after hearing “Candy Pop”, they are on my list of J-Pop artists to check out. This song was also used in a popular Anime Music Video of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, called “Skittles”. Apparently, the AMV gave this song a lot of attention for Haruhi fans, though this was released in 2003.

Photo Credit: maury.mccown

I have been looking for different variations of playlists to use for my iPod mini (I know…I need to update to the latest generation iPod). I find a few decent ones, but as my music collection gets bigger, I need more to accommodate my music needs, like organizing the pillows discography from my Rick Astley tracks. So I bring you my own playlists that everyone can use on their iPods (This may work for non-iPods, but my knowledge is limited to only iPods).

This guide covers many ways to get the best out of their music collection. We are going to use the Smart Playlists feature. Smart Playlists automatically organizes your playlist based on Artist, Ratings, Genre, and such without having to manually editing static playlists! I’ll even show you a couple of playlists that I use on a regular basis that will get you started.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Coconut Boys’ (or CCB for short) is next in Ni-Ongaku Spotlight. For those who are into the current generation of J-Pop will get to check out the J-Pop artists in the 80s! The song “Romance ga Toremanai” was featured in the popular J-Dorama, Densha Otoko. CCB is a Japanese New Wave band with that ruled the Oricon charts in the mid eighties, with other notable songs such as Lucky Chanceをもう一度 and ないものねだりの I Want You. The music video for this song is a little weird (and the translated song title is a bit naughty for Westerners), but the song is sure is catchy!