SOUNDTRACK: TOKYO JIHEN [東京事変]-“The Scarlet Alibi” (永遠の不在証明 Eien no Fuzai Shoumei) (2020).
Ringo Sheena formed Tokyo Jihen (which means Tokyo Incidents) in 2003. They put out five albums and disbanded them in 2012.
Then she surprised everyone by reforming the band in 2020 (with the same people who played with her in 2012). They have released a new EP, News.
永遠の不在証明 which translates more or less as “Eternal Alibi” is the final song on the EP and the only one that Ringo Sheena wrote the music for.
It starts like a kind of James Bond theme (and it is indeed a theme for Detective Conan: The Scarlet Bullet). It’s got a noir piano, but the bass is really fat and fuzzy.
The chorus gets big while the piano stays prominent and the bass does some really fancy fretwork. Then in th emiddle of the song there’s an instrumental break.
Seiji Kameda (亀田 誠治, Kameda Seiji) gets a wicked bass solo followed by a ripping guitar solo from Ukigumo (浮雲, The Drifting Cloud) and a soaring keyboard solo from Ichiyō Izawa (伊澤 一葉, Izawa Ichiyō). Everyone gets a moment to shine except drummer Toshiki Hata (刄田 綴色, Hata Toshiki)–but his playing throughout is stellar.
The song halts at 3 and half minutes, but there’s a jazzy jamming coda (lots of piano and guitar solos) that runs for about a minute as the song concludes.
Although I just discovered the band this week, it’s nice to have them back.
[READ: July 1, 2020] Fuku Fuku 2
This is Konami Kanata’s second and final collection of FukuFuku stories. After all of the Chi stories, it was probably for the best to limit FukuFuku to just two volumes.
It allows the story to go out on a high note.
The framing device of the series is an older woman looking at pictures of her cat FukuFuku when she was a kitten. I was pleased that this book ends the framing device with FukuFuku as an older cat–the flashback is complete.
This volume is less about FukuFuku exploring new things and more about her owner’s expectations of her. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 