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Soft Ballet
Soft Ballet was a Japanese electronic group formed in 1987. The group consisted of three members, Maki Fujii, Ken Morioka, and Ryoichi Endo, though they employed extra support members for live shows. While Soft Ballet weren't necessarily chart toppers, they had a strong cult following and were considered pioneers of modern electronic music in Japan in the 1990s. History Formation and Alfa Records Years Soft Ballet was formed in 1987 as a side-project when Ken Morioka and Ryoichi Endo (who had already been working together in a band called Volaju) joined with Maki Fujii. That year, the trio released their first single ''Tokio Bang!'', which was released in very limited quantities, making it a sought after collector's item today. Ken Morioka at the time was also already in the band Granny Takes a Trip, which split in 1988. Afterwards, Soft Ballet became a full-fledged band. Their combination of light synthpop with hard European-style EBM attracted great attention for being a uniq ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Japan
Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea in the south. The Japanese archipelago consists of four major islands—Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu—and List of islands of Japan, thousands of smaller islands, covering . Japan has a population of over 123 million as of 2025, making it the List of countries and dependencies by population, eleventh-most populous country. The capital of Japan and List of cities in Japan, its largest city is Tokyo; the Greater Tokyo Area is the List of largest cities, largest metropolitan area in the world, with more than 37 million inhabitants as of 2024. Japan is divided into 47 Prefectures of Japan, administrative prefectures and List of regions of Japan, eight traditional regions. About three-quarters of Geography of Japan, the countr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oricon
, established in 1999, is the holding company at the head of a Japanese corporate group that supplies statistics Statistics (from German language, German: ', "description of a State (polity), state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data. In applying statistics to a s ... and information on music and the music industry in Japan and Western music. It started as , which was founded by Sōkō Koike in November 1967 and became known for its music charts. Oricon Inc. was originally set up as a subsidiary of Original Confidence and took over the latter's Oricon record charts in April 2002. The charts are compiled from data drawn from some 39,700 retail outlets () and provide sales rankings of music CDs, DVDs, electronic games, and other entertainment products based on weekly tabulations. Results are announced every Tuesday and published in ''Oricon Style'' by subsidiary Oricon ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Japanese Rock
, sometimes abbreviated to , is rock music from Japan. Influenced by American and British rock of the 1960s, the first rock bands in Japan performed what is called group sounds, with lyrics almost exclusively in English. Folk rock band Happy End in the early 1970s are credited as the first to sing rock music in the Japanese language. Punk rock bands Boøwy and The Blue Hearts and hard rock/ heavy metal groups X Japan and B'z led Japanese rock in the late 1980s and early 1990s by achieving major mainstream success. Rock bands such as B'z and Mr. Children are among the best selling music acts in Japan. Rock festivals like the Fuji Rock Festival were introduced in the late 90s with attendances reaching a peak of 200,000 people per festival making it the largest outdoor music event in the country. History 1960s: Western music adaptation Rockabilly had a brief surge in popularity in Japan during the late 1950s. Suppressed by authorities, elements of it nevertheless managed t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Luna Sea
Luna Sea (stylized as LUNA SEA) is a Japanese Rock music, rock band formed in Kanagawa Prefecture in 1986. Due to the use of makeup and costumes early in their career and their widespread popularity, they are considered one of the most successful and influential bands in the visual kei movement. Throughout the mid-1990s they used significantly less makeup, and after a one-year break in 1997, came back with a more mainstream alternative rock style and toned down their on-stage attire. They disbanded in 2000. In 2003, HMV ranked Luna Sea at number 90 on their list of the 100 most important Japanese pop acts. Initially founded in 1986, by bassist J (musician), J and rhythm guitarist Inoran while in high school, the band was originally called Lunacy. In 1989 they recruited lead guitarist Sugizo, drummer Shinya Yamada, Shinya and vocalist Ryuichi Kawamura, Ryuichi, a lineup that has remained the same. They released a few demo tapes prior to renaming themselves Luna Sea and releasing ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Schaft
Schaft is a Japanese musical side project whose main members are Maki Fujii (of minus(ー), formerly of Soft Ballet) and Hisashi Imai (of Buck-Tick). Schaft can be thought of as being a supergroup in that for the release of their debut album Switchblade Maki and Imai formed the core of the group and a rotating roster of collaborators, who are well known within their genres, were brought in to work on various songs. Raymond Watts of PIG was Schaft's most recurring collaborator, having contributed to half the songs on their debut album and toured with the band. After a long hiatus, Schaft resumed activities in 2015. History Maki and Imai originally formed Schaft in 1991 to record and release the song "Nicht-Titel" (German for "Non-Title") on the album ''Dance 2 Noise 001'', a compilation album of various Japanese electronic and industrial acts. A live concert event was held on December 16 of the same year for the purpose of promoting the ''Dance 2 Noise 001'' compilation and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Julianne Regan
Julianne Regan (born 30 June 1962) is an English/Irish singer, songwriter, and musician. She achieved success in the late 1980s and early 1990s having formed the band All About Eve. Her major role in the band was as lead singer and songwriter. AllMusic describes Regan as "certainly one of the more talented singers of the late eighties British goth rock scene". Early life (1962–1981) At the age of 15, Julianne Regan was given a Woolworths electric guitar by a cousin and taught herself to play. From Zig Zag to The Swarm (1982–1984) Regan moved to London aged 19 and found work as a journalist for music magazine ZigZag, while studying at the London College of Fashion. In her capacity as a journalist, she interviewed Gene Loves Jezebel and subsequently joined that band on bass guitar. Soon after, apparently unhappy with the tension between the group's twin frontmen, she left to make music with friend and former Xmal Deutschland drummer Manuela Zwingmann, while working in a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Meat Beat Manifesto
Meat Beat Manifesto, often shortened as Meat Beat, Manifesto or MBM, is an electronic music group originally consisting of Jack Dangers and Jonny Stephens that was formed in 1987 in Swindon, United Kingdom. The band, fronted by Dangers (the only permanent member), has proven versatile over the years, experimenting with techno, breakbeat, Industrial music, industrial, Dub music, dub and jazz fusion while touring the world and influencing major acts such as Nine Inch Nails, the Chemical Brothers and the Prodigy. Some of the band's earlier work has been credited with influencing the rise of the trip hop, big beat, and drum and bass genres. History Early years Dangers and Stephens had formed the English pop group Perennial Divide in 1986 with Paul Freeguard and released the first few Meat Beat Manifesto singles as a side project. The first release under the Meat Beat name was 1987's ''Suck Hard'' EP on Sweat Box Records. They left Perennial Divide in 1988 to record a full Meat Beat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Raymond Watts
Raymond is a male given name of Germanic origin. It was borrowed into English from French (older French spellings were Reimund and Raimund, whereas the modern English and French spellings are identical). It originated as the Germanic ᚱᚨᚷᛁᚾᛗᚢᚾᛞ (''Raginmund'') or ᚱᛖᚷᛁᚾᛗᚢᚾᛞ (''Reginmund''). ''Ragin'' ( Gothic) and ''regin'' (Old German) meant "counsel". The Old High German ''mund'' originally meant "hand", but came to mean "protection". This etymology suggests that the name originated in the Early Middle Ages, possibly from Latin. Alternatively, the name can also be derived from Germanic Hraidmund, the first element being ''Hraid'', possibly meaning "fame" (compare ''Hrod'', found in names such as Robert, Roderick, Rudolph, Roland, Rodney and Roger) and ''mund'' meaning "protector". Despite the German and French origins of the English name, some of its early uses in English documents appear in Latinized form. As a surname, its first recorded ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Buck-Tick
Buck-Tick (stylized as BUCK-TICK) is a Japanese rock band formed in Fujioka, Gunma in 1983. The classic lineup of lead vocalist Atsushi Sakurai, lead guitarist Hisashi Imai, rhythm guitarist Hidehiko Hoshino, bassist Yutaka Higuchi and drummer Toll Yagami lasted from 1985 until 2023. Following Sakurai's death that year, Imai and Hoshino began sharing lead vocal duties. The band has experimented with many different genres of music throughout their four decade career, including punk rock, gothic rock and industrial rock. Buck-Tick are commonly credited as one of the main founders of the visual kei movement. The band has released twenty-four studio albums and forty-four singles as of 2024, nearly all reaching the top ten and twenty positions on the Japanese Oricon charts. Buck-Tick released both their debut independent and major studio albums in 1987, and achieved breakthrough success the following year with the album '' Seventh Heaven'' (#3) and the single " Just One More K ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hisashi Imai
is a Japanese musician, singer and songwriter. He is best known as the lead guitarist of the rock band Buck-Tick since 1983. Following the October 2023 death of vocalist Atsushi Sakurai, Imai began sharing lead vocal duties in the band with fellow guitarist Hidehiko Hoshino. He has also performed in side-projects such as the duo Schaft with Soft Ballet member Maki Fujii, the supergroup Schwein, and the rock trio Lucy. Imai is known for his visual aesthetics, and Buck-Tick are commonly credited as one of the founders of the visual kei movement. Early life When Imai was in elementary school, his uncle gave him an acoustic guitar and tried to teach him how to play it. Despite being right-handed, Imai said it just felt natural for him to play the instrument left-handed. Regardless, he was not interested in guitar at the time and ended up ignoring it. But when he decided to start a band in high school, he was conscious that choosing the wrong handedness would cause problems, and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cabaret Voltaire (band)
Cabaret Voltaire are an English music group formed in Sheffield in 1973 and initially composed of Stephen Mallinder, Richard H. Kirk, and Chris Watson (musician), Chris Watson. Named for Cabaret Voltaire (Zürich), the Zürich nightclub that fostered the early Dada movement, the band are often characterized as among the most innovative and influential Electronic music, electronic acts of their era. The band's early work consisted of experimentation with Do it yourself, DIY electronics and tape recorders, as well as Dada-influenced performance art, helping to pioneer industrial music in the mid-1970s. Finding an audience during the post-punk era, they gradually incorporated more conventional elements of synthpop, Dance music, dance, house music, house and funk music, funk styles. After Watson's departure in 1981, the group continued as a two-piece until disbanding in 1994. Kirk revived the name as a solo project from 2009 until his death in 2021. Watson and Mallinder announced o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
LFO (British Band)
LFO was a British electronic music act formed in 1988 consisting of Mark Bell and Gez Varley. They released their acclaimed debut LP ''Frequencies'' in 1991 on Sheffield label Warp. After Varley left the group in 1996, Bell continued solo to release '' Advance'' (1996) and '' Sheath'' (2003). Bell died in October 2014, ending the project. LFO are considered to be pioneers of the bass-heavy "bleep techno" style. AllMusic called them "one of British techno's most important, agenda-setting groups." History Early years Varley and Bell met while studying at Leeds and named their group after the initialism for the common synthesizer function low-frequency oscillation. They gave their first track, the "LFO", to Nightmares on Wax. The popularity of the demo in clubs led to the track being released by the Sheffield-based Warp label in 1990, and it was a Top 20 hit in the U.K., reaching number 12 in the singles charts in July. DJ Martin (Martin Williams) is credited as a cowriter ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
