"Inori" (, ) is a song by Japanese band

Sakanaction are a Japanese rock band from Sapporo, Hokkaido. Their music is a fusion of alternative rock, electronic, pop, and new wave styles. The band consists of five members: Ichiro Yamaguchi, Motoharu Iwadera, Ami Kusakari, Emi Okazaki, and Keiichi ...

. An instrumental electronic track incorporating non-lexical vocables, "Inori" was a collaboration with the Japanese electronic musician

Aoki Takamasa (sometimes stylized as AOKI takamasa) (born 1976), is a Japanese people, Japanese electronic musician and producer. Biography Aoki Takamasa was born in Osaka in 1976. He began experimenting as a musician in 1993 when he was 17, when he rec ...

. The song originally appeared as the first song on the band's sixth studio album ''

'', released on March 13, 2013. Three months later, "Inori" was packaged with another instrumental song from ''Sakanaction'', "Structure", as the ''Inori EP'', a

vinyl record A phonograph record (also known as a gramophone record, especially in British English) or a vinyl record (for later varieties only) is an analog signal, analog sound Recording medium, storage medium in the form of a flat disc with an inscribed, ...

-exclusive release. The record debuted at number 36 on

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 ...

's weekly singles chart.

Background and development

The band were contacted by the promotions team of Mode Gakuen to write a commercial song for their 2012 advertisements in October 2011, when the band had just begun performing their Sakanaquarium 2011 tour for ''Documentaly''. This was the first time the band had been asked to write a piece of music specifically for a purpose (though songs on ''Documentaly'' had been used for commercial tie-ups, these had been organized after the songs had been completed). The band recorded the song after the tour finished, and planned to release it as a single at the beginning of 2012. However, while this was happening, the band were contacted to write a theme song for the

Tsuyoshi Kusanagi is a Japanese actor, singer, television host, and a former member of SMAP, one of the best-selling boy bands in Asia. Early life Kusanagi grew up in Kasukabe, Saitama, Japan. Career Music In 1987, at age 13, Kusanagi auditioned to enter John ...

drama ''37-sai de Isha ni Natta Boku: Kenshui Junjō Monogatari'', which disrupted their plans for the single. The theme song, "Boku to Hana", was released in May 2012, while the Mode Gakuen commercial " Yoru no Odoriko" was released in August 2012. The band began recording their next studio album, ''Sakanaction'', in September 2012. Instead of creating and recording songs in a recording studio, the band recorded songs at Yamaguchi's apartment for four months, in order to create music that they truly wanted to produce, in a comfortable environment away from the pressures of a recording studio. The first song they created in these sessions was "

Music Music is the arrangement of sound to create some combination of Musical form, form, harmony, melody, rhythm, or otherwise Musical expression, expressive content. Music is generally agreed to be a cultural universal that is present in all hum ...

", which their management organized to be used as the theme song for the

Fuji Television JOCX-DTV (channel 8), branded as or , is a Japanese television station that serves the Kantō region as the flagship (broadcasting), flagship station of the Fuji News Network (FNN) and the Fuji Network System (FNS). The station is owned-and- ...

drama ''Dinner'', even though Yamaguchi had not finished the song's lyrics. Originally the band intended for "Music" to be the leading promotional track for ''Sakanaction'' and not released as a physical single before it was chosen as a drama theme song. "Music" was released as a single on January 23, 2013, as a special price-reduced single, featuring only a single B-side. On February 16, the band finished the recording sessions for ''Sakanaction''. The band released ''Sakanaction'' on March 13. It reached number one on

's albums chart with 83,000 copies sold, becoming their most commercially successful release in their career. After the album's release, the band held their annual tour, Sakanaquarium 2013. This tour featured 17 dates performed from March to June, including two dates at the

Makuhari Messe is a convention center in Chiba (city), Chiba City, Chiba Prefecture, Japan, located just outside of Tokyo. Designed by Fumihiko Maki, it is accessible by Transportation in Greater Tokyo#Railway and subway, Tokyo's commuter rail system. ''Makuha ...

and one at the

Osaka-jō Hall is a multi-purpose arena located in the Kyōbashi, Osaka, Kyōbashi area of Osaka, Japan. The hall opened in 1983 and can seat up to 16,000 people. Built on a site area of , part of its form uses stone walls, modeled after those of Osaka Castle ...

. The tour final was held on June 15 at the Wall in

Taipei , nickname = The City of Azaleas , image_map = , map_caption = , pushpin_map = Taiwan#Asia#Pacific Ocean#Earth , coordinates = , subdivision_type = Country ...

; their first solo concert held outside of Japan.

Writing and inspiration

"Inori" was chosen to be the first song on ''Sakanaction'' as it would surprise listeners who had only heard the three singles and " Aoi". They saw "Inori", along with the band's song "Structure" as being the complete opposite to what they saw as the outward-facing songs meant for a wide audience that they had used for the singles. The band separated ''Sakanaction'' songs into two categories: outward-facing and inner-facing, with the inner-facing songs expressing the type of music that Sakanaction wanted to do personally. They saw "Inori" was the most inner-facing song on the album. "Inori" was a song created by Sakanaction working together with electronic musician Aoki Takamasa, who worked with the band on the arrangement and mixing. Previously, the band's songs followed a convention that every song had to be able to be performed with only a guitar. "Inori" was their first song that went against this convention, and was composed by Yamaguchi without a guitar. The band wanted "Inori" to be a song without lyrics, in order for listeners to focus on the music itself, without imagery created by the lyrics affecting their impressions of the song. The band released the extended play under the name sakanaction (ibid.) as opposed to their name in Japanese, , which they used for their general releases. This was related to discussions the band had three years prior, where they wanted to use their name in

katakana is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji). The word ''katakana'' means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived fr ...

for their general musical releases and "sakanaction" for instrumental songs.

Composition

"Inori" begins with mixed vocal chorus, then develops into a vocal-less minimalist techno song.

Promotion and release

The band decided on two leading promotional songs for ''Sakanaction'': "Aoi" and "Inori", the two songs they saw as being the most outward-facing and inner-facing songs on the album. Of the two, they chose "Aoi" to be the song sent to radio stations, as they felt "Inori" would not be effectively surprising if people had already heard it on the radio. Instead, the band chose to create a music video for "Inori". During the production stage of ''Sakanaction'', they had discussed releasing the album as an

LP record The LP (from long playing or long play) is an Analog recording, analog sound storage medium, specifically a phonograph record format characterized by: a speed of revolutions per minute, rpm; a 12- or 10-inch (30- or 25-cm) diameter; use ...

, but scrapped plans when they realized that the sound quality would degrade for the release. Instead, the band decided to release an abbreviated version of the album with a single song on each side, the ''Inori EP''; with "Inori" as the release's A-side, and "Structure" as its B-side. ''Inori EP'' was the band's first vinyl record release, prior to their albums being re-released on vinyl later in 2015. The ''Inori EP'' was released on June 26, 2013; three months after its parent album ''Sakanaction''. The band created extended versions of "Inori" and "Structure" with a stronger

club music Electronic dance music (EDM), also referred to as dance music or club music, is a broad range of percussive electronic music genres originally made for nightclubs, raves, and festivals. It is generally produced for playback by DJs who create s ...

sound, in order for the release to appeal to DJs. The remixes were created in collaboration with Aoki Takamasa, who had worked with the band on the album versions of both "Inori" and "Structure", arranging and mixing the compositions. The release's artwork was produced by Kamikene of the design team Hatos. It features

streamline Streamline may refer to: Business * Streamline Air, American regional airline * Adobe Streamline, a discontinued line tracing program made by Adobe Systems * Streamline Cars, the company responsible for making the Burney car Engineering ...

s forming from a north and south pole, which meet in the middle at a line of English text describing the release information. On June 22, the band organized a special streaming program on

Ustream IBM Watson Media (formerly Ustream and IBM Cloud Video) is an American virtual events platform company which is a division of IBM. Prior to the IBM acquisition, it had more than 180 employees across San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Budapest office ...

to promote the release. In the early hours on June 23 in Japan,

's satellite channel BS Fuji broadcast a documentary about the band's release of ''Sakanaction'', entitled ''Mezamashi TV presents Sakanaction Micchaku Document: Sakanaction Hyōriittai''. The band performed "Inori" as a part of their set-list for their Sakanaquarium 2013 tour. A performance of the band's concert at the

on May 19, 2013 was released as a video album, featuring a performance of "Inori".

Music video

On June 21, a music video directed by Yasuyuki Yamaguchi for "Inori (Extended Mix)" was released to

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

. Yamaguchi had previously worked with Sakanaction twice before on the band's music videos, for the songs "Document" and "Boku to Hana". The

monochrome A monochrome or monochromatic image, object or palette is composed of one color (or values of one color). Images using only shades of grey are called grayscale (typically digital) or black-and-white (typically analog). In physics, mon ...

video was recorded at the band's release party for their album ''Sakanaction'', held at Liquidroom Ebisu in Tokyo on March 8, 2013. The video shows Sakanaction wearing sunglasses on a stage and standing behind

Apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...

notebook computers, as fans in the crowd dance to the music. Interspersed with this footage are digital affects and images of streamlines.

Reception

Critical reception

Kazuki Namba of ''Rolling Stone Japan'' was impressed with "Inori", describing it as a song that progresses by the power of only its choir-like vocal chorus and beat. He was impressed by the song's new approach, to the degree that he was disappointed when the rest of ''Sakanaction'' did not show similar signs of growth. ''CDJournal'' reviewers felt that the mixed gender vocal chorus closely resembled the band's song "Night Fishing Is Good" (2007), and called the song's arrangement "surprising". Mayumi Tsuchiya of ''Bounce'' described the song as a "cool

tech house Tech house is a subgenre of house music that combines stylistic features of techno with house. The term ''tech house'' developed as a shorthand record store name for a category of electronic dance music that combined musical aspects of techno, ...

" song, feeling its place as the first song was symbolic for the album's strong dance music mentality.

Commercial reception

The ''Inori EP'' debuted at number 36 on

's singles chart, selling 2,000 copies. The release spent a total of two weeks in the chart's top 200 singles, charting at number 131 the following week, with an additional 400 copies sold. The song did not receive enough combined airplay and physical sales to chart on the ''

Billboard A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertis ...

Japan Hot 100 The ''Billboard Japan'' Hot 100 is a record chart in Japan for songs. It has been compiled by ''Billboard Japan'' and Hanshin Contents Link since February 2008. The chart is updated every Wednesday at Billboard-japan.com ( JST) and every Thursday ...

, however reached an identical peak of number 31 on the Hot Single Sales sub-chart, which exclusively tallies physical sales data of singles.

Track listing

Personnel

Personnel details were sourced from ''Sakanactions liner notes booklet. Music video personnel details were sourced from Victor Entertainment's official YouTube channel. Sakanaction *All members – co-arrangement, production, composition *Keiichi Ejima – drums *Motoharu Iwadera – guitar *Ami Kusakari – bass guitar *Emi Okazaki – keyboards *Ichiro Yamaguchi – vocals, guitar, lyrics Personnel and imagery *

– co-arrangement *Rashad Becker – mastering, vinyl cutting *Minoru Iwabuchi – executive producer *Kamikene – art direction, design *Kensuke Maeda – assistant engineer *Tatsuya Nomura – executive producer (Hip Land Music Corporation) *Tadashi Owaki – assistant engineer *Yoriko Sugimoto – A&R director *Satoshi Tajima – executive producer *Ayaka Toki – assistant engineer *Naoki Toyoshima – executive producer *Masashi Uramoto – mixing, recording *Satoshi Yamagami – A&R promoter *Naoki Yokota – executive producer Music video *Kazuhiro Hirayama – lighting *Yoshinori Ishiguro – smoke *Hayato Kasahara – camera *Hisashi "Momo" Kitazawa – camera *Toshinomu Nagasawa – camera *Miki Nakamura – camera *Hideyuki Nomura – producer *OMB – production *Takaya Saito – camera *Masatoshi Takizawa – camera *Yasuyuki Yamaguchi – director

Chart rankings

All figures pertain to the ''Inori EP'' vinyl record release.

Sales

Release history

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Inori Sakanaction song 2013 songs Sakanaction songs Songs written by Ichiro Yamaguchi Techno instrumentals