__NOTOC__ ''Nice'' (stylised as ''Nice.'') is an album by

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

ese pop group

PUFFY Puffy can refer to: * Puffy, stage name of Sean Combs (born 1969), American rapper and entrepreneur * Puffy, nickname of Mike Bordin (born 1962), American drummer for the rock band Faith No More * Puffy, nickname of Jeff Dubay (born 1968), Minneso ...

, released in 2003 it is their third

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...

n album. The US release featured a few track changes: "Atarashii hibi" and "Tomodachi" were replaced with "Urei", "Teen Titans Theme" and "Planet Tokyo", an English song with the melody of "Akai buranko". The album peaked at No. 20 on the

Japanese Albums Chart , established in 1999, is the holding company at the head of a Japanese corporate group that supplies statistics and information on music and the music industry in Japan and Western music. It started as, which was founded by Sōkō Koike in Nove ...

. The introductory carrier melody of ''"K2G(Kimi Ni Go!)"'' was derived from the introductory interlude of the song "How Was It for You?" by James, from this English Postpunk/Britpop band's third album, ''Gold Mother'' (1990). The cover art for the American version of the album is a homage to

John Lennon John Winston Ono Lennon (born John Winston Lennon; 9 October 19408 December 1980) was an English singer, songwriter, musician and peace activist who achieved worldwide fame as founder, co-songwriter, co-lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist of ...

and

Yoko Ono Yoko Ono ( ; ja, 小野洋子, Ono Yōko, usually spelled in katakana ; born February 18, 1933) is a Japanese multimedia artist, singer, songwriter, and peace activist. Her work also encompasses performance art and filmmaking. Ono grew up i ...

's "

bed-In The Bed-ins for Peace were two week-long nonviolent protests against wars, intended as experimental tests of new ways to promote peace. As the Vietnam War raged in 1969, John Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono held one protest at the Hilton Amsterdam, H ...

" peace protests held in 1969. The songs ''

Planet Tokyo A planet is a large, rounded astronomical body that is neither a star nor its remnant. The best available theory of planet formation is the nebular hypothesis, which posits that an interstellar cloud collapses out of a nebula to create a young ...

'' and ''K2G (Kimi Ni Go!)'' are featured in the ''Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi World Tour Game'' and ''

Teen Titans The Teen Titans are a superhero team appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics, frequently in eponymous monthly series. As the group's name indicates, the members are teenage superheroes, many of whom have acted as sidekicks to DC ...

''.

Track listing

Personnel

Puffy AmiYumi *''

Ami Onuki is a Japanese singer and a member of J-pop group PUFFY, along with Yumi Yoshimura. Career She has co-hosted several Japanese TV shows with the "cool" half of PUFFY, Yumi Yoshimura, including the talk show ''Pa-Pa-Pa-Pa-Puffy'', part of a morni ...

'' -

vocals Singing is the act of creating musical sounds with the voice. A person who sings is called a singer, artist or vocalist (in jazz and/or popular music). Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung with or without ...

, harmony *''

Yumi Yoshimura is a Japanese singer, best known as a member of the pop duo PUFFY, along with Ami Onuki. Early life and career She was born in Neyagawa, Osaka, in 1975. She learned that there was a talent search underway in Tokyo. She successfully tried out a ...

'' - vocals, harmony Additional personnel *''

Andy Sturmer Marvin Andrew Sturmer (born March 11, 1965) is an American musician, singer, songwriter, and composer who co-founded the rock band Jellyfish in 1989. He was the group's lead vocalist, drummer, and primary songwriter. Following their break-up in 1 ...

'' -

drums A drum kit (also called a drum set, trap set, or simply drums) is a collection of drums, cymbals, and other Percussion instrument, auxiliary percussion instruments set up to be played by one person. The player (drummer) typically holds a pair o ...

, guitar, drum programming,

ARP synthesizer ARP Instruments, Inc. was a Lexington, Massachusetts manufacturer of electronic musical instruments, founded by Alan Robert Pearlman in 1969. It created a popular and commercially successful range of synthesizers throughout the 1970s before de ...

Moog synthesizer The Moog synthesizer is a modular synthesizer developed by the American engineer Robert Moog. Moog debuted it in 1964, and Moog's company R. A. Moog Co. (later known as Moog Music) produced numerous models from 1965 to 1981, and again from 20 ...

, guitars,

pipe organ The pipe organ is a musical instrument that produces sound by driving pressurized air (called ''wind'') through the organ pipes selected from a keyboard. Because each pipe produces a single pitch, the pipes are provided in sets called ''ranks ...

mellotron The Mellotron is an electro-mechanical musical instrument developed in Birmingham, England, in 1963. It is played by pressing its keys, each of which pushes a length of magnetic tape against a capstan, which pulls it across a playback head. A ...

percussion A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Exc ...

vibraphone The vibraphone is a percussion instrument in the metallophone family. It consists of tuned metal bars and is typically played by using mallets to strike the bars. A person who plays the vibraphone is called a ''vibraphonist,'' ''vibraharpist,' ...

keyboards Keyboard may refer to: Text input * Keyboard, part of a typewriter * Computer keyboard ** Keyboard layout, the software control of computer keyboards and their mapping ** Keyboard technology, computer keyboard hardware and firmware Music * Musi ...

trumpet The trumpet is a brass instrument commonly used in classical and jazz ensembles. The trumpet group ranges from the piccolo trumpet—with the highest register in the brass family—to the bass trumpet, pitched one octave below the standard ...

marimba The marimba () is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars that are struck by mallets. Below each bar is a resonator pipe that amplifies particular harmonics of its sound. Compared to the xylophone, the timbre ...

bass Bass or Basses may refer to: Fish * Bass (fish), various saltwater and freshwater species Music * Bass (sound), describing low-frequency sound or one of several instruments in the bass range: ** Bass (instrument), including: ** Acoustic bass gui ...

, Prophet synthesizer,

Fender Rhodes The Rhodes piano (also known as the Fender Rhodes piano) is an electric piano invented by Harold Rhodes, which became popular in the 1970s. Like a conventional piano, the Rhodes generates sound with keys and hammers, but instead of strings, th ...

, vocal kazoo, claps,

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...

acoustic guitar An acoustic guitar is a musical instrument in the string family. When a string is plucked its vibration is transmitted from the bridge, resonating throughout the top of the guitar. It is also transmitted to the side and back of the instrument, ...

ARP string ensemble The Solina String Ensemble, also marketed as the ARP String Ensemble, is a fully polyphonic multi-orchestral synthesizer with a 49-key keyboard, produced by Eminent BV (known for their ''Solina'' brand). It was distributed in the United States by ...

, harmony, Vox Continental organ, BVO *''John Fields'' - guitars, bass, piano,

vocoder A vocoder (, a portmanteau of ''voice'' and ''encoder'') is a category of speech coding that analyzes and synthesizes the human voice signal for audio data compression, multiplexing, voice encryption or voice transformation. The vocoder was ...

, Hammond organ B3,

Roland Space Echo The Roland RE-201 Space Echo is an audio effects unit that produces delay and reverb effects. It was produced by Roland Corporation from 1974 to 1990. Roland produced several smaller versions in later years. Background A tape echo device reco ...

chamberlin The Chamberlin is an electro-mechanical keyboard instrument that was a precursor to the Mellotron. It was developed and patented by the American inventor Harry Chamberlin from 1949 to 1956, when the first model was introduced. There are severa ...

Farfisa organ Farfisa (Fabbriche Riunite di Fisarmoniche) is a manufacturer of electronics based in Osimo, Italy, founded in 1946. The company manufactured a series of compact electronic organs in the 1960s and 1970s, including the Compact, FAST, Professiona ...

, strange echoes, *''Wookie Von Crozier'' - crazy drum fill *''Chris James'' - drums,

Wurlitzer The Rudolph Wurlitzer Company, usually referred to as simply Wurlitzer, is an American company started in Cincinnati in 1853 by German immigrant (Franz) Rudolph Wurlitzer. The company initially imported stringed, woodwind and brass instruments ...

, synthesized blips and bleeps,

toy piano The toy piano, also known as the ''kinderklavier'' (child's keyboard), is a small piano-like musical instrument. Most modern toy pianos use round metal rods, as opposed to strings in a regular piano, to produce sound. The U.S. Library of Congress ...

, chamberlain *''Printz Board'' -

flugelhorn The flugelhorn (), also spelled fluegelhorn, flugel horn, or flügelhorn, is a brass instrument that resembles the trumpet and cornet but has a wider, more conical bore. Like trumpets and cornets, most flugelhorns are pitched in B, though some ...

*''Bleu'' -

12 string guitar A twelve-string guitar (or 12-string guitar) is a steel-string guitar with 12 strings in six courses, which produces a thicker, more ringing tone than a standard six-string guitar. Typically, the strings of the lower four courses are tuned in o ...

*''Dean Parks'' -

banjo The banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity to form a resonator. The membrane is typically circular, and usually made of plastic, or occasionally animal skin. Early forms of the instrument were fashi ...

, acoustic guitar *''Elizabeth Lea'' -

trombone The trombone (german: Posaune, Italian, French: ''trombone'') is a musical instrument in the Brass instrument, brass family. As with all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player's vibrating lips cause the Standing wave, air column ...

*''The Horndogs'' - horns *''James Childs'' - guitars *''Phillip Broussard, Jr.'' - harmonies and chorus *''Toishi Toshikazu'' - harmonies and chorus

Production

*Producer: Andy Sturmer *Instrument recording: John Fields *Vocal recording: Thom Russo, John Fields *Mixing: Thom Russo, John Fields *Mastering: Kotetsu Tohru *Mastering assistants: Phillip Broussard, Jr., Ohno, Shiota Osamu, Hatagoshi Hideyasu *Musical instruments technician: Oba Toshimasa *A&R: June Shinozaki *Interpreter: Takamizawa Mai *Art direction: Central 67 *Design: Central 67 *Photography: Uchida Shoji *Hair and make-up: Shuma Tesuro *Styling: Miyajima Takahiro

References

{{Authority control Puffy AmiYumi albums 2003 albums