is the second studio album by

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 ...

ese

rock Rock most often refers to: * Rock (geology), a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals or mineraloids * Rock music, a genre of popular music Rock or Rocks may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * Rock, Caerphilly, a location in Wale ...

band

Asian Kung-Fu Generation (stylized in all caps) is a Japanese alternative rock band formed in Yokohama in 1996. For its entire career, the band has consisted of vocalist Masafumi Gotoh, guitarist Kensuke Kita, bassist Takahiro Yamada (musician), Takahiro Yamada, and dr ...

, released on October 20, 2004.

Release

Upon its debut, the album topped the

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 ...

charts for two weeks straight and produced four singles, with sales reaching over 600,000 copies by its third week. Its success can be partially traced to two tracks that the band produced, " Rewrite" and " Haruka Kanata," were featured in the opening themes of the highly popular anime series ''

Fullmetal Alchemist is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Hiromu Arakawa. It was serialized in Square Enix's shōnen manga, manga anthology magazine ''Gangan Comics#Monthly Shōnen Gangan, Monthly Shōnen Gangan'' between July 2001 and June ...

'' and ''

Naruto ''Naruto'' is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Masashi Kishimoto. It tells the story of Naruto Uzumaki, a young ninja who seeks recognition from his peers and dreams of becoming the Hokage, the leader of his village. T ...

'' respectively. In 2016, the 2016 version of " Re:Re:" was used as the opening for the anime adaptation of '' Erased''. With the LP, AKG also finally succeeded in outreaching to international audiences, a goal they had attempted in earlier English indie releases but were met by little response . The album peaked at number three on the World Chart while "Rewrite" went on to win Best Anime Theme Song at the 2007

American Anime Awards The American Anime Awards were a series of awards designed to recognize excellence in the release of anime and manga in North America. The first (and only) annual American Anime Awards balloting was supervised by Milton Griepp of industry websit ...

. Following its domestic release, fans from around the world petitioned for ''Sol-fa'' to be distributed outside Japan. The support for Ajikan eventually resulted in

Tofu Records was a US record label of Sony Music Entertainment Japan that was launched in 2003 to distribute Japanese Sony artists in the United States until its closure in 2007. Their first signed artist was T.M.Revolution, and they used the anime fandom ...

striking a contract to release ''Sol-fa'' in the United States on October 18, 2005.

Reception

With the LP, AKG fully realized and honed the upbeat tempo but hard-edged and emotionally charged sound first expressed within ''

Hōkai Amplifier is the major-label debut EP by Japanese rock band Asian Kung-Fu Generation, released on November 25, 2002 on Under Flower Records. Background After six years since its inception and three independent releases, Asian Kung-Fu Generation contrib ...

''. The urgency of the songs were complemented by the balanced nature of the overall album, creating their most mature release as of late. Gotō credited this outcome as the result of sharing his songwriting duties more evenly with bandmates than ever before. The album was equally praised for its high production quality, which thoroughly nullified the language barrier that frequently impeded non–

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

speaking audiences. In 2020, Jonathan McNamara of ''

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'' listed ''Sol-fa'' as one of the 10 Japanese albums worthy of inclusion on ''

Rolling Stone ''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. The magazine was first known fo ...

s 2020 list of the

500 greatest albums of all time 5 (five) is a number, numeral and digit. It is the natural number, and cardinal number, following 4 and preceding 6, and is a prime number. Humans, and many other animals, have 5 digits on their limbs. Mathematics 5 is a Fermat pri ...

, billing it as "an album full of tracks as well produced as they are sonically complex."

Track listing

B-sides

Sol-fa 2016

In 2016,

Asian Kung-fu Generation (stylized in all caps) is a Japanese alternative rock band formed in Yokohama in 1996. For its entire career, the band has consisted of vocalist Masafumi Gotoh, guitarist Kensuke Kita, bassist Takahiro Yamada (musician), Takahiro Yamada, and dr ...

re-recorded ''Sol-fa'' and released it on November 30, 2016. "Re:Re:" was released as the lead single on March 16, 2016. The tracklist changed with "Loop & Loop" as the third track and made "Kaigan Dōri" the closer for the album. This was the original track order that the band wanted for the original album, but they decided not to as they thought it would be bad to have all the singles in the first half of the album.

Track listing

Personnel

* Masafumi Gotoh – lead vocals, guitar *

Kensuke Kita (January 24, 1977) is the lead guitarist and backing singer of the Japanese Rock music, rock band Asian Kung-Fu Generation. Kensuke met fellow band members Masafumi Gotō and Takahiro Yamada (musician), Takahiro Yamada while attending a music cl ...

– lead guitar, background vocals * Takahiro Yamada – bass, background vocals * Kiyoshi Ijichi – drums *

– producer *Michihiko Nakayama – executive producer *Rieko Ohkura – production coordination *Fumihito Yokono – drum technician *Kenichi Nakamura – engineering *Toru Takayama – engineering, mixing *Stephen Marcussen – mastering *Stewart Whitmore – editing *Yusuke Nakamura – art direction

Chart positions

Sol-fa

Album

Singles

Sol-fa 2016

Album

Singles

References

External links

*
CDJapan
' *

' at

MusicBrainz MusicBrainz is a MetaBrainz project that aims to create a collaborative music database that is similar to the freedb project. MusicBrainz was founded in response to the restrictions placed on the CDDB, Compact Disc Database (CDDB), a database for ...

*
Sol-fa
' at

Last.fm Last.fm is a music website founded in the United Kingdom in 2002. Utilizing a music recommender system known as "Audioscrobbler", Last.fm creates a detailed profile of each user's musical preferences by recording the details of the tracks they ...

{{Authority control Asian Kung-Fu Generation albums 2004 albums 2000s Japanese-language albums Sony Music albums