After 3 years of silence (other than doing some small gigs), Yuki and his band Rayflower will be releasing their second mini-album titled Narcissus on 2014.02.19. The album will include 6 songs, with the one of them called “Libra”. It will cost 2,000 yen (around $20 US). Stay tuned for updates.
And I can tell that they are quite happy with the announcement too. Watch them announce the album with beaming faces here.
The previously reported event Cosmos Blackness organized by Sakura of Rayflower just finished.
Special guests included Rayflower’s Miyako among others.
Setlist:
Lion Heads:
1. Show for them, Sally’s mind
2. Zepet
3. Hitonigiri no Hana
4. Squall
5. Fujyuu Fujizai
6. Boku to Watashi to Jishin
7. Sora Kimi Umi Chi
Session with Kaoru:
1. Kami to Hitsuji to Gasoline Stand
2. Rosario
3. Kumo wo Tsukamu You na Hanashi
4. Penthouse
CIRCUIT9:
1. Usu Akari de Mitsume Ai
2. U Turn
3. Sanctuary
4. Ware ni Buki Ari
5. Go to the Emotion
6. miracle
Session with IKUO & YUKI (Rayflower):
1. YYZ (Rush)
2. The Spirit of Radio (Rush)
3. Led Boots (Jeff Beck)
4. Scatterbrain (Jeff Beck)
5. Rosemary (original Yuki composition)
6. 21st Century Schizoid Man (King Crimson)
Session with RYO&DEN (BY-SEX):
1. Phase Phase
2. breeze
3. Memai
4. Risoukyou
5. Need Your Love
6. Blackie Angel
7. No
8. Strawberry Shampoo
The Rayflower session was mostly comprised of covers of Western bands but as you can see, they also played an original composition by Yuki entitled “Rosemary“. I have the audio here that I managed to capture myself, missing just the brief piano intro.
Also, do watch their awesome cover of King Crimson‘s “21st Century Schizoid Man“, including a bit of on-stage rehearsal before actually kicking into the song. This was definitely the highlight of the whole show for me. I’m telling you, Yuki’s getting pretty damned good.
Rayflower’s drummer, Sakura, will hold a live event, titled “Cosmos Blackness” at Koenji ShowBoat on November 20th, which will be broadcast live via USTREAM. He himself will host the show, and fellow Rayflower members Ikuo and Yuki (yes, our snow prince Yuki of Λucifer) will be performing with him on bass and guitar respectively. Other members are Kaoru (vocal), Den (another bassist), and Ryo (guitar). I’ve got no clue at all about Kaoru, Den, & Ryo, but I believe they are all also experienced musicians.
Sakura’s other band, Lion Heads (in which he plays the guitar) will also perform at the event, along with CIRCUIT9.
For all concert-goers, you can grab a pillow and cry on it since the tickets are SOLD OUT, but as mentioned above, you can stream it live on USTREAM’s official MySpace, NEXUS TV, and SYNC MUSIC JAPAN. Streaming times are as follows:
18:30 pm (Tokyo)
13:30 pm (Moscow)
11:30 am (Paris)
10:30 am （London）
5:30 am （New York）
2:30 am （Los Angeles)
In another Rayflower related news, vocalist Takayuki Tazawa will reunite with his old band, WAIVE, in a revival tour called CASE OF Waive. The tour has already begun with the show in Saitama and Yokohama were held last Friday and Saturday, and there will be three remaining shows at Nagoya (23rd November), Ebisu (24th November), Osaka (26th November), and followed by the grand final at Shibuya-AX at 29th November.
Keiichi Miyako (39), the keyboardist of rock bands SOPHIA and Rayflower, officially resumed activities with a public appearance on Sunday. Miyako has been on break since April after he announced that he needed to undergo medical treatment for lymphoma.
The event on Sunday was a talk session to celebrate the release of Rayflower’s mini-album “Flower Language” (released on September 15). Miyako thanked his fans, saying that their words encouraged him while he has been fighting the lymphoma. However, he lightheartedly acknowledged that he was wearing a hat to completely cover his head, as the treatment has resulted in hair loss.
Fortunately, Miyako mentioned that the lymphoma has progressed slowly, so with the treatment, he has recovered to the point that the illness does not hinder his daily life. He also mentioned that his wife – singer Ruriko Kubo (41) – and their two children are feeling relieved now. He finished receiving treatment in September, so he returned to Osaka on October 3 to resume his music activities. He is expected to continue visiting the hospital two to three times a month for the next two years in order to prevent a relapse.
Rayflower, Yuki’s new band, is releasing their first mini album today, it’s called “Flower Language”. The album is released in regular and limited editions (as usual, the regular one has only a CD and the limited one has a bonus DVD). Here’s the tracklist:
1. Runaway Brain
2. Inishie
3. Shinjitsu no Mori no Naka de
4. Social Network Generation
5. Uragiri no Nai Sekai Made
6. Hanataba -From Rose With Love-
The DVD from the limited edtion contains (only…) one video, which is the PV of Uragiri no Nai Sekai Made.
And if you were questioning about what happened to their official website (yeah, it has been down for weeks), actually they are moved into a new website, which in my opinion is cooler than the old one.
Also, just as a reminder that Makoto’s new band, TRICK is also debuting today. Like it was reported before, they are participating in SEIKIMA-II tribute album, which is out today. But the strange thing is, the full line-up of the band is yet to be revealed, with SHUSE, the bassist of Acid Black Cherry is the only other member revealed other than Makoto himself. I think we really got to have the CD first to discover the full line-up.
And for all you fanboys/girls, my friend who lives in Thailand went to J-Channel Office last week to meet Makoto in person!! Yes, he was there to promote their upcoming (and sadly, the last) show. She took a video, which was very short but I think kinda good enough. Here’s a picture signed by him for her:Oh man… if I was her, I’d go and rape him XD
The Thai show is just 10 days away, maybe there are still tickets available, so try your best to be there!!
The Minori Chihara SUMMER CAMP 2 rehearsals are nearing their end!
This week at last, the 7th and 8th are drawing near～.
It’s the first time I’m visiting the Kawaguchiko Stellar Theater～.
Seems like you can see Mt. Fuji from there☆
I’m worried about the weather. Especially since it’s so close to the mountain…
We can play through all the songs perfectly now!
That’s a bit of a relief…
I think I’ll thoroughly enjoy this two-day festival♪
A story from a while back when we went to Okinawa to film a PV.
As we were searching for a Seven Bank which is where I always withdraw money, we found that there are no 7-Elevens in Okinawa!
Did you know that?
There were just loads of Lawsons and Famimas.
Be careful about that, everyone!
You can view Minori Chihara’s PV for “Freedom Dreamer” on YouTube, so definitely check it out.
I’m the second guy. (Note: that’s real helpful, Atsuro!)
It placed 9th on the Oricon chart. Congratulations～!
That’s pretty awesome as it it didn’t even have a tie-in with anything☆
I was let to take part in the guitar recordings, too, so be sure to listen to the CD as well!
With that, I’m off to rehearsal today, too♪
Here’s said PV featuring Atsuro. He’s the second guy. *chuckle* I assume he’ll also play in any and all TV performances of the song. For now, you can see him in the Music Japan 2010/08/01 episode.
While we’re on the subject of second guys, Yuki can be seen in the PV for Acid Black Cherry‘s upcoming single Re:birth. Here’s the CM:
By the way, there’s reason to believe that Yuki’s other band Rayflower is coming out with their yet-unnamed debut album on September 15th. All their stuff I’ve heard sounds pretty rockin’ so I personally can’t wait! Rayflower just came out with their second single two days ago and while there’s no PV to be found on YouTube yet, there are audio samples of both tracks on the single. The ever-present delicious boys’ love imagery they’re stuck on top of ought to come as a welcome bonus.
PS. Less than 20 days until the first reunion concert!
For the first time in who knows how long, Aucifer are set to make a TV appearance on TBS network’s 「BLITZ INDEX」 on June 11th! No info as to what sort of appearance we should expect but seeing that it’s a 10-minute slab of airtime, we could possibly be looking at a little talk and — fingers crossed! — a live performance. You can never have too many performances of “Datenshi BLUE.”
If you’re desperate to try and catch this live, you might have luck with KeyHoleTV or freshverse for example, but the quality is going to be pretty lousy. The best livestream I’ve found is the gundam.eu one but unfortunately it appears to be down for the foreseeable future. If there’s any goodness in the world, someone will later put up a good quality version on the ol’ Tube or elsewhere.
In any case, for those of you with access to Japanese TV, Aucifer will be on air this Friday – Saturday night at 26:55 – 27:04 Japan time, which of course translates to Saturday 02:55AM – 03:04AM.
In other news, Aucifer are to be featured in the upcoming August issue of the Arena 37°C SPECIAL magazine which goes on sale on June 27th. Meanwhile, you can also catch Rayflower in the June issue of the standard edition of Arena 37°C which is already on sale.
By the way, did any of you hear the Rayflower single? Just as I expected, it’s pretty damned good! The riffs on “Uragiri” are gnarly and I kind of dig the vocals. And hey, while we’re on the subject of Yuki, Acid Black Cherry are releasing their second cover album “Recreation 2” on June 30th. Apparently they’re also releasing their next single “Re:birth” in the near future. No release date on that one yet.
With less than three months to go, we’re getting closer to the main event here, folks. As a sign of that, there’s several of these little guys starting to pop up on Yahoo.jp auctions:
Just as a quick reminder to you guys, Rayflower‘s single is now out. Still haven’t got my hands on it actually, so here’s to hoping it’ll pop up somewhere sooner rather than later. The full PV can now be found (in disappointingly shitty quality) on YouTube. The tune does sound absolutely rocking though!
One more quick bit of news: though they just barely got their first release out, looks like they’ve already set a date for their follow-up single! It’s entitled Inishie and will go on sale on August 4th. Hope it’s as good as their first!
In my foolishness I forgot to post the full line-up of the band. In case you weren’t aware, it’s:
In other news, Makoto‘s site reports that he’s planning a birthday concert/event. More info to come in June, I’ll keep you updated. Speaking of Makoto, here he is sporting his meganekko style with cool actor Tamaki Hiroshi (Nodame Cantabile, Love Shuffle)!
Finally, I’d like to talk a little about the blog. It’s been up for three months now and honestly so far I’m really happy with the amount of hits it gets. I mean, when I started out, I knew I’d be sorely disappointed if I expected any real popularity to speak of. Hell, it’s a band that’s been dead for a good seven years now! Still, even averaging ~5 visits daily (on a good day) is more than enough to make me go “wow.” Last month I even had a day with 26 visitors! What the hell! Sure, on my other blog I often have days that surpass the amount of this site’s visitors in total, but to me seeing people actually reading this blog makes me significantly happier for some peculiar reason. Especially the fact that I even have a few commenters on this site, that to me just feels surreal. I’d just like to thank everyone who comments here, links this site somewhere or even silently reads up on the latest Aucifer going-ons. I’m happy if it helps anyone keep up with them.
I’d like to ask you guys something. As readers, is there anything more you’d like from Silent Melody? Anything you’d like me to do differently? More news on related artists, or just more focused on Aucifer? More opinion pieces? More, err, eyecandy? Simply just more/less posts? Want more of anything, less of anything? Or if not, if you’d just let me know that what I’m doing now is fine as is, that’d be sweet. Comment and let me know what you think!
One thing I have been wanting to do is reviewing Aucifer’s releases one by one. Not only that, but I’d love to also gather up anyone else’s reviews on Aucifer and post them here, as I know not everyone can be bothered with setting up a blog and all that. Would there be any interest in that, or would that be just about me satisfying myself?
Finally, have some pics of Atsuro who’s rehearsing for Minori Chihara‘s live tour right now.
