(the) Road to the Deep East

The magnetismm of SOUL'd OUT which grabbs our hearts and makes even a girl like Nakagawa 'the Otaku' Shokotan addicted must exist in the chemistry of three different characters, each of whom has a different musical background.

First of all, of all three members, it looks the human beat box and mc, Bro.Hi was a typical Japanese boy who loves hip-hop and new culture imported from United States when he was a boy. He used to be a rock star wannabe who admires THE WHO or Jim Morison, but later was impressed by the performance of THE ROOTS, and jumped to hip hop music, especially human beat box performance.

Meanwhile, the interest on hip-hop is common, but the careers and nature of other two members are very unique.

Shinnosuke, trackmaker of this group started his carrer as a musician as a trombonist in a brass band. Later, he was influenced by one of representative pop groups in 90s, ACCESS, and especially influenced by Asakura Daisuke, who is famous as a producer of TM Revolution until 2001. So, the track of SOUL'd OUT, which includes a lot of pop materials and synthesized sounds is the reference to this group.

Diggy-Mo, the main mc also started his musical career as a pianist, and learned a lot from classic music when he was a child. Even today, he lists Mozart or Bach as the musicians he was incluenced most, as wellas Jay-Z or Snoop Doggy Dogg.

But the most notable his musical attribution must be the influences from musicians in 80s, Southern All Stars or Okamura Yasuyuki. Southern All Stars is another Japanese musician which is very popular in Japan but ignored by other counties, but Diggy-Mo's very smooth and fluent rap which no other people, even a Japanese native speaker can't imitate must be the influence from the vocal of Southern All Stars, Kuwata Keisuke. Not only musical influence, Diggy-Mo admires Southern's achievement and says to make SOUL'd OUT 'Monster Group' like Southern All Stars or Mr Children which almost people in the nation love is his dream.

And after these three crews encountered and mixed in a melting pot, SOUL'd OUT was born in 1999. Of all their works, I'd like to pick up one of their representative 'Starlight Destiny' which sold the most copies and ranked #6 at Oricon Weekly Single charts in 2006.

Starlight Destiny (2006/09/27) SOUL’d OUT click the pic for the link to amazon

(clip from youtube)

The reference to 90s pop songs from Sinnosuke, human beat box and old-school style rap from Bro. Hi, and very melodious, passionate verse from Diggy Mo are mixed altogether in one song and create their world which no other creature on this planet can. As they say in this song, this is the perfect S.O. Triangle.

Now they dropped a new album including this Starlight Destiny, but I'd like to also recommend 'Cozmic Travel, 'Gasoline' and 'Growin Kids' if you are interested. Especially, it's sure the person who loves 70s discotique song like 'Love Machine' from Morning Musume or 'Kimi ni Bump' from Ketsumeishi like me loves 'Gasoline.'

ATTITUDE (2008/01/23) SOUL’d OUT click the pic for the link to Amason.com

(you can try the song at sonny music online.)

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Anyway, the search of my lost decade – the time when I lost myself in a jungle of seductive teens- ends here, for the time being. DOUBLE, m.o.v.e, and SOUL'd OUT. It looks the things I overlooked for ten years was evolution of black music, or R&B and hip-hop, which was imported from the United States last century and took root in this country, and bore wonderful fruits grown by the water flow circulates underneath of this country.

Of course, I know this research is not enough. There are some candidates appeared in this decade for the subjects of this search. For example, minmi, Bennie K, M-flo, Rip Slyme, Kick the can crew(KREVA).. and so on. When I find something new, or someone new which I think it's worth to write here, I'd like to restart this series and introduce them again.

(Series #1)
(Series #2)
(Series #3)
(Series #4)(this entry)