Its been more than a decade since a female idol group (Morning Musume) managed to break the half million sales mark with their 3rd album “Love Paradise”. However, AKB48 still has a long way ahead if they want to break the record set by SPEED first two albums, “Starting Over” and “RISE” which sold 823,000 and 1.32 million copies respectively.

Source: Tokyograph and Oricon

Have you bought your copy yet? I’m still waiting for my copy to start shipping from CDJapan.

The Ebisu Muscat originated from the concept of a TV show “Onedari Muscat DX!” and they have announced on their show their first album titled “The Muscats~Hollywood kara Konnichiwa~ (ザ マスカッツ～ハリウッドからこんにちは～)” and it is scheduled to be released on 25 May 2011. In addition, they also announced their concert tour of Japan, where they will be touring to Osaka, Kobe, Nagoya and Hanamatsu.

Meanwhile I leave you with their first single titled “Banana Mango High School” (don’t ask me why they had such an interesting title).

What are you doing tonight on Saint Valentine’s Day? If you are desperate for someone to talk to (or pretend to be talking to you), then you might want to check out this “Delusional Confession CD 妄想告白CD”.

Akiba Fumikko Gakuen (previously featured) is the first shop in Akihabara that offers cosplaying girls stepping on your aching back as a form of massage service. The CD was produced by nine different staff and features them in various situation on Valentine’s Day.

The CD can be bought at their store for 2,000 yen. Meanwhile, for us back at home, you can check out the sample clip here.

Source: Akibamap

Actually such “love confession” CD are fairly common and usually feature moe characters. I think you would have more fun playing a visual novel than listening to just a CD.

The album is titled “R-GIRL’s ROCK!”, where the alphabet ”R” stands for “respect”. SCANDAL will be singing 7 rock covers of well-known songs by other female artists.

1. “Rock ‘n’ Roll Widow” – Momoe Yamaguchi
2. “Roppongi Shinju” – Ann Lewis
3. “Koibito ga Santa Claus” – Yumi Matsutoya
4. “SINKY-YORK” – JITTERIN’JINN
5. “DAYDREAM” – Judy and Mary
6. “Sunny Day Sunday” – Sentimental Bus
7. “secret base ~Kimi ga Kureta Mono~” – ZONE

Source: Oricon via Tokyograph

I would definitely love to hear their rendition of “secret base” and then compare it to ZONE’s version. ^^

The album will supposedly contain cover tracks of popular songs from the 1980s up to the present, including ZONE’s most famous hit “Secret Base (Kimi ga Kureta Mono)”.

Source: JaME WORLD via Tokyohive

Not much information is announced with regards to the track list or what will be bundled in the different release editions. Meanwhile, how many of you folks are attending SCANDAL’s concert at the upcoming AFAX event?

There are a total of 3 tracks on this single and they are really a good mix of songs:

1. NOBODY KNOWS
2. 1/3000 Piece (積水ハウス シャーメゾン TVCMソング)
3. Konbini (コンビニ )

I always found Suga Shikao’s soulful voice a good choice for the theme songs of xxxHolic.

This season of xxxHolic Kei (継) was pretty good, the only dissapointment was that 13 episodes is too short!!

But I took a quick look at the song listings and it was pretty dissapointing because there were quite a few songs (Bouken Desho Desho, LOVE GUN, Neophilia) which were already released previously.

I haven’t got the chance to listen to the album yet, but hopfully the new songs would have some surprise.

Since this album marks Utada Hikaru’s 10th anniversary in the music industry, the CD is also one of the most heavily promoted album so far. There were free ringtones downloads, promotions on Mixi, and many more tie-ups, theme songs, etc. If you are curious, you can read it on wikipedia.

There are a total of 13 tracks on this album.

1. “Fight The Blues” – 4:10
2. “Heart Station” – 4:36
3. “Beautiful World” – 5:17
4. “Flavor of Life -Ballad Version-” – 5:25
5. “Stay Gold” – 5:14
6. “Kiss & Cry” – 5:06
7. “Gentle Beast Interlude” – 1:13
8. “Celebrate” – 4:26
9. “Prisoner Of Love” – 4:46
10. “Teiku 5 (テイク 5,)” – 3:42
11. “Boku wa Kuma (ぼくはくま)” – 2:23
12. “Niji-iro Basu (虹色バス,)” – 5:50
13. “Flavor of Life” [Bonus Track] – 4:46

I think the first track “Fight The Blues” has to be my most favorite track on this album. I like the lyrics because it talks about being strong and not getting yourself down.

Here’s a youtube video of the song being performed at Music Lovers:

Other tracks which I really liked were, Heart Station, Stay Gold and Flavor Of Life -Ballad Version-.

Well 10 years in the music industry is something that isn’t easy to achieve. I hope this album will mark a new start for another 10 years.

There are a total of 13 tracks on this album, with 8 brand new songs:

1. energy flow – 2:09
2. JOINT – 4:01
3. Beehive -album edit- 4:29
4. TRILL – 4:47
5. Akai Namida – 4:19
6. triangle – 4:50
7. sense – 4:13
8. DREAM – 5:33
9. intron tone – 4:20
10. HISUI – 5:28
11. Saigo no Yakusoku – 5:48
12. Get my way! – 2:56
13. portamento – 6:01

Th album starts off with a nice trance/techno intro which leads right into JOINT.

For the 8 new tracks found on this album, my top 3 tracks would be TRILL, portamento and sense.

I think SAVIA is an above average album which is worth a listen.Its nice to see her experimenting more with different genres, and I hope she will continue to produce more good songs.

The tracks in this album are well arranged and the music flows so smoothly you’d hardly notice the transition in between tracks.

There are a total of 14 tracks on this album and here are the tracklisting:

1. Amazing -Prelude of ROCK PIT- (4:27) – written by Yuusuke
2. Break now! (2:50) – written by Yuusuke
3. TOXIC (3:52) – written by Yuusuke
4. FLASHBACK -digital grain mix- (4:37)
5. HINATA (4:35) – written by Yuusuke
6. EARTH (4:48) – written by Yuusuke
7. *SKIT* (1:30) – written by Yuusuke
8. GAMBLING (2:37) – written by Maki and Yuusuke
9. MEKIMEKI (3:23) – written by Yuusuke
10. ZERO SYMPATHY (2:40) – written by mACKAz
11. ROSIER (4:42) – Original cover of LUNA SEA
12. Tokyo NIGHTS (4:24) – written by Maakii and Yuusuke
13. Tegami (4:41) – written by Yuusuke and SASSY
14. Komorebi no Uta -ROCK PIT ver.- (3:42) – written by Yuusuke and Maakii

I especially like the first track “Amazing” which has been edited with a new piano intro, a very nice way to kick start the album.

In summary, this album proves that HIGH and MIGHTY COLOR is capable of producing awesome music. Unfortunately, the album only managed a poor 14th placing on the oricon charts on the the day of its debut.

So if you are looking for some great music to pick up this weekend, I would recommend this album together with Asian Kung-Fu Generation’s World World World.