the Shiina Ringo thread

cool video! laudable effort, though the singer has a tough comparison
it's no Boys II Men style cover, but what can you do

For those who are interested but haven't yet heard the new album:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cfq8LRqmB-w

(I imagine this will get yanked pretty quickly though.)

Actually, looks like the whole album is up there now.

More not-her-best, but not bad:

https://vk.com/video-9089995_171354843

she's middling now, but has there been any act out of asia since YMO as great and essential as shiina ringo? she's got one of the all-time classic rock/pop albums to her name, and imo rounding up the best of her other stuff puts her on a level far above bjork, beck, or any other such artist who might be considered a peer/analog

No argument here (although I wouldn't feel comfortable make sweeping claims about all of Asia). She is still capable of something like this from just a few years back.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0ML7SdxI_c

For that matter, I thought some of the new songs on her album last year were quite good.

Part of the problem is that she has embraced her own institutionalization so enthusiastically, with all of these often self-parodic performances celebrating her own career. I'm not sure what to make of all of that, although perhaps she's always been laughing up her sleeve at her various stage personae.

i am most certainly comfortable with sweeping claims about asia!

no one artist comes close out of korea, china, HK, taiwan...and none of the other asian countries really have the industry or audience means to support a genius like shiina ringo's even were its kernel to appear. japan had some killer pop artists in the '80s and early '90s who need to be considered, but from the immense amount of listening i've done so far i can't say anyone truly stands in the class. only YMO and their members' solo careers eclipse her, but then again, i don't think any of them have a single album as relentlessly brilliant as kuri no hana...

and yeah i love a lot of her new stuff (second half of "nippon" melts my nerve endings), but it's more a pick and choose game now for sure, and generally with lesser/less artful peaks. though some of her post-hana stuff, at an individual song level, match or best that album's highlights imo

reading through this old thread a bit it occurs to me that she's done some pretty unique rearrangements live. anyone have any mp3 bootlegs handy? demos/rarities/etc, anything would be welcome...i already have both Demo 1 and Demo 2, and the 1999.11.30 gig at kyoei branko

How I wish, bet there's a ton of stuff in the vaults that will just appear one day in a massively expensive and exquisite box set.

i really hope so.

but i'm sure there are some live bootlegs out there in the ether, doubt i have anything any such collector would want/need but i'd be happy to trade sometime if anyone has any good gigs. falling back under ringo's spell and want whatever i can get

I think I have some MP3 boots stored away, but they might not be that great iirc, I'll have a look

ah no pressure, thank you though. i need to find some reliable discography of all her singles and guest appearances and stuff, i'm sure there're a lot of floaters i'm still missing

It's no trouble, this what I got...

http://i62.tinypic.com/1585yd0.jpg

how about that. I don't have too much of the early ephemera but many of my favorite post-KZK tracks are the b-sides

favorite live show that never saw official release is Jihen's 'Domestic Virgin Line' show, posted to this thread more than once and here again

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDotMg5_cA4

well, looks pretty good to me! i'd gratefully receive any of the live stuff you have (except the branko one, since i'm guessing that's the 99 boot i have), don't have much shiina per se to give in return, but it does look like i have a little more of her demos than you do there, i've got 31 tracks total arranged into a DEMO1 and a DEMO2. if you're interested i *think* i just successfully webmailed you

The address attached to my webmail is long dead I'm afraid, email me again at nakagincapsuleto✧✧✧@gm✧✧✧.c✧✧ instead.

dammit that was (without gaps) - nakagin capsule tower at gmail

For those who have never seen these wonderful TV commercials for KZK:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sKvEm2ib5Y

lol. not an easy album to advertise!

also like how the editor seems to have romanized it "RINNGO" just for symmetry's sake.

Soil & "PIMP" Sessions are touring Europe again, kinda tempted.

June
25th - Fusion Festival - Larz, Germany (Festival)
28th -Glastonbury - Glastonbury, UK (Festival)
30th - North Sea Jazz Club - Amsterdam, Holland (Venue)
July
1st - Bird - Rotterdamn, Holland (Venue)
3rd - Kelburn Garden Party - Largs, Scotland (Festival)
4th - Colston Hall - Bristol, UK (Venue)
7th - Jazz Café - London, UK (Venue)
9th - Band on the Wall - Manchester, UK (Venue)
10th - Mosely Jazz Festival - Birmingham, UK (Festival)
11th - La Marquies - Lyon, France (Venue)
12th - Worldwide Festival - Sete, France (Festival)

Here's the Glastonbury set -

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p02txwt0/glastonbury-2015-soilpimpsessions

had the lowest expectations for this new single, one song being an autotuned jingle written for this summer's coca-cola campaign, the other being a jingle for a cell phone. the ads have been online for a month and they have all the entertainment value of staring at a huge stack of money, but the videos for the new songs are a different story

http://aramajapan.com/news/music/musicvideo/shiina-ringo-releases-full-pvs-for-nagaku-mijikai-matsuri-and-kamisama-hotokesama/20888/

here are the ad versions. autopilot tightrope.

http://jrock247.com/2015/07/shiina-ringos-new-single-chosen-for-coca-cola-campaign/

Thanks Milton, the autotune really blows, I'm digging the other track though, has a kind of OSCA feel about it.

the autotune one is just hilariously bad. the other one is a bit of a mess, but the good parts are good.

she's recently admitted to not trying with her music so much anymore, so it's little surprise that her output's going in this direction.

Yeah, the non-autotune one has moments of lol wut, but actually is a pretty good tune.

I'm glad this thread popped up, because this is one of the most amazing songs I've ever heard and I always forget who was responsible for it:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5q71o_shiina-ringo-x-saito-neko-yokushits_music

quality on that upload is brutal, but that's one of my favorites off the amazing heisei fuuzoku. ain't no self-cover like a shiina self-cover

Everything on Dailymotion sounds like crap these days. This is a bit better:

Yokushitsu

Yeah, sorry, I was searching for a video clip on the train so I couldn't actually watch it. Is the YouTube clip the remix? I haven't heard the original so I don't know how different it is.

I still prefer this version:

http://nhacso.net/nghe-album/shouso-strip.X1BYVUpZ.html

x-post

I don't remember which is original. There's also this earlier (EP?) version:

http://nhacso.net/nghe-nhac/la-salle-de-bain.Vl1SVUBZ.html

(I'm still not sold on her singing in English most of the time.)

An early live version. I don't think I've seen her hop around like this anywhere else. Not sure I like it:

http://vk.com/video62610559_165946360

(The opening reminds me of Psychic TV c. 1988.)

Tsumi to Batsu live, 2015.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoTAXRGzq3s#t=49

Not unworthy.

why did i never listen to her 2014 record? it's pretty good

A fair chunk of her back catalogue is up on Spotify now [in the UK at least] under 'Sheena' Ringo, no Jihen as yet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnhNeT152Qs

why did i never listen to her 2014 record? it's pretty good

― HYPERLINK TO RAP GENIUS (BradNelson), Friday, March 18, 2016 1:36 PM (3 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Was let down a little by the last few albums, so I actually put off listening to her 2014 solo album Hi Izuru Tokoro until tonight.
What a mistake! It's actually pretty great, and already a few tracks in feels like her best work in a while.

Yeah I really, really made a terrible mistake sleeping on it so long. This album is fantastic, easily some of her best work and production, even if it is mostly re-recordings of non-album tracks, it's super well done and feels fresh.

I don't know if it's a great album per se, but it has a bunch of good-to-great songs on it. One reason I didn't say more about it is that I simply am not sure what to say about it. The newer (often Latin tinged) jazz-oriented tracks were very well-crafted.

The some what sui generis (in her catalog) "Irohanihoheto" is still my favorite on this album.

But as an album it's a bit too much of a miscellany.

She wrote some sort of music for the World Cup this year, I think. Has anyone heard that?

At least I thought so. Unless I was reading old news from 2014 and got mixed up.

Still no Shiina/Sheena Ringo on US Spotify. It's okay. I sometimes imagine her being "discovered" in a big way, somewhere down the line. But maybe what she has done best is too far removed from where popular music generally is or is headed. Then again, I know a lot of college aged people who listen a ton to rock from the 60s and 70s. (Not calling SR classic rock, but she's more of a piece with that than with most of what's on US top 40.) Music in foreign languages is still mostly a hard sell in the US.

Yeah, even someone like Shakira barely broke through to the US, I feel like. definitely possible one day people will wake up to her and/or a bunch of journalists will start crowing about her achievements, hopefully during our generation. but even if this doesn't happen, she seems pretty successful both commercially and artistically in her career and I still feel like she's got a lot more to give.
But yeah it sucks that she didn't reach Spotify here or even the US iTunes store.

I missed that she performed in Taiwan, not that I would have gone, but interesting development:

http://www.mtv81.com/news/ringo-shiina-launches-special-site-for-her-first-overseas-show-in-taiwan/

there was a song on here that I liked that was on youtube and had like some animated video that was pink or purple and had flowers blowing in the wind? maybe? like over hills? does anyone have any idea what song had a youtube video like this at some point (that has since been removed)?

might be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVCCe2tuL20

lol wow that actually has animated flowers on a pink background and like horizontal parallax motion but that is not it! the song was kinda upbeat and peppy and sort of vaguely reminds me of early Bjork or something? also I think she said "la la la la la" a lot

stumped me. right now to find any of her many videos, you pretty much have to search with kanji to find something posted within the last 12 months; sony has really cracked down on uploads of her videos. even on the official vevo, clicking on most of them results in 'not available in your country'.

we never really talked about how wonderful the video is for Irohanihoheto a few years ago though

http://en.musicplayon.com/play?v=935827