It’s been a while since we’ve posted news on the BOO website, and we are very glad to be bringing you this fantastic update, as this is the first single release since  ‘flyaway‘, which was released way back in January 2009.

The single will feature 2 songs:  ONE STEP! feat. mini and Tomorrow Never Knows, and is due out on January 27th 2010, with an RRP of  ¥1,050.

Two of our most favourite websites have been very receptive of new single suggestions, so you can now pre-order the single from:

• Play-Asia ($11.90)
• YesAsia ($13.49)
• CDJapan ($11.06)

amongst others. It is probably worth bearing in mind that purchasing from YesAsia and CDJapan will contribute towards BACK-ON‘s Oricon rankings,  but Play-Asia is currently offering 10% off the listed price (sale price shown above) so after postage and packaging, it might be slightly cheaper. 10% discount is no longer on offer so may or may not be cheaper*

I certainly have high hopes for the single. Tomorrow never knows has already been used as the background theme music for the DyDo coffee TV commercial and in case you haven’t heard it yet, you can watch the 30 second CM in full or below courtesy of jr77355.

In the meantime, we do know that BACK-ON are currently preparing for their 2 forthcoming live gigs in Taiwan on the 26th and 27th of December, at Taichung’s SOUND LIVE HOUSE and Taipei’s THE WALL LIVE HOUSE respectively.

You can see the special promotional poster below:

BACK-ON will be supported by local bands such as LAZY LADY, OverDose, Broken Flowers (碎紙花), and Solidor(固定客) (Solidor’s Blog).

Last but not least, Kenji03 and the band members are here to promote their mini ‘tour’ on Youtube. The video is courtesy of MONSTERSNITE and we get to hear Kenji03 speak some quality mandarin! :)

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

DyDo TV CM ft. Tomorrow never knows, courtesy of jr77355

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

p/s: * Post updated on December 24th 2009 with title of ‘Untitled’ song and other details.

These photos are from the official live report and I really wish there were more! Loved TEEDA‘s hoodie top by the way:

And this is a map of the entire venue – BACK-ON was right in the heart of everything!

Icchan and Kenji03 certainly look as though they were enjoying themselves (see Icchan‘s full blog post):

Finally, to give you an idea of what the atmosphere is like at this massive music festival, take a look at the official Attractions & Audience photos and videos from Osaka – we’ve included a few below:

BACK-ON has been added to the lineup of of bands performing at the 10th Anniversary of the major Japanese ROCK Music Festival: SUMMER SONIC 2009!

Just to give you some idea as to how big this festival is, here’s a snapshot list of some of the other big name artists that have been lined up for the event in Osaka:

You might not listen to any of their music, but I’m willing to bet a BACK-ON album/single that you’ll have heard the name of at least ONE of them! :)

According to the SUMMER SONIC 2009 Osaka timetable, BACK-ON will be performing at on 7th August 2009 at 16:20pm on the Garden Stage and you can get buy the one-day pass directly from the SUMMER SONIC 2009 website for ¥ 13,000. The ‘sister’ event will be running concurrently just outside Tokyo.

Now, moving onto non-factual commentary: I know we like to talk about BACK-ON‘s “milestones” (like their work with GReeeeN to form BAReeeeeeeeeeN and doing the theme song for TotW:RM2) every so often on this fan site, but considering the variety and pulling power of the lineup and the enormity of the event – it attacted 200,000 people in 2007 – I think anyone would agree that for a ‘home grown’ talent like BACK-ON, this performance will potentially be one of their crowning moments!

Fingers crossed that international producers, record companies, or even bands who are known to spot previously unrecognised talent, will take time out to listen to BACK-ON‘s 40 minute live set and take them to the next level… Glastonbury, anyone?

UPDATE 31/07/2009: A really interesting post about the logistics of the event is Summer Sonic 2009: a reader Q&A about the event by Joshua Williams .

The anime convention will run between 18-20th September 2009 at their usual venue: the gorgeous Kongress Palais Kassel (see below for photos) and BACK-ON‘s live performance will be on 19th September 2009!

Although this fantastic news has already been posted for sometime on the official Connichi site, the band finally announced it today on their official website with a nifty new banner:

I know I will definitely be going (this *is* BACK-ON‘s debut in Europe!)  and hope to see many other BACK-ON fans there – from Europe and from other parts of the world! If you are planning to go, drop us an email or visit the Forums and let us know!  Fingers crossed we can have a mini-convention of BACK-ON fans.  In the meantime, stay tuned for travel information for fans heading to the convention (in English) and also more news about BACK-ON!

The festival is a celebration of the Tales of series, as well as an event for announcing forthcoming new games. This year’s festival was held on 14th June 2009 and BACK-ON were invited to perform flyaway and Re:Start, songs that most fans will know as the OP and ED (respectively) theme songs from Tales of the World : Radiant Mythology 2.

According to various reports, they wow’d the audience with their thrilling renditions of both songs:  Gpara said that ‘they single handedly roused the crowd’ during their performance.

BACK-ON later invited Ito Kanae (伊藤かな恵) – Kanonno Earhart‘s seiyuu – who featured in the flyaway [Tales of] remix – to join them onstage; she was too nervous to actually sing in front of the crowd.

BACK-ON with Ito Kanae courtesy of Gpara

The photos are courtesy of Gpara.com,  Dengeki.com and Famitsu.com, and you can view them in full by visiting the Tales of Festival 2009 section of the Gallery.

p/s: Although BACK-ON have posted a photo of the event,  Icchan and Kenji03 also talked briefly about the event in their official blog, they did manage to get hold of some nice programmes!

photo by ooishi nami

p/s2: For fans wanting to know more about the new Tales of games that were announced at the Festival, please visit the dedicated Tales of fansite Abyssal Chronicles for detailed information.

Then came September, and the revelation that the other half of the mysterious new group BAReeeeeeeeeeN were in fact BACK-ON, and since then, the band has experienced a huge surge of popularity. So much so, that at their first public performance after the release of 足跡 (Ashiato) at Shibuya Boxx on October 9th, the venue was packed out! We found out about this from the official ‘report’ on Back-on.com, which was accompanied by the launch of their official photo gallery, featuring more than a dozen photos from the gig!

There are more photos available at the link above, but perhaps more importantly… we had the very first hint in the last line of the report that the full album really is forthcoming, this time on the new rumoured date of November 12th 2008!

So what do we know about this potential new album? If the Japan-base online CD retail companies like Amazon.jp, CDJapan and HMV.jp are anything to go by, this is the jacket cover of the brand new album:

We also find out that the new album will probably be called Yes!!!, and that it should be priced at ¥ 2,600, which is around $27 USD or £17 GBP. Apparently there will be a total of 10 tracks, including 足跡 (Ashiato) aka. Footprints and color from the BAReeeeeeeeeeN debut single, which really shouldn’t be a surprise, given that the cover design really does scream (to me) GReeeeN!!! What do you think? Let us know on the Forums, if not in the comments below!

The supposed 8 other tracks on the album are currently unknown, but it seems BACK-ON will definitely be including all the title tracks from their singles so far, which presumably means songs such as (in reverse chronological order) -

• Sands of time
• flower
• Butterfly
• BLAZE LINE
• NEW WORLD
• Chain

and many more of their crowd favourites. One site even mentioned ヒカリサスホウ (Hikari Sasuhou), which was a huge hit with the fans at their October 9th Sonic Concorde gig, enough to make BACK-ON perform it twice!

Seeing as it’s one of my most favourite songs, I think I can understand why ;) And as if the photo extravaganza above wasn’t enough, look at the promotional photo we found on Amazon.jp!

Kenji03 is wearing glasses!!! That’s enough to make any fan-girl go KYAAAAAA! (I’ve borrowed this from someone, sorry!) It’s a pity the photo isn’t larger, but if you do want a good close up, I can certainly recommend watching a new video uploaded by gangangan03, where BACK-ON (in their new outfits!) introduce 足跡 (Ashiato), but unfortunately the broadcasting giants appear to have waved their copyright flag, and not only have they removed the video, but gangangan03‘s Youtube account has mysteriously been suspended! It’s a HUGE HUGE blow for BACK-ON fans imho, and I really hope the account will be re-instated soon as it is a gold mine of media of the band. Let’s keep our fingers crossed!

I would like to drop in a tantalizing hint “タネウマ★DJ ICHIKAWA from Volta Master remix” at this point, but let’s leave it for the next post and move back to the main topic:

Will BACK-ON‘s first full album be called Yes!!!

Will it really be released on November 12th 2008?

That really remains to be seen, but please keep checking back here for more news!

For part 2, again we have to thank the photographers for their kindness in allowing us to post them on BOO and also our Gallery. These feature photographs were taken by Art.style (Arthur Liao) and Aqua Eyes (#2 and #6), and are as much eye-candy as the previous set!

Of course, these (as before) are just the thumbnails, so to give you a preview (before you click on the links above) of the quality of the pictures, let us focus our mind on a certain Back-on band member, Kenji03, below taken by art.style! :)

I would (again) strongly encourge everyone to view the photos in the Gallery, simply because it really is hard to appreciate the photos from such small thumbnails.

Hope you’ve enjoyed viewing the 2-part series of the Formoz Festival 2007 photo extravaganza! :D

I personally love this new ending theme, and the artwork is impeccable as usual, but in case you weren’t satisfied with this short version, gangangan03 has just uploaded a video of Back-on performing flower LIVE at Formoz Festival 2007!

The song is very chilled out (similar to the previous ED by Back-on – a day dreaming…) but in my humble opinion, this song is so much more balanced, with a strong verse and chorus, and the band have actually used a violin in the background as the underlying theme (that almost always means bonus points from me :p) but as always,  it would be interesting to hear what everyone else thinks though!

As usual, you can watch both videos by clicking on the relevant links above, or you can watch it on BOO below! Please do let us know your thoughts about the new song!

Eyeshield 21 – ED 6 – Back-on – flower

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

Back-on LIVE at Formoz Festival 2007 – flower

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

In Part 1, we’re featuring photos taken by KHT and Hyperreality Mer (latter 2) , who have both very kindly given us permission to post them here on BOO news and our gallery! Thank you! You can see all of their work below as thumbnails, where each photo is linked to its original size in the gallery. And as Teeda might say – check them out! :)

I would strongly encourage EVERYONE to view them in their original sizes, because these thumbnails seriously don’t justify the quality of the photos! If you do need a little persuading, take a closer look at Hyperreality Mer‘s photo of Shu below!

Finally, you may also have seen that this is only Part 1 of the photo extravaganza, so please stay tuned for further updates!

I’m fairly certain this is the first outdoor venue that Back-on has performed at (to be continued with their upcoming performance at Anime Evolution in Canada on August 18th 2007!) and many of us would have missed out, save for gangangan03! He has kindly uploaded two video clips of Back-on performing Believer and Chain live, both of which are available to watch below, or here and here respectively!

The first video is particularly special imho, because at the start of Believer, Kenji03 says hi to the crowd in mandarin (he went to school in Taiwan for a bit!) ending with “I love everyone!” which really sets the mood; it is also the first LIVE recording of Believer!

BUT, in the second video – Chain - I can honestly swear that Kenji03 has a costume change with a bandana and black t-shirt! :D And he looks pretty darn good. In addition to that, at the end of the song when they leave the stage, you can hear the crowd shouting ENCORE! in unison. I hope for the sake of the crowd that Back-on did return for an encore! :)

So a big thanks to gangangan03 for sharing the videos with everyone! :D If you want to watch the videos here on BOO, take a look below!

Believer

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

Chain

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]