This is definitely one of my most favourite BACK-ON songs, although at the time of its release, the song certainly caused some concern amongst the fans that preferred the ‘rock’ side of the band, as it had a very ‘electronic dance’ feel to it. A PV was never released for the song, and it was promoted on TV with a 15-second CM featuring Kenji03 against an urban backdrop, fitting as the song was the ending theme for the TV series Shinjuku Swan.

As usual, you can find the lyrics below (after the cut-off) with the original kanji, romaji and karaoke versions of the lyrics as well! If you haven’t heard the song yet, visit our Music page and scroll to the end for our pop-out radio and listen to it.

By the way, we do occasionally amend the spelling of the original English lyrics if we believe it to be appropriate. But as always, if you spot any mistakes, please let us know either by commenting below or via the contact form.

Finally, if you would like to post these lyrics elsewhere, please kindly link back to this page. :)

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.

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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:

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With warm thanks again to MONSTERSNITE for the news, it is probably the first time the band’s live performance of any of their songs has been released as a DVD! We have seen a few standalone recordings (on Youtube) and even in the BLAZE LINE PV, but nothing like this, although some of us BOO Forum folk would love to have a dedicated DVD!

The DVD will have a Retail Price of ¥ 7,140 and a running time of approximately 240 minutes (4 hours?) . According to this post by Anoop Gantayat on AndriaSang.com :

This is a “set” in that it contains two DVDs, one each for the afternoon and evening versions of the June 14 show. Buyers can look forward to talk shows and skits, much of which differed depending on the showing. In addition, the set will include bonus promotional footage, specifics about which have yet to be shared.

I only wish that the release date wasn’t so far away, but at least we have got BACK-ON’s European debut at Connchi in Germany to look forward to in September. And before I forget – if you haven’t already heard – we are organising a GIGANTIC FANBOOK PROJECT for the band by fans. All ideas and fans are welcome so please do come and participate if you can!

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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 .

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She has decided to pick out some of the more distinctive songs from YES!!! to write about, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading what she had to say – I’m sure it will be the same for you too!

About our volunteer reviewer

Nickname: Yo-Yo! (funbari) Location: Hong Kong, China Favourite BACK-ON song(s): CHAIN, HIKARI SASUHOU, sonomamade Other favourite artists: Avril Lavigne How did you find out about BACK-ON? Air Gear’s OP–CHAIN!! Mini Introduction: I love listening to music, playing guitar and reading manga (favourite manga: Shaman King & Air Gear). Due to my very low contribution on the forum as a member(~_~), I decided to write this review, and it’s a great experience! Website: Funbari Onsen

The Review:

For those who haven’t heard of any songs from BACK-ON, I think it’s not too difficult for them to fall in love with BACK-ON’s songs after listening to “YES!!!”.

In my view, BACK-ON is not at the extremities, even though their songs are mostly ROCK based, they’re neither a pure ROCK BAND, nor a POP BAND, nor even a Hip-Hop band, but something in between three of them.

This diversifies their songs’ types. And in this album, it’s quite obvious.

Here’s my review of some of the songs:

果てなき道へ[LA mix]
It’s a totally new song of BACK-ON. The lyrics are quite (or very!) ENCOURAGING, with a vivid beat, this is a lovely song I think. But it’s difficult for me to find a word to describe the intro though, I think it’s a little bit unmatched with the whole song, but a lively opening.

CHAIN [LA mix]
What’s the difference between the original CHAIN and the LA mixed CHAIN?
I think it is mainly the GUITAR, which has been re-volumed, and being emphasized especially in the intro and the bridge parts, which is made to sound really like the live version of CHAIN.

Besides, Kenji’s voice seemed to be masked a little bit by some special effects, which I think couldn’t bring out Kenji’s chorus part, and couldn’t deliver the feeling of “太陽をお呼び覚ます” as the original version did.

That’s why I like the original one better than this LA mix. But, this LA mix definitely has a stronger feeling of GUITAR.

color[LA mix] & Ashiato[LA mix]
These are songs of BAReeeeeeeeeeN in the single “Ashiato”, for those who don’t know BAReeeeeeeeeeN, it’s a Group(or BAND) with 10 members:

BACK-ON(5)+GReeeeN(4)+JIN(1).

I personally like the song, “color” more than “Ashiato” due to it’s very strong and fast drum beat, and together with its lyrics with a feeling of ‘going forward’, the 2 songs are both inspiriting.

For Ashiato, I love its ending, where GReeeeN and BACK-ON split the verse into two.

ヒカリサスホウ [NEW WORLD version]
This is one of my favourite songs! Compared with the other BACK-ON songs, this is one of the most “ROCK” songs, I think.

And I LOVE its intro, as it seems the sound is sliding into my left ear and into the right one!!

ヒカリサスホウhas 3 versions, here in YES!!! is the NEW WORLD version (same as that in the album “NEW WORLD”), another version is the very original version, which first appeared in the album “Survive”(which is an album of Airstrike / ピンクフラミンゴMG / BACK-ON). The other one, the FK metal version, appeared as the opening song of the anime OVA “Murder Princess”.

And I like this New world ver. most. For me, the oldest version has an intro that’s just a bit too long, and the FK metal ver. sadly, doesn’t have a longer version (yet…maybe?).

Finally, そのままで[NEW ver.]
The original version of this song is in the very first album(mini album) of BACK-ON, called “ADACHI TRIBE”. It is my favourite song from ADACHI TRIBE, as it was always very easy to relax while listening to the song.

The differences between this new ver. and the old one: first, it is the total reproduction of the instrumental track, which I think makes me more relaxed while listening to it~

And the second change is that they added the chorus part which doesn’t exist in the original version, I think this chorus makes the song more complete, and, perhaps more meaningful~

Seeing as the YES!!! EU Edition has recently been released in France, I hope this fan review and others will help people decide that the album is really worth buying. A huge thank you must go to funbari for kindly volunteering to write the review for us!

If you’re interested in reviewing one of BACK-ON’s albums or singles, please get in touch! To rehash what we said last time, our aim is always to encourage as many people as possible to listen to BACK-ON’s music, and by featuring different styles of reviews by fans, it will help promote their work to even more people. If you liked this review or any of the others,  please do let us know in the comments or on our Forums.

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The band announced on BACK-ON.com that the European version of YES!!! (a.k.a YES!!! EU Edition)  would be available online directly from Amazon France for 20.95 EUR (= $30 USD = £18 GBP) and you can see the CD cover design below:

BACK-ON – YES!!! [EU Edition] Cover

The news release stated that the tracklisting for this European edition of the album would be the same as its Japanese counterpart, with the only difference in the design cover. In case you’ve forgotten what the original YES!!! looked like, take a look below:

Some fans might just prefer the EU Edition as it features all the BACK-ON band members :) Which one do you like best?

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

The CD has been released through the French-based record label Wasabi Records, which also has rather big name artists such as Anna Tsuchiya, OLIVIA, Kanon Wakeshima, Yuki Kajiura and m.o.v.e on their books; the record label even have their own Myspace and Facebook, and according to Mimu-net.net, Wasabi Records announced that they had signed BACK-ON way back in September 2008!

Hopefully we can find out more information about the release soon – which was out on 10th June 2009 according to Asia-Tik – (although Amazon.fr has a dispatch time of 2-3 weeks at the moment, it might be possible to find it elsewhere)  but in the meantime, if you haven’t already got a copy of BACK-ON’s debut album YES!!!, perhaps the EU Edition will tempt you. It would certainly be interesting to find out which CD cover design you prefer as well with our poll, so please do vote!

p/s: Heads up to ookami for inspiring the poll idea! Don’t forget you can also listen to most of the tracks from YES!!! on our fan radio (scroll towards the bottom of the Music page) now with a new ‘pop-out’ function so you can listen whilst browsing the rest of the fan site.

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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!

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We are…

The news was also announced on the official BACK-ON.com website just earlier today, and you can listen to what appears to be the entire song (with its long instrumental introduction) by watching this preview clip uploaded by IAMSjapan (2:48) either by clicking on the link below or viewing the video at the end of the post.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYZObdBeBe8

So what do you think? It’s actually difficult to describe how excited I am by this fantasic news, as since January 2009, i.e. start of this year when flyaway was released as both a standard and limited edition single, BACK-ON have been surprisingly quiet even with news on their official blog, although we had brief glimpses of their occasional live performances and the interesting snapshots of their life (including ones about them working on new songs)

Rumour has it that this may be due to personal events and celebrations as well, but now that summer is here (or winter for those of you in the Southern Hemisphere) BACK-ON appear to be back on the music scene again, this time with a brand new uplifting track called ‘We are…” reminiscent of flyaway, and even tied in with an IAMS (international pet food company) TV documentary project!

The documentary was filmed at the Helen Woodward Animal Center and features Kiki Sugino (aka. Yeong-hwa Seo) as the hands-on presenter. The preview clip is – literally – teeming with kittens, so if cute, fluffy and sadly abandoned kittens living in an animal shelter are your thing, it should be worth watching the documentary in full when it is released.  This means that – as appropriate for the song – BACK-ON has once again presented a wonderfully upbeat and joyful creation as the backing theme.

So no heavy riffs this time round, and as BACK-ON continue to develop their ‘pop’ style of music with a really sunny melody and Kenji03’s captivating voice, this time we get treated to quite a lot more of Teeda singing in the main verses, although he does still rap during parts of the song, it is much more evocative of BAReeeeeeeeeeN Teeda than New World Teeda.

We would love to find out what you all think of this shiny new song; the band have asked fans to try and watch the video and listen to the song where possible. It’s rather unfortunate that comments have been turned off for the video by IAMS (you can get so much feedback via Youtube comments!)  so please let us know and maybe we can send them all in to BACK-ON! :)

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

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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.

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