The new single is called ‘with you feat.Me‘ and come in two editions (much like flyaway) – a normal/standard edition with just two tracks, and the other a special ‘Tales of’ edition that will feature a special remix of the title track, special in-game downloads and we presume a different CD jacket design as well.

The tracklisting is as follows:

1. with you feat.Me
2. 流れ星 (Nagareboshi)
3. with you『テイルズ オブ』Remix [Tales of] Remix **

The two different editions will retail for  ¥ 1050 and  ¥ 1260 respectively, and if you click on the links above, you can watch the recent promotional video by Namco Bandai on Youtube and jump to clips of both songs; 流れ星 (Nagareboshi) stands for meteor or shooting star. I’m personally really digging TEEDA‘s rap part at around 1:37 in with you feat.Me.

We still don’t know the identity of the mysterious Me, who (w/ thanks to Sok) is rumoured to be Misano. Hopefully we will be able to confirm whether this rumour is true very soon and also find out the cover designs of the single!

EDIT on 20th January 2011: The new covers are out!

And in case you missed the video links above, watch it 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!

The PV, which was uploaded by raykennedy, is 3:56 minutes in length and features BACK-ON performing on a sunny beach and in a dark industrial warehouse with various background images of urban buildings panning in and out. Very interesting camera work imho and it is definitely a must watch for the song AND the video! The director is none other than 須永秀明 (Hideaki Sunaga) who also directed BACK-ON‘s Sands of time PV!

You can watch the PV by clicking on the direct link below or after the cut (as usual):

http://www.veoh.com/videos/v17144930HrJcS5sk

and if you would prefer to watch it in HQ on Youtube courtesy of funkeejap (original by Sok) please visit:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kf06dyEmR9o

Now you can even watch the subbed version of the PV (with karaoke effect) with thanks to BenBoomZ right here (in HQ as well):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Md6ukDBj7dY

You can also download the mp3 (PV rip courtesy of Sok) or download the PV (courtesy of Umm) or even view some of the quick photo stills of the PV that we have uploaded to our Flickr account:

Or feel free to peruse some of the ‘PV offshots’ or ‘behind the scenes’ photos taken by Ooishi Nami from BACK-ON‘s official website gallery below by visiting our fansite gallery:

BACK-ON – flyaway PV uploaded by raykennedy on Veoh

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BACK-ON – flyaway PV uploaded by funkeejap (original by Sok)on Youtube

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BACK-ON – flyaway PV (Subbed with karaoke effect) uploaded by BenBoomZ on Youtube

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Featured are 42 second clips of:

• flyaway (Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology 2 OP)
• where is the future? (Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology 2 ED)
• flyaway 『テイルズ オブ』Remix (Special remix of the title track available as an extra in the special [Tales of] edition of the single)

To summarise, flyaway is just as good as we expected from the original 30 second preview of the song; where is the future? seems reminiscent of one of BACK-ON’s previous title songs flower, but the biggest (and best) surprise imho is probably flyaway 『テイルズ オブ』Remix or flyaway [Tales of] Remix!

For fans of dance or game background music, this is a must listen, but the preview is alas so very short! Teeda‘s voice is electronically altered, and with thanks to BOO forum member Sok for this information, apparently the singer of the main chorus (at least in this preview clip) is the female seiyuu of Kanonno, the main character in the Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology 2 series!

In addition to clips of the 3 songs (sadly missing Re:Start) BACK-ON have also posted a much longer video clip of the flyaway PV on their official Myspace as well! :) I think it is pretty safe to say that everyone on the Forums who has seen the PV preview so far likes it.

You can watch it after the cut (as usual) at the end of this post, or you can:

watch the PV preview on BACK-ON’s Myspace by clicking here!

Last but not least, for fans and visitors who do not have access to Myspace, you can also listen to the clips of all 3 songs after the cut as well! Either way, please enjoy and let us know what you think! :)

BACK-ON – flyaway (Myspace audio)

1. flyaway
2. where is the future?
3. flyaway[Tales of]Remix
   

BACK-ON – flyway PV preview (Myspace video)

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Although there is no hint of this on their website, the news is official, as it was included on an informational flyer with YES!!! It was quite a surprise when this small sheet of paper came fluttering out as I unfolded the CD insert, and you can see for yourself what I saw:

At that moment, I actually quite *forgot* that I was meant to be excited about YES!!! and jumped around for this instead. If you can read a bit of Katakana or are feeling resourceful enough to find one of those helpful pronunciation tables on Google Images, the blurb at the bottom of the leaflet says something like:

Bandai Namco game: Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology 2‘s theme song “flyaway” is the title track of the 3 song (single)…

This could be better translated (please let us know in the comments or by email!) but interestingly, aside from the fact that the single will be released just a day before the actual game, like other subscribers of CDJapan’s Artist Newsmail list for BACK-ON, I received an Artist Update email listing TWO different editions of the CD. One is known as flyaway [Jacket A] and the other flyaway [Limited Pressing/Jacket B]!

For an extra 200 yen, flyaway [Limited Pressing/Jacket B] supposedly offers the magical world of First Press, which is defined by CDJapan to be:

a sticker, serial number for cell-phone ringtone and standby screen (valid only in Japan.)

for people lucky early enough to order the first batch of CDs. Now, the BACK-ON fangirl in me screams “HOLY ZOMG First Press FTW!” but from my limited experience of owning two different editions of Chain (one of my favourite singles by far by the way) if you do decide to pre-order flyaway, it will probably NOT be the end of the world if you receive flyaway [Jacket A] instead.

Besides, it’s still too early to make that decision yet imho, as we don’t even know what the CD cover looks like, but please do continue checking back here for more updates as January 28th 2009 draws nearer! In the meantime, I’ll leave you with news of what is to come:

• Fan reviews of YES!!! - 4 members of our Fan Forums have kindly volunteered to write a review of BACK-ON‘s first full length album, which we will be featuring on the site very soon!
• Random tidbits – Bits and pieces of news that we’ve meant to tell you about but haven’t quite got round to it; this includes multimedia and even a remix of Taneuma!

Last but not least, we would like to congratulate Sesshy on becoming Head Admin of Sound-Ex! You can also check out her newest wallpaper for YES!!! on our forums here, which looks professional enough to be an official promotional poster!

Sound-Ex will be launching a brand new layout for YES!!! very soon, so don’t forget to visit them as it is always worth it, although another site that you might like to visit whilst waiting might be the Facebook BACK-ON Fan Group run by Laura; there are currently 74 members and is quite a friendly community!

The news was posted on the band’s official site earlier in the week, and the information was further confirmed by an article on GPara.com (scroll to almost the end of the article) which mentioned Back-0n (and posted the band’s group photo as well!) and seemed to say that Light and Wind would be the key themes for the song. I don’t think this will be a difficult task for the band at all, because a lot of their music *does* follow this philosophy!

You can watch the promotional trailer for the game on the official website, and although I don’t own a PSP, there already seems to be quite a bit of hype from the major PSP-gaming sites such as: PSP Fanboy and PSPHyper, where the latter also includes extra screenshots in a later post.

However, for a more introductory approach to the new continuation of the Tales of the World series, the best place to visit is probably the Wikipedia entry. No official release date has been announced yet, but the plan is for Winter 2008. Of course, this is great news for us Back-on fans – it means we have something good to look forward to! :)