>
> I got my two Tomoe Shinohara CDs yesterday, (Megaphone Speaks/
> Dream & Machine) I had a listen to the former this morning and
> it sounds really good on first listen, quite spacey and odd with
> some pretty interesting chord sequences going on too.
>
> Does anyone know anything about her?

Sure I do ;-)

She got signed to Ki/oon, a Sony label that specializes in mixtures
of pop and techno, when she was 16. She initially worked with Takkyu
Ishino from Denki Groove as producer and only wrote a small amount of
her material herself. The album "Super Model" and a bunch of singles
came from that era. One of the singles became an end theme to the
popular anime "Kodocha"

She was a favorite guest of "Hey x3 Music Champ" as I guess she could
be both be teased by and tease back at the hosts. TV got interested
in her so she started co-starring as a regular actress in a bunch of
mostly TV productions, usually as the main character's eccentric
friend and she also became a TV talent - you know appearing as
yourself on regular TV programs. She still does that .

The next big musical thing was "Megaphone Speaks" where she began
producing and partly writing more material, though she does other's
songs too. Some well known acts worked on songs with her, Yasuharu
Konishi, Shonen Knife's Naoko, Jun Matsue of the Spoozys and Buffalo
Daughter. Buffalo Daughter also did a super neat Giorgio Moroder-
style remix that only appeared on 12".

Right before she was 20 I guess her contract ended with Sony and she
went to Warner where they seem to have set up a new label Dream
Machine with her as I think the debut artist. "Dream and Machine" was
her 20th birthday album (well it's actually either a really long EP
or a slightly short album). Along with Buffalo Daughter and Shonen
Knife again she's joined by Jitterin’ Jin and Sean and Yuka from Cibo
Matto. She followed that with a good remix album with a new (not
manic) bossa nova song produced by Sugizo. I guess in 2000 she might
have gotten overworked. She was producing a friend Wakame (Yoshino)
and designing all sorts of things including fashion besides the
music, touring and TV. She was studying design and fashion around
this time and still designs clothing that's for sale. And she made
her theatre debut too - and not only did the songs but designed all
the costumes for it.

Starting in 2001 until last year she released almost no music for
several years though she had lots of TV and radio hosting jobs. She
formed ZuTTo, a duet with Eiko Matsumoto in 2004 - which is more down
to earth. They got a fair amount of press for drastically lowering
the price of their single and selling out all the copies real fast.
(though it was repressed and can still be bought) They are tied in
with Marusan a soup company and appear on their commercials and get
their live shows sponsored. In 2005 she formed a performance group,
PANIKARAQS, which includes Yuka Honda and Steve Eto (Pugs, Demi Semi
Quaver) and a dancer, Chikage. They've just played live. No releases.
Lately she's working with techno composer Kagami and they did the
closing song for the 6th season of "Konjiki no Gashbell" (Zach Bell).
Still these days she does a lot TV talento stuff when not starring on
stage. She was a regular on a kids show- so you can hear her sing
other people's kids songs on several tie in albums. http://
www.yymonster.tv/

Regarding musical theater she just wrapped up a big reprise tour of
Japan in the role she was born to play
http://pippi.macoron.jp/
(though someone european wrote the musical, if you know the popular
children's book and late 1960s movie character I'm sure you'll get
what I mean)

. She's about to co-star in a play called "Jail Breakers" where some
guys in prison put on a rock show in order to break out of prison I
think. http://www.g2produce.com/other/jail/ I think she only
collaborated on the content of her debut play, not on the numerous
fairly big production plays she's been in since.

She went to France a couple times recently. She only did mini shows
and I guess is trying to see how she's received there.

Really all her stuff is good though I'm sure you can run into singles
that are either too sweet or too manic when you want the other -
which I guess is her main pitfall.

Here's her official Japanese site
http://www.takeitag.co.jp/tomoe/
which unfortunately uses double byte sub-directories for assets so is
really hit and miss as to it working on completely non-Japanese
machines. I think she's sort of doing the site herself using some
sort of sitebuilder program that's not very international savy. Sadly
last year she had a two full length unreleased songs on her site that
I guess her management or the domain's webmaster told her to remove
(if you wonder why there is a speaker icon on her homepage there used
to be background tracks).

>
> I spied a copy of Cartoom! by Plus Tech Squeeze Box in HMV
> yesterday, they want £27, it is a Japanese import with Obi
> and all that but I'm really torn becuase I want the album on
> cd but 27 quid is such a lot for one cd.

The CD itself is like £9.50 in Japan and the trick is to find
someone who sells it and uses EMS rather than something super
expensive like FedEx or UPS to ship. Or I guess you could buy
several CDs to spread out expensive shipping. Trouble is it's on a
smaller label (Vroom), though it is being distributed to some extent.
I see Amazon.co.jp has it. I like them but now they use more
expensive shipping. HMV.co.jp has super expensive shipping but their
site is available english.



nick

selling my Japanese CDs to pay bills, sorry it's kind of expensive
but the shipping is cheap
http://technopop.gemm.com/