'Suiyoubi no campanella' ~ I tell you it's the climate of Hokkaido!

How did I find about 'suiyoubi'? I just checked what's new on jpopsuki. Out of 5 new torrents and 10 recommendations, there are usually 0 to 1 artist I can have any interest in. Most frequently, though, such searches lead me to no considerable discovery. So, I went to watch a couple of her clips on Youtube. My first reaction was to want to close this collection of fast changing landscapes with a red-nosed girl in the middle, filmed as if with a pocket camera or maybe smartphone. However, the second part made me change my mind. And there is a perfect reason why.

To keep warm in the cold climate people of Hokkaido were dancing very often. That's why so many electronic, hip-hop, trance etc. artists are from Hokkaido. I mean I can find no other explanation? The melodic part of the song is awesome. Well, maybe this time I should also give credit to the sound producer, Kenmochi Hidefumi, one of my favourite DJs.
jump-inspiring and energetic - 'Medusa'

What I liked a lot about Suiyoubi is that all songs contain lyrics that are not essentially a 'story', but are not an attempt to create a mysterious atmosphere by using a lot of difficult philosophical terms. Rather, the lyrics contain mostly rows of words or phrases grouped around the main article, like Hokkaido places and names in 'Shakushain' and Russian composers and places in 'Tchaikovsky'. Also, all songs have a particular topic they revolve about, and sometimes the topic is in the very title: 'The Little Match Girl' or 'Marco Polo' or 'Twiggy'. She also uses the wonderful flexibility of the Japanese language to create simple but funny puns, like spelling 'Norway no mori' as ノルウェイの盛り instead of ノルウェイの森. Accidentally, her another song, 'ranbou', quotes the same phrase from 'Poison', the GTO live-action theme song, I've mentioned recently in my other post.
probably the best experimental piece with astounding vocal tricks and playful lyrics - 'Momotaro'
I just love those 'ki-bi-daaan, kibi-kibi-daaan, o-ni-taaaaaish, oni-oni-taaaish'. I mean if I were to sing a song I would choose something melodic and beautiful, but this is sheer entertainment and she's not afraid or embarrassed of uttering such sounds, moreover to the microphone, moreover with the purpose of being recorded and sold on CDs. I surely respect her daring heart.

One of her albums surprisingly turns out to be a collection of covers. The first one is a nice attempt to create a modern song based on an oldie

Kung Fu lady - retro alive

'meguru kisetsu' - another famous song

This attempt was not as successful as the previous, I'd say, or maybe I'm biased, but I do think that no cover was ever able to retain the original pureness of Ghibli songs with their female vocals that feel like clear blue skies or pure water of a forest creek - except for the Takarazuka cover album.

'tsuki akari funwari ochite kuru yoru' - sheer cuteness

The third cover is a very cute song that was not ruined by Suiyoubi because probably the original song was equally experimental.

'hoshimeguri no uta' - sometimes you really needn't have made such covers

Finally the fourth song is a cover on Kagaya Rei's OST for his brother's 'Celestial Railroad'. Again, this song lost all its charm in Suiyoubi's performance and became just an arguable cover.

best video - 'Ra'
This is beautiful and sexy. No comment.

a failure - the whole 'Triathlon' album
You can throw tomatoes at me, but this album is ugly. Not a single song impressed me, but this is not the reason, the real problem is that all songs use such creepy combinations of sounds that it makes me have shivers. It's just physically unpleasant.

conclusion

While I totally prefer that she does not make any more covers, Suiyoubi's own songs are really great. You could say it's not sophisticated, it's not academic. I say it shouldn't be, it has that primeval feel about it that affects your body directly, at the physical level. Just today I was searching the web for what 'groove' means. It's not that I did not know, but for me it seems a feeling that is impossible to explain with words and I was trying to see if there is any understandable explanation of this term. I ultimately found a couple of very good explanations, but everywhere on the forums and websites I visited people agreed that it's easier to feel it than to express it with words. And now I think 'groove' is probably just about what Suiyoubi creates.