Radwimps Asia-Europe Tour 2015
With all things Japanese, from Anime to Zen, enjoying massive popularity in the UK, it’s high time for Japanese music to finally break through the language barrier. Radwimps have enjoyed 10 years of success in Japan, and now their certified platinum-selling hit 7th studio album Batsu to maru to tsumi to / Xと○と罪と (meaning, approximately,‘Wrong & Right & Crimes &…’) is finally being rolled out internationally with a corresponding Asian and European tour.
Radwimps are a ‘rock’ band, but with popular, feel good appeal. It could be easy to dismiss Radwimps as an alternative/funky boyband making catchy J-pop, but the band’s enduring status, serious guitar riffs, and high-class stadium showmanship lend them proper credibility.
‘JikkyoChuuke’ (実況中継) has been released in Europe as a single and is the second track of 15 on the album. It has rather epic overtones; it took frontman Yojiro Noda 5 years to write this tongue-twisting tune about Buddha and God fighting. ‘Tummy’ is attractive to an international audience as it is half in English. It’s an adorably sincere ode to his wife’s tummy, in which the singer is welcoming a baby son but warning him that ‘she’ll always be mine’. The poetic lyrics are fast-paced but clearly enunciated throughout the album: a real boon for Japanese-language-studying karaoke fans!
As the album has been out in Japan since 2013, there’s loads of fab footage of gigs and the enthusiastic crowds Radwimps draw available online. Their first ever UK gig is at the O2 Academy Islington on Monday 19th October. An unmissable chance to get up close to a band in happy crowd of hundreds, rather than the tens of thousands of Radwimps fans you’d be amongst at their gigantic Japan gigs!
Radwimps Facebook / Twitter 1.1 million followers! / Website
JapaneseLondon.com has two tickets and an album to give away to a lucky reader! Please message @IsshoniVanessa on twitter. We’ll draw from the names on Saturday so you’ve still got enough time to snag your own tickets if you don’t win!
Track to try: Darma Grand Prix