Japan and all their bands that still remain obscure to me.
Clare being one of them. I have just discovered some of their songs on Youtube, mainly from their second album, the cassette tape “Womb Fantasy” released by the Italian label Best Kept Secret (LIE 046) in 2003.
Prior to that release they had put out a CD album titled “One Night 2001” (CAR 002) on the label Chocolat Art Returns which I have never heard before even though they had released an Orange Cake Mix album. This first album had 16 tracks, “Angel-Something Will Start-“, “Shining Star, Shining Sun”, “Stargazing”, “My Being”, “Yesterday and Today”, “One Night 2000”, “L/M/M”, “Kitten K”, “Nothing Makes Me Afraid”, “Not Here but Somewhere”, “A Boy Inside You”, “What Heaven Gives”, “Hand in Hand”, “Leave You To Me”, “SA-YO-NA-RA” and “Vaguness in Love”.
The album comes with some details about the band. Here we know that Kazu Ohno was on guitar, keyboards and programming, Yoko Takashima on vocals and keyboards and Isao Watanabe on guitar. The album art was created by Shigeki Komori and the album was recorded and produced by Room 203.
If you read the blog you’ll notice that the name Kazu Ohno is not unfamiliar. I have written about another of his projects, Tip Top Planets, before. He has also been on Room203, The Fruits Basket, Jenka and The Sun Never Sets.
After this album came “Womb Fantasy in 2003”. This time the album was recorded in 1999 at Studio K which seems to be Kazu’s own home-recording studio. The engineer for this record was Touru Isii and again the producer is Room 203 which clearly was Kazu. I suppose because of the time it took for this to release, these songs may have been demos or outtakes from the first album.
The album includes a guest guitarist, Yasuyuki Hatake.
And the tracklist was as follow, “Daze”, “Distorted Moon”, “Winged Angel” and “As You Think” on the A side and “Edge of the Top”, “Take Your Time”, “Here I Am” and “Fill My Room With Flowers” on the B side.
Two years later, in 2005, another album was released. Again on Best Kept Secret. The cassette album was titled “Easy” (LIE 098) and was recorded in 2004 again by Room 203. The songs were “Words Foil”, “Wanna Be Alone”, “Tears” and “This Life” on the A side and “Does That Answer Your Question?”, “Far Away”, “Itchy and Fidgety” and “If” on the B side.
The band would also contribute to a few compilations.
On the 2000 CD comp “Captain Circus! Chocolat Art Returns Compilation” released by the label Chocolat Art Returns (CAR 001) the band had the song “Friendship Makes the World Go Round”. A year later, 2001, the band would have songs on two compilations. First on “Prspctv” a CD comp released by the classic magazine Beikoku-Ongaku (BDBO-E0019) with the song “Something Will Start Part 2” and then on the “Bubblegum Factory” CD that Chocolat Art Returns (CAR-004) released with the track “Tears (Short version)”.
And that’s what I have. Not much background info, mostly the releases.
Where from Japan where they? Did they play many gigs? Were the other members involved in other bands? Who would know?
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Listen
Clare – As You Think
