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Heroes (Commemorate Edition) (CD+DVD)
Denise Ho (Singer)
Following the socially conscious Ten Days in the Madhouse, Denise Ho returns with Heroes, an even more ambitious album that elevates her message about people and society into an almost mythical level. Working again with Hanjin Chen and her older brother Harris Ho (both of whom co-composed almost the entire album), Heroes takes a major step towards fixing Ten Days in the Madhouse's main problem by giving heavier emphasis on more pop-friendly compositions and less on experimental arrangements. Part of the reason is the structure they're working with. Lyricist Wyman Wong, in charge of the entire album's lyrics, worked with HOCC (Ho's nickname) to create the structure for Heroes, using the idea... [read more]
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Fever (Preorder Version) (Hong Kong Version)
Sodagreen (Singer)
Working at a rate even quicker than most Hong Kong idols, Sodagreen has released another album - the second in their series of season-based albums - only 4 months after The Daylight of Spring back in May. As the title suggests, Fever is all about the heat of the summer, which means the musical style would naturally lean towards light rock. With a mix of punk, pop-rock, and even poetry, Fever is a little more ambitious than your typical band album in its range and structure, but that doesn't make it any less enjoyable. Produced by Will Lin and arranged entirely by the band with Lin, Fever is tightly constructed with fluid pacing, masterfully carrying off the transitions between genre and... [read more]
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Box Emotions (ALBUM+DVD)(First Press Limited Edition)(Japan Version)
Superfly
Think of Superfly as Love Psychedelico reformed for a modern pop audience. Unlike the latter, whose musical style sticks closely to its 70s rock roots, Superfly uses the 70s rock genre only as a starting point and an inspiration for its pop-oriented style. Combine that with talented vocalist Shiho Ochi, and you've got the perfect crossover formula that connects the two musical styles. Even though official second member Koichi Tabo left the duo shortly after their second single in 2007 to pursue a solo career as a composer/producer, he is heavily involved in carrying the established Superfly style to second album Box Emotions, which explains why the style remains the same on their second... [read more]
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If You See Him
Tanya Chua (Singer)
When some pop musicians find an established style, they feel perfectly content to stick to it for the rest of their careers. Out of those musicians, only a lucky few can actually manage to maintain quality consistently along the way and not sound redundant. With her gentle, guitar-driven soft-rock style, Singaporean singer-songwriter Tanya Chua happens to be one of these musicians, and she maintains her usual standards here with her latest album If You See Him. While the album has the familiar soft-rock sound that has charmed Tanya fans for years, she also tweaks the formula ever-so-slightly, and the result is as relaxing and smooth as any other Tanya Chua album, even though it lacks any... [read more]
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Timeless
Khalil Fong (Singer)
Cover albums are tricky for any musician to do. Should the musician create something new at the risk of alienating fans who are so attached to the original song that anything different would be considered blasphemy? Or should the musician stick close to the style of the original songs, and risk being so faithful that the cover ceases to serve any purpose? Khalil Fong chooses to do both in Timeless, his way of paying tribute to his favorite classics, both Western and Chinese. However, Khalil has mostly picked classic songs so untouchable that he ends up becoming too restricted by his love for the songs to do anything more than pay tribute to them. More critical fans won't need to doubt... [read more]
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Opus 69
David Tao (Singer)
David Tao returns three years after the creative slump that was Beautiful with his 6th full-length album Opus 69. Taking on a predominantly rock flavor, Opus 69 strays a little bit away from the R&B style that has made him so influential, but it's also a return to the familiar genre-hybrid style of his earlier albums. However, the rock style here breaks loose from the angst and anger that initially drove his forays into rock in previous works like Black Tangerine and Ghost. For once, he actually sounds like he's having fun in the process, and the result is his best album since the 1999 game-changer I'm OK. However, David still has some steam to blow off via rock, starting with the intro... [read more]
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alan Debut Mandarin Album (CD+DVD) (Regular Edition) (Hong Kong Version)
alan (Singer)
Score one for either cross-platform marketing or just really good timing; Avex managed to expose their first signed Chinese artist alan (it's pronounced "Ah Lan") into the Greater China region twice within a year with the theme songs for the two Red Cliff films for which it served as a co-investor. Having established herself as a musician in Japan with nine singles and a Japanese-language album, alan makes her re-entry into the Greater China region with her first original Chinese-language album Orient of the Heart. But before Chinese-speaking fans get excited, Orient of the Heart is comprised almost entirely of Chinese covers of tracks from her first Japanese album Voices of Earth. Even the... [read more]
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Morning
Janice M. Vidal (Wei Lan) (Singer)
An auspicious debut and a few mediocre albums later, Janice Vidal finally gets a shot at proving her vocal talent in her native language with the English-language album Morning. With boss Leon Lai determined to not let family matters stop Janice's career, Morning is easily the young singer's most promising album since her debut in 2005, and the one with the most potential to go abroad. Written by familiar collaborators like Mark Lui and Jone Tsui, Morning offers very little in the way of pleasant surprises, though it is mostly pleasant. An altogether different type of surprise though lies in the lyrics by new Amusic talent Aarif Rahman. Filled with overused pop cliches, the words of the... [read more]
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Sanmon Gossip (Japan Version)
Shiina Ringo
Fans looking for the old Ringo Shiina may not be so happy to see her these days; the once-bad girl rocker has shown that she has evolved since the days of girl power-fueled pop-rock songs like Honnou and Koko de Kiss Shite and even experimental music like the Karuki Zamen Kuri no Hana album. Ever since the second Tokyo Jihen album Adult, Shiina has moved towards a more mature, Western-oriented jazz sound that fits her surprisingly well. On the other hand, it has also earned plenty of doubts from hardcore fans looking for the edge that attracted them in the first place. However, even these hardcore fans will sure have something to praise about Sanmon Gossip, Shiina's first full-length solo... [read more]
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Ken's Bar 2 (ALBUM+DVD)(First Press Limited Edition)(Japan Version)
Hirai Ken
In 2003, Japanese pop musician Ken Hirai managed to break through his R&B-pop mold with the album Ken's Bar, in which he covers some of his favorite Western pop songs. The lounge-style musical niche even rose a bit of controversy when Hirai took the idea of a bar too literally by serving alcohol at large concert venues, prompting concerns about promoting drunk driving. After 10 years of the Ken's Bar live concert series and six years after the first album, Hirai took the natural step and delivered a sequel. Ken's Bar 2 is more of the same from the soulful crooner, featuring 10 covers of his favorite classic and recent pop songs, some of them drastically re-arranged to fit the series' lounge... [read more]
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I Kill My Heart (ALBUM+DVD)((Japan Version)
Tommy heavenly6
I won't spend any time going into all the stories about how The Brilliant Green's lead vocalist Tomoko Kawase somehow created and began performing under the current Tommy heavenly6 alter ego. Anyone who buys what Tommy heavenly6 (or february6, her other alter ego) is selling already knows about what the possibly schizophrenic rock star is about, so it would be best to simply think of her latest album I Kill My Heart - her 3rd under the heavenly name and her 5th solo album overall - in purely musical terms. And on that, there's a little more to I Kill My Heart than just looks and created personalities. It is a deconstruction of the pop-rock genre, leaning towards a darker rock sound and... [read more]
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Last
Nicholas Tse (Singer)
After a three-year hiatus, ex-Cantopop bad boy Nicholas Tse is back with Mandarin album Last. In his late 20s, Tse is now a married man and a father, putting his career and music at a potential turning point. Should he keep up with his bad boy image, or change into a gentler, more mature pop star? While Last doesn't offer any definitive answer, it seems to blend the two paths together as a way of testing the water. And even if that's the intention of either record company honchos Ng Yu and Mani Fok (who are listed as Executive Director and Director, respectively) or Tse himself, Last is still a bit of an underwhelming comeback after a three-year hiatus from music for the rock-pop artist. The... [read more]
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H3M
Eason Chan (Singer)
Anyone expecting Eason Chan's latest Cantonese album H3M to be anything as fresh as his previous album Listen To may be a little disappointed. Written and produced along with the band for his ongoing world tour (each member, except for band leader Pal Sinn, contributes one song) as a commemorative album, Eason's first Cantonese album in 17 months is a return to his Cantopop roots from his days at the now-defunct Capital Artists. With almost no usual Eason-style genre-bending this time around, H3M consists almost entirely of easy listening Cantopop ballads made for easy consumption by the mass audiences. For fans of his later works, the album is considerably more monotonous than his recent... [read more]
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A Time For Us (CD+DVD)
Joey Yung (Singer)
With Joey Yung celebrating her 10th year in Cantopop, it's no surprise that her 14th full-length album A Time for Us doesn't deviate far from the established Joey Yung pop album formula. After all, with up-and-coming talented pop stars like Kay Tse quickly gunning for her throne, Joey and her record label have to make sure that she has the fans and the music sales to keep her at the top. Even though A Time for Us is a considerably milder and commercially appealing album than her recent works, the album does manage to maintain Joey's solid quality streak. Like Joey's 2007 album Glow, A Time for Us comprises of ten tracks from nine different composers and six different producers. As a result,... [read more]
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This Is The One (Japan Version)
Utada
| Utada Hikaru
It's ironic that Japanese-American pop star Hikaru Utada's second English-language album This Is The One flopped in the sales chart in Japan. The album, again released under the name "Utada", is the closest thing to a return to the Western R&B roots of her early Japanese career. Unlike her first English album Exodus, which confounded fans with a style that has too much genre bending for America and too much Western elements for Japan, This Is The One is definitely created with the American market in mind. To make sure of that, Utada has producing team Stargate, who's created hits for American artists like Ne-Yo and Beyonce Knowles, and Christopher "Tricky" Stewart on board to capture the... [read more]
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Next Level (Japan Version)
Hamasaki Ayumi
Another year means another album from Japanese pop diva Ayumi Hamasaki. This being her 10th album in ten years, Avex is pulling out all the stops for Next Level, offering four different types of packaging for the album. One of them is even a 2GB flash drive that includes the album in MP3 format. Talk about overblown marketing. But overblown is perfectly okay when the scale of the music easily matches Avex's marketing effort. Once again produced by Max Matsuura, Next Level is mostly comprised of a long chain of electronic instruments-driven upbeat songs to keep up with the themes of elevation and progression. While a landmark such as a musician's 10th album always seem to signal some kind of... [read more]
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Trick (ALBUM+2DVD)(First Press Limited Edition)(Japan Version)
Koda Kumi
Japan's pop princess Koda Kumi proved in 2008 that just saying the wrong thing on the radio can leave a surprisingly heavy dent on a pop star's career. After spending several months in the doghouse for her "rotten amniotic fluid" comment on nationwide radio, the queen of "ero-kakkoii" (sexy-cool) has attempted to recover her status with a concert tour and several successful singles. However, sales for her 7th original album Trick have been lower than the standards she set in the last few years. It's a little unfair to Kumi, as Trick is an energetic pop album that brings together the best of her musical styles and would've elevated her status in the J-pop world. Featuring her usual team of... [read more]
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Immortal (Regular Version)
Cheer Chen (Singer)
Very few pop artists can afford to take as much time between albums as Cheer Chen. Then again, considering her experimental streak ever since becoming an independent musician, one can say Cheer Chen isn't just another pop artist. Immortal marks her second album as an independent artist after the success of A Fabulous Adventure in late 2005. Compared to A Fabulous Adventure, Immortal feels like a heavier and certainly more personal album, pulling back slightly from the diverse musical ambitions of the former. Fans of Cheer's more pleasant brand of acoustic music may take some time to get used to a more melancholic album, but somewhere in there, they should be able to find the Cheer they know... [read more]
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Love Letter (ALBUM+DVD / Jacket A)(Japan Version)
Otsuka Ai
For the past 5 years, Ai Otsuka has embodied the unique Japanese brand of kawai bubble gum pop with hits like Sakuranbo, Happy Days, and Smily. But for her 5th full-length album Love Letter, the multi-talented 26-year old musician changes things up with a surprisingly mature effort that drifts further away from her typically energetic rock-pop than her fans may expect. As the album title suggests (like the rest of Ai's other album titles do), the theme of Love Letter is various stages of love, with each track written as an individual love letter. However, the major difference this time around is purely musical, with a heavier use of live instruments and Ai putting out her more vulnerable... [read more]
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Ten Days In The Madhouse (CD+DVD) (Limited Boxset)
Denise Ho (Singer)
After wrapping up her works so far at East Asia Records, Denise Ho delivers her most ambitious project yet with Ten Days in the Madhouse. Released with a documentary by Hong Kong director Yan Yan Mak (Butterfly) and an exhibition for charity, Denise shows that a multimedia project by a musician can be about something more important than clothing tie-ins. As the title suggests, the Ten Days in the Madhouse project is mainly out to show a kinder perspective of society's outcasts, including recovering mental patients. Having a Hong Kong pop album that's not all about broken hearts and dancing already earns it plenty of points for effort. Similar to Andy Hui's 2006 album In the Name Of... (a... [read more]
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