LUMINESCENT EYE
Or, What the Bird has been up to the last two months.

Long story short, just go here : http://luminescent-eye.com/index.html
(English site doesn't have much yet but the Japanese version is mostly in English anyway so don't worry about that)





Ever since the Finale of L'7 in my awesome city of awesome, I have befriended a wonderful group of people who are not only L'Arc fans but also musicians.

I got to see the musical talent initially through cover bands that some of you will have heard of, maybe? ;3

This extended into a crazy event simply known as "the session" which is like 6 hours of Karaoke but with live music. Awesome, much?

These things were all L'Arc-centric, but it so happens that there is life beyond L'Arc, at least for some of my friends.
Some of them are actually active in the Osaka Indie music scene, so I got to go to a lot of lives.


This would have been enough for me, but almost exactly two months ago, I got much more directly involved.

(Check the profile to put faces to names. ^.^)

As it happens, one of my musicians friends, hiro (vocalist), decided to start an original band. He is tired of doing L'Arc covers and wants to develop his own style, so he wanted a band to let him do that. With that goal in mind, he teamed up with KAOL (read Kaoru, bassist and fish enthusiast), over cream soda. The soda was bad but the idea was good, so KAOL dragged in his old friend SYOTA (guitarist) whom he has known since high school. hiro has an apparent skill at discovering talented young pretty people and so he pulled Yuusuke (drummer) out of seemingly nowhere, and tada, a band existed!

Or so you'd think, but that would be far too easy.
In a strange coincidence, hiro got contacted via mixi (a social networking site for JAPAN ONLY since 2008) by a guitarist looking for a band. From the guy's videos, he seemed really skilled, so it was very tempting to make it a five man band with twin guitars.

The catch is that this new guitarist is, in fact, Alex, a Russian. Who can't speak Japanese (nor English -.-). He was getting his girlfriend to write the initial messages for him, but in order to work with the band he would need to use English.


That is when I got called up. Emailed up. Whatever.

For the stalkers on my LJ who don't know, I'm actually a professional interpreter/translator. At first I just wrote emails into English for coordination, but when the first band meeting came around, I showed up to interpret directly. With no other pay than coffee.

In case you couldn't guess, all the guys have intensely strong accents. The Russian is not that good with the Angliski, and the other four are very intensely Kansai-jin. HARD Kansai accents all around. Actually I love this fact so it's not a problem, but still woth mentioning if only because, when I did my English-to-Japanese job, KAOL pointed and shouted "OMG She's talking in Kansai-ben!". XD;
(don't hold that against him, he's adorable really. And it is pretty rare for a bird.)

Because I rock at what I do, I still managed to get things across back and forth. Woo.


The first meeting, and the first jam session, went smoothly and before long they were composing songs. SYOTA has an amazing talent for it, despite having never been in an actual band before. All the guys are very serious about this project, and as the only staff member, so am I.

I went from Interpreter to Manager, Photographer, and whatever else needs doing.
So now you know what has been eating my time, and why I haven't posted any new Chronicle translations since, oh, two months ago 8D



Now go on the site and check them out for yourself!
Be sure to check out the music demo! And tell me what you think! It will get passed on 8D

If anybody knows a good (read: active) j-indies comm where I could do some PR, please let me know!

(cross-spammed wherever I feel like it)