Wow~

Kylie Minogue's 2007 album, X, has been on repeat in my iTunes for the past 3 days. I don't know what it is about it! But I've become hooked on the songs (all but one song, which happens to be a bonus track anyway...) and I'm just glad I randomly decided to check out some of her recent music again. Her songs have some really good flow--I'm feeling even more inspired to make interesting music!

Kylie - Wow [OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO]


Kylie - In My Arms [OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO]


Kylie - 2 Hearts [OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO]

Lift The Fog Up

Here's yet another song I've fallen in love with recently. Shing02 is one of the first emcees whose lyrics really affected me. His writing is often expressive, eloquent, and full of metaphors, which really helps to inspire me both musically and personally... and one day I'm damn well gonna see him perform! ;P

Check out the music player below to listen to Lift The Fog Up, by KK + Shing02 (remixed by the absolutely awesome Eccy). If you're curious about the lyrics for this song, they are available on Shing02's website in both English and Japanese. All his other lyrics are here, for those of you who are even more curious (but maybe that's just me haha). Enjoy~~


Lift The Fog Up(Eccy Remix) - KK + Shing02

Thanks 663A!

663A's MUSIC NEIGHBOUR event on Saturday November 29th was great!! Lots of people turned up, and the response to all the performances was amazing. Thanks to everyone who attended and, of course, to Gim, Kumy, Issei, Mayuu, Yuko, Miri, Hitomi, and the many other people who helped to organize the event and kept people entertained that night!!♥

In other news, there are some new music-related projects in the works, which I'll elaborate on later... also,I'll soon be adding a brand new track to MySpace! Stay tuned~ :D

Music Neighbour Performance!

Coming up on November 29th is 663A's next music showcase, MUSIC NEIGHBOUR! I, along with many other talented people (including deejays, singers, emcees, and dancers) will be performing at this admission-free event. Look out for SoL, DJ MaA, Navarrow, Kumy, Yuko, and many others!

For more information, check out the Facebook event page or my upcoming shows info on MySpace. If you're in Toronto that weekend, I hope you can make it! :D

EDIT: Toronto emcee MASIA ONE (www.masiaone.com) is going to be the special guest on the 29th!! Another great reason to come out to this event, if you can!

Make Me Sweat

If any of you fellow Canadians have been watching the first season of So You Think You Can Dance Canada, you may recognize the song that I've recently taken a liking to. Make Me Sweat by Basement Jaxx—one of my all-time favourite music artists—first came to my attention a few weeks ago when SYTYCD couple Kaitlyn and Izaak performed a Benji Schwimmer routine. That song really stood out! There's hardly a song by Basement Jaxx that I don't enjoy, and this one is definitely no exception~ Have a listen! :D



Make Me Sweat - Basement Jaxx

It's Decided!

Although I haven't been able to push completely through my music block just yet, A-KICKS and I have decided what to name ourselves!: Full Circle is our duo name! It "only" took us 6 months to think of it haha. ;D

Apart from that, AKA KOROSHIYA is over in Japan now and planning some great music projects, and A-KICKS is composing great tracks, as always... so I'm hoping some of that inspiration will trickle over to me too! The motivation is there, but I need something to kick-start it some more. Let's see where this month takes me!

I Lost My Shoes!

Okay, so they were never really my shoes... they were actually up for auction on eBay. But still! I had formed an attachment to the orange kitten heels over the last days of the auction... only to be outbid at the last minute. haha~ Truthfully, I'm not surprised; this was my first time bidding in an auction, so I'm in the minuses on the auction-savvy scale.

I could go on and on about this (I actually just backspaced a paragraph elaborating on my kitten heel woes), but I'd rather get to the music stories! So! So... well, there's not too much to tell, actually. It seems that I've fallen into a creative rut in the past 2 weeks..! Hopefully I can get that sorted soon, though. I'd love to get some more tracks closer to completion! (Including a certain Japanese track...)

But, congratulations to Navarrow, AkA Koroshiya, Dr. PeaceMaker, and Shige for getting some exposure for their Sweet Girl track! And even more congratulations to A-KICKS for getting some great composing projects in Hiroshima!! Hopefully there'll be even more developments to mention soon--look out for news in the next month or so! Until then, Imma keep pushing myself~ Wish me luck. ♥

Time flies when you're sick.

This post is pretty long overdue because I managed to get myself sick again (thanks for giving it to me, mum! haha)... so now this post is just in time to catch the first day of September! It's a little depressing that it's "already" September, and yet I still feel like I have to wait forever to get where I want to... but anyway.

Last Saturday, on August 23rd, was 663A's third BBQ Jam party. This one was a little different to its predecessors and included a fashion show and dance showcase. I'm not actually much of a party person, so I wasn't aiming to attend the shindig initially... but I was asked to model for the fashion show for a friend's original t-shirts, so I couldn't refuse. :P Here are a couple of pictures from that night:

I look kinda giant in this one...!

Otherwise, lately I'm just aiming to work on music, as usual~ This past week hasn't been too good for that, since I'm sick, but I hope I can make some progress this week despite that. Let's see what happens!

Another new track!

Last week saw some hardcore recording and mixing from both myself and from A-KICKS, and the result is a new song called "Separate Ways"! It's a more jazzy, R&B type of song, and the track was produced by the ever-talented A-KICKS (thank you sooooo much~♥♥♥!! your tracks are always amazing). Head on over to my MySpace to listen to it! We're always working on new music, so there'll definitely be some more new tracks again soon~ :D

SUNSHINE

A new track is complete! It's another eclectic house track, entitled "SUNSHINE". Please check out my Mochalicious MySpace and listen to it~ Once again, this song was composed and mastered by A-KICKS, and it sounds amazing! There is version two of this song in the works, which will include AKA's rhymes, so I'm looking forward to seeing how that goes~~!! Keep your eyes peeled, there will be more songs completed soon. :D

On another note, Dr. PeaceMaker headed back to Japan two days ago!! By now he should be having a great time with everyone there (especially Hanaaaa~!!) so I'm more excited than sad that he had to leave Toronto. (But I still cried a little at the airport.. hahah) Good luck until we meet again Hiro~!!!

Change in Plans...

It's probably nothing new to hear that I'm planning to live in Japan for at least a year. This past spring I applied for one of the documents I'll need in order to get my passport and visa and originally I estimated that I would only have to wait until August to leave Toronto. But then August became September... and now it looks like it could be October, or November... maybe even after that! It sucks, because there are people in Japan who I want to see a.s.a.p. but it looks like the soonest possible time isn't really soon at all...!

But there's good news! Recently (today) I aced a job interview! Money is definitely something I need in order to reach my goal, so this is great. Better yet, I start on Monday! So, at least while I'm waiting to get all my documents processed I can make a fair amount of money. I'm sure I'll need it, since I'll have to live off of my savings for a while after moving to Japan--I don't expect to get hired there right away, even though I'll probably be looking for jobs as soon as I arrive.

The only thing is that I'll be working 6 days a week and finishing at 9pm every weekday night... so I'll have less time to make music while I'm working... -_-;;

But I'm aiming to keep my motivation and creativity up, and continue making new music~~! I'm extremely serious about it and I really want to be successful so there's no time to waste! I'll definitely be working on music during every spare moment. Wish me luck! :D

P.S.: We still don't have a name for our duo! Noooooooo~~!!!

AUGUST EDIT: I ditched that job already. Haha, it's a long story...

がんばらなきゃ！

As the title implies, I have to try hard! I'm pretty pumped lately and feel like there's a lot to do~ First, and most of all is recording music. The mic stand I was using to record actually belongs to AKA... and now, sadly, it's almost completely fallen apart at 663A!! But it's all good. The other day I picked one up for myself from Long & McQuade. And, although I was expecting to pay upwards of $40 or $50, luckily the stand I bought was only $30. Not too shabby!

So, now that I have a stand, I've been recording all this week~! This isn't the first time I've recorded something since A-KICKS left Toronto... but this is the first time that I'm getting some good results haha! My recording attempt back in late May was, uh... well you don't want to hear it, trust me.

In any case, the first song I started to record is just about finished! So I hope I can post that here when it's completely done. My producer and I (haha) have been talking about making a Japanese version of this song too... and that would be awesome!

And in other news... the Name Game is still going! And I'm really bad at it! We totally lucked onto the name AOA for our trio with AKA-kun, but for this duo... I got nothin'. Any suggestions?

What's in a Name

Because we have quite a number of songs together (both finished and planned), and we're aiming to shop our demo around to some record companies, A-KICKS and I are currently brainstorming as to what the name of our duo should be. The songs we've done with AKA KOROSHIYA are submitted under our trio group name AOA, but for these duet tracks we want to classify them under a separate entity.

I put together lists of ideas using a few different methods:

1. mixing the letters of our stage names together (this turned out to be harder than I imagined...),
   
2. combining our real names (but I'm told that DANIMITSU is ダサい)
   
3. putting together letters from the names of music styles that we like
   

That last idea isn't exactly a bad one but what I came up with for it was by far the worst of all my creations, maybe because we both enjoy so many different genres. To mesh them into a name leads to ridiculous results. Well, at least when I do it.

Looking for inspiration on the internet, I found that there are a few resources that attempt to help music groups and bands in this task by providing lists of names that have been suggested by other internet users. Sounds good, right? But there was pretty much no help there. On the other hand, if I ever create a metal band...

By the way, Happy Canada Day! (or what's left of it)

Limits & Laughter

So, on Wednesday I recorded a short vocal part at the end of a song that includes Dr. Peacemaker (deejay and emcee) and AKA KOROSHIYA, as well as two other performers. I figured that it's been almost a week since my voice came back, and I haven't really been coughing so I should be good to go... but while recording, I discovered that my vocal range isn't the same!! I can't get some of those high notes that I could before... so I guess my voice still has some warming up to do...

Also in the last couple of days I became unsatisfied with some new lyrics (and flow) that I put together for some new music tracks... but thankfully, last night I made some decent progress and things are getting back on track!

As far as the flow is concerned, I always want to pay attention to the little details early on. Often the recording stage is when some of those nuances can be figured out as well, but somehow I don't feel right about going into a recording session with only the basic idea of how it will work. Does that make sense? haha

On a completely different note... it looks like A-KICKS is being missed! (albeit with his former spelling... haha) I really love facebook sometimes. Sorry I stole your photos, Gim!

Music galore~!

So, it's been over a month now--1 month, 1 week and 5 days--since A-KICKS headed back to Japan from Toronto... but music production hasn't slowed down at all! He's been composing music on a daily basis, and already has some new tracks ready for vocals. It's definitely inspiring to collaborate with such a hardworking person, and he's definitely rubbed off on me lately; I finished song lyrics for a few of those new tracks, so now all that remains is the recording!

But I should mention: I got a summer cold a little over a week ago, and it made my voice disappear for a few days...! So I'm still warming up my singing voice again.

Hopefully this won't take too much longer, especially since there are music gigs to perform in! I had to miss out on singing at last night's (another performance/freestyle event at Grace O'Malley's in downtown t.o.), but I'm looking forward to the next one in two weeks~

Plus, these BBQ Jam events should be hella fun too (check them out if you're in the t.o. area!):

Beginnings

Welcome to Mochalicious! I go by the stage name O-Mocha and I'm an amateur singer-songwriter currently based in Toronto, and soon moving to Tokyo, Japan. This is going to be my space for sharing random musings, documenting recent happenings... and, most of all, for writing about my musical progression. I'll do my best to keep this up-to-date, and I hope you'll join me on my journey~ よろしくお願いします!

Until I make my first true contribution here, please feel free to migrate over to my Mochalicious MySpace music hub and listen to the music I have put together in the past few months alongside amazing singer/producer A-KICKS (♥!!) and emcees AKA KOROSHIYA and SWAY a.k.a. O-Jah Maru. Most of the tracks on my MySpace were completed this past May, but we've all been busy working on new music since then so there will definitely be new song additions over the course of the next few months. Keep your eyes peeled!