[Apr 2004] ayu featured in uk magazine

[appears]

this one goes out to all the fools who dared defy the thought that the uk would ever feature hamasaki in print over here... :p

its a bit late, as this magazine came out 2months ago, ive been busy with uni work thou, so apologies for the delay... also, my scanners busted, so i cant include pics yet... but will try asap.

the january issue of arena magazine for men had a supplement magazine entitled [arena guide to japan] featuring articles on culture, film, food, fashion etc... the following is a peice on j-pop, featuring ayu, albeit very dated information...

BIG IN JAPAN

Because that karaoke machine in
the corner isn't impressing anyone

Half the size of America's, and twice as big as the UK's,
the Japanese music market is the second largest in the
world, worth £1.3billion. And, like ours, it is afflicted by
the plague of pop to such an extent that it has
developed its own, deeply twee,descriptive signifer:
J-Pop, a term that seems to have attached itself
organically to the genre rather than being thought up
by a Simon Fuller-like svengali behind a teak desk.
In this world the enduring draws are Ayumi
Hamasaki and Utada Hikaru. At 23, Hamasaki is
evidence of what happens when Madonna, Britney,
J-Lo and David Beckham collide. She's a J-Pop pioneer
and its midriff-baring totem, a control freak and the
meal ticket of all her six sponsors, who include
Panasonic, Kirin lage and Kosé make-up. Last year her
record sales topped £65million (acheived by charging
£14 an album, and such stunts as producing two
different covers for her last opus, one in which she
looks white, the other black) and every single she
released went top three.
But it's Utada Hikaru who's the more credible option. A
21-year old whose debut, First Love, sold
9.5million in 1999, making it the best-selling album in
Japanese history at the time, she recorded the excellent
Neptunes-produced "Blow My Whistle" with Foxy Brown,
and had already released an English-language album
under the pseudonym of Cubic U by the time she was
just 12 or something. Scarily enough, Lenny Kravitz was
a fan at the time. She is, should it be noted, as capable
as anyone else - Céline Dion included - of producing
frankly terrifying ballads, but that's J-Pop for you.
There are many bands in Japanese pop, including
Morning Musume, their version of S Club, a mutating
mass of young girls who jump around and form sub-
groups seemingly at will(), and Plus Tech
Squeezebox, who are responsible for strummy pop that
comes complete with squeaks and oinks throughout.
Sounding a little like incidental music on Late Night
Grandstand, it's not unlike Busted sung by filthy
young women.
Elsewhere, the US-influenced hip-hop scene flourishes,
having begun stirring in the mid-Nineties. Names to drop
include Kick The Can Crew, who lay claim to Japan's
smallest rapper, the suitably titled Little. Then there's
Rip Slyme, who signed to Warners in 2000 and knocked
out the first million-selling hip-hop album in Japan,
Tokyo Classic. They walked away with three MTV
video music awards last year and have supported The
Chemical Brothers and The Pet Shop Boys. Also of note
is the producer/DJ/remixer DJ Krush, possibly Japan's
most successful artist in terms of appealing to US/UK
territories, who's worked with Guru, DJ Premiere, DJ
Shadow and The Roots.
Somewhat sexier is Ai - signed to Def Jam - touted as
the Japanese Missy Elliott, though that could be as much
for her gender and a marketing push that insists on
sticking her in tracksuits than anything else.
Closing the rock-rap divide are Loop Junction, who
actually play more acid jazz-style funk more than rock,
yet cite Metallica as a reference. They met whilst the trio
were studying at the Berklee College of Music in Boston,
which does somewhat diminish their hip-hop heritage.
Still, real-rock-wise, there are the disparate strenghts of
Polysics, a punk trio who delight in wearing wipe-clean
metallic jumpsuits and Orbital-apting glasses, which,
altogether, manage to make them look stupid. Guitar Wolf,
on the other hand, are the real deal in that they play
painfully loudly and wear leather. They also tour the
Americas and made a film, Wild Zero, in which they
save the world from zombies and UFOs using the power
of rock! Worth a spin too are the 5.6.7.8's, a girl-trio you
may have noticed thrashing their Fifties-style rock 'n' roll
in the restaurant massacre scene in Kill Bill: Volume 1.
Lastly, Maher Shalal Hash Baz (who couldn't sound less
Japanese if they tried) are based around husband and wife
Tori and Reiko Kudo. Long a presence on Tokyo's avant-
noise scene, these virtuoso types produce perfect
psychedelic pop (often cramming 40 songs into an hour)
that juxtaposes free jazz with the primitive thump of The
Shags and Can. If you need any more incentive to go
"native" when you're there, be aware that Blue had
somehow infiltrated the chart at the time of writing.

very inaccurate with the facts if their thinking the LOVEppears / appears jackets were ayus latest "opus"... shes achieved a hellova lot in the 4and a half years since then... arena seemed to prefer hickey thou: there are 5pictures included with the article, ill rate them in order of size (1=largest)
1rip slyme
2hickey
3the polysics
4dj krush
5ayumi hamasaki