Suilen

Tokyo-based duo Suilen follow in pretty much from where band member Maki Fujii’s prior outfit, Gentle Ballet, left away. That group, which got its name from its people’ two preferred performers, Soft Cell and Spandau Ballet, up to date the early-’80s synth pop audio using the tougher digital beats of commercial music and severe key pad stabs of Italian home music. Made up of multi-instrumentalist Fujii and vocalist Shakuyaku, Suilen perform at least sluggish things down a little for the post-millennial age group, the group’s atmospheric audio owing as very much to ’90s/early-’00s trip-hop as ’80s synth pop, its picture even more sullen goth than flamboyant New Romanticic. Suilen (Japanese for drinking water lily) created in 2001, still 2 yrs before Soft Ballet break up for the next — and last — period. While an associate of Soft Ballet, Fujii experienced also dabbled with additional projects beyond your music group, playing in Schaft, with Buck-Tick’s Hisashi Imai, liberating a single recording on Polydor, and developing the short-lived She-Shell. Nonetheless it was to Suilen that he switched his attentions after Soft Ballet’s dissolution, recruiting the distinctive-looking vocalist/songwriter Shakuyaku, who sings in both Japanese and British, to front side the group. Shakuyaku had not been a newcomer towards the music business — during becoming a member of she was looking to get her single career off the bottom. It was not really until 2004 that this band performed their first concert events, in Yokohama, but since that time Suilen have held their live schedules to the very least, preferring to focus on documenting. The duo’s debut record, Neo Haramu, premiered in 2007 on Tearbridge Productions, the same subsidiary of Avex Trax that also grips the Go! Group in Japan. Second record Hita Hita implemented in 2008. Another record, Licca No Ne, was released in ’09 2009.