Well, who were they? There are three answers to this question.
1. The Wikipedia answer: a four member jazz-punk fusion band formed in 2003 in Osaka, Japan featuring Mariko on vocals, Yoshitaka on drums, Keigo Iwami on bass, and Hajime on keyboard. Their disbandment was publicly announced by vocalist Mariko Gotō on December 25, 2010, with their last show titled "Sayonara, Gotō-san" being played on December 28.
2. My friends' answer: pretty cool, but the singer sucks
3. My answer: nothing less than the best band of the 00s.
![Posted Image]()
I will probably stand by that statement forever, since I went absolutely crazy over them from December '14 to January '15. If I was going to list my favourite songs ever, Midori would have a good 20 songs gracing the top of that list. I'm hooked! And the fact they broke up without the Western world knowing anything about them makes me very very disappointed indeed. Like, shame on you. All of you motherfuckers whining about rock music being dead just let an incredible rock band pass by under your nose!
To be fair, though, despite some popularity in Japan they were complete unknowns to the Western world. So it's unreasonable to get mad about them being underrated, especially since none of their 3 albums are available in the West. I'm gonna go ahead and make this blog post a loose history of the band, so if anyone is interested you can discover them for yourself. I promise they're it's a worthwhile listen.
note: any lyrics mentioned are my own translations, and thus probably incorrect. the track titles are probably more accurate, since a more reliable source provided them.
ファースト (First)
![Posted Image]()
This EP was their introduction to the Japanese music scene: a bizarre swing-metal hybrid, a song about witnessing a couple partaking in anal, a pop song and some throwaways. Not the ideal first impression, but everyone has to start somewhere. They definitely hadn't found their sound yet; singer/guitarist Goto Mariko growls on the opener like she's writing a screamo parody and then shrieks like a banshee on Romantikku Natsu Modo. Two of the better songs also appear on better releases, and the pop song is super boring, leaving the song about anal as the best song here. Oy vey! Luckily they got better by the time they released...
セカンド (Second)
![Posted Image]()
This is more like it! If you only heard this album, you'd be missing out on so much but you'd still find yourself with three of their best songs: Love Song is more a song about the concept of love rather than a "love-song", Goto sings lyrics like "I was deceived about love/I was taken in my him", before raising her voice to a yell in the chorus. Smell Of The City is a gorgeous closer. But the best song is easily I Want To Hear Your Voice, But I Can't, and at this point I feel I should introduce you to Midori's pianist, Hajime. He occupies this strange middle ground where he sounds classically trained but plays like a lunatic, favouring chaos over precision, and STILL managing to write beautiful parts, especially on that song.
There are good moments elsewhere, like the piano riff to Doping Noise Noise Kiss, but their good-to-insufferable ratio was still a little off at this point, and so we get ridiculous moments like Goto yelling "yes I do, yes I DOOOOOOOOO". But you know what? Most of these songs are good. And it's a short album: only 32 minutes. Brevity would become one of their running themes.
Speaking of brevity, it's EP time.
清水 (Shimizu)
![Posted Image]()
Yes, that T-shirt is official Midori merch. People are wearing that shirt right now.
Six songs here. Two of them are pretty irritating, so let's get those out of the way. Romantikku Natsu Modo originally appeared on First, and while it stood out on that EP, it's not great here. Ezojika Dansu is mostly howling and unpleasant, and not in the good ways that Midori specialise in. However, there are two cool moments: 1) when what sounds like a jet engine appears and utterly demolishes the band, and 2) the bouncy, fun bridge directly afterwards. Too bad these two moments had to appear in such a grating song!
The other four songs are cool. Love Is Sad is probably the purest dose of Midori you'll ever get, straight to the jugular. "ANTA O 1-BAN, ITOSHI TERU!" And then we get jazz-punk straight to the face. The Dog Runs is one of Goto's cooler moments on guitar, and the closer, Goodbye, is pleasant, fun and pretty adorable. That's three great Midori songs, which ain't bad.
But it's nothing compared to what happened next. NSFW album art on the way whoops too late
あらためまして、はじめまして、ミドリです。 (Hello Everyone, Nice To Meet You, We Are Midori)
![Posted Image]()
Their 5-star masterpiece. I first saw the album art in a /mu/ thread and knew I had to investigate, thrusting me into the furious world of Midori. If I've been a little over-evangelical so far, I apologise but it might get even worse here.
This album toyed with me for a good 4 months. Various songs made me pumped, others made me feel dirty, others sounded beautiful in a way that knocked me out. The opener, Suki, is a delicate acoustic tune, designed to lull you into a false sense of security. Directly after that, the most iconic moment of any Midori song happens:
"DESTORAI"
at full volume, and then the band comes in and tears everything to shreds. For the rest of the song, Goto howls, gibbers and screams in ways that humans shouldn't be able to. She sounds freaking deranged. And this is the norm for the following 30 minutes: on the next song Sad Every Day she sounds like she tried to save a loved one from death, but couldn't. The other songs are less grim and more fun, and a few of them are even beautiful, like the cascading 5 Time. Honestly I realise I've been praising this guys a little TOO excessively, so in the interest of fairness I will say that the last track kinda sucks. But that's about it, everything else rules. Basically this is one of my desert island discs and I listen to it all the time. The intensity still hasn't worn off.
So a good album indeed! But did it hold up live?
ライブ!! (Live!!)
![Posted Image]()
Spoilers: it did. All four members of the band at this point - that's Goto Mariko, Hajime, Kozen the naked drummer and Iwami the upright bassist - were furious performers. Goto in particular was a great frontwoman, playing guitar AND singing AND screaming her face off.
But no, this live EP isn't that great. The audio quality is crummy and Goto was clearly exhausted for a good few of these songs (who could blame her tbh?). I say skip it; there are several live videos on Youtube that do the band more justice. Especially this one:
Swing
By this point it was 2009, and they were basically at the top of their game. Little did anyone know they were already in their last stretch as a band. 2009 only saw the release of a live DVD (which I haven't seen yet), an absolutely terrible collab with Melon Kinenbi and a tiny inconspicuous single named Swing. I see it as more of an EP, since it contains 4 songs, three of which are among their absolute best.
Swing itself is beautiful, and another stellar moment for Hajime's piano work - it's him that keeps driving this song upwards. It feels like someone's pushing you WAY too high on a swing and you can't stop them, a very urgent song. Akan!! is a treat if you like Boredoms, which I do. And The End Of Decay features one of their absolute darkest piano riffs, it's really a song with a colossal gravitational pull.
Then 2009 came and went. Sometime in 2010 their breakup was announced, and all that was left to do was release their final album. How did it do?
Shinsekai
![Posted Image]()
Oh it did well.
Shinsekai translates to "New World", but it's also the name of a district in Osaka, with one half modelled after New York and the other modelled after Paris. It's known for many things, including relative poverty, crime, a high homeless population, a flourishing transvestite community and what's known as "the Tower of Heaven". It's also where Goto Mariko grew up.
This is basically a pop album, but it's one that only Midori could make. By which I mean, there's grindcore all over the damn thing, but yet half the tracks are either blissful or catchy. Sayonara, Perfect World is a highlight easily, and an example of one of the noisier tracks; then there's Spring Mellow, a piano ballad in which Hajime gets lead vocals! He has such a soft voice, and it's great to hear him duet with Goto.
It's an interesting album because it really feels like a finale. Like they knew they had to go out with a bang, so they smoothed out all the kinks in their sound and just went for it. Every song feels climactic, like they're building to something. And the sense of closure even permeates the lyrics. Like, there's a stanza in the song Speed Beat which I translate as:
"Tomorrow, if the world is ending, sadness will disappear.
You do not choose me.
How, nice, if, if there is a continuation, I want to kiss in front of people,
Embrace until we break, I'm kidding, romantic"
It's one of the best lyrics Goto ever wrote, I think.
And then they broke up.
Where are they now?
Goto did what every frontman or frontwoman did and started a solo career, which hasn't really taken off yet. Hajime has put out an EDM EP under the name Hajimetal. As for Kozen and Iwami, who knows? I assume they took up desk jobs or something. The band as a whole performed their last concert, entitled Sayonara Goto-San, in late 2010. A DVD came out, and that DVD is the last Midori-related thing you can still buy.
So that's their 7 year run. If you're interested in what their music actually sounds like, sadly it was never printed in the States or the Kingdom, so you have three options: a) get a Japanese import,![B)]()
download their music from somewhere or c) listen to Youtube videos! I'm gonna list a few down below for that purpose. There's also a couple download links for parts of their catalogue.
http://lolhipsterslol.blogspot.co.uk/2011/06/midori.html - some Midori albums for download
http://japansmusicworld.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/midori.html - much of the same
1. The Wikipedia answer: a four member jazz-punk fusion band formed in 2003 in Osaka, Japan featuring Mariko on vocals, Yoshitaka on drums, Keigo Iwami on bass, and Hajime on keyboard. Their disbandment was publicly announced by vocalist Mariko Gotō on December 25, 2010, with their last show titled "Sayonara, Gotō-san" being played on December 28.
2. My friends' answer: pretty cool, but the singer sucks
3. My answer: nothing less than the best band of the 00s.
I will probably stand by that statement forever, since I went absolutely crazy over them from December '14 to January '15. If I was going to list my favourite songs ever, Midori would have a good 20 songs gracing the top of that list. I'm hooked! And the fact they broke up without the Western world knowing anything about them makes me very very disappointed indeed. Like, shame on you. All of you motherfuckers whining about rock music being dead just let an incredible rock band pass by under your nose!
To be fair, though, despite some popularity in Japan they were complete unknowns to the Western world. So it's unreasonable to get mad about them being underrated, especially since none of their 3 albums are available in the West. I'm gonna go ahead and make this blog post a loose history of the band, so if anyone is interested you can discover them for yourself. I promise they're it's a worthwhile listen.
note: any lyrics mentioned are my own translations, and thus probably incorrect. the track titles are probably more accurate, since a more reliable source provided them.
ファースト (First)
This EP was their introduction to the Japanese music scene: a bizarre swing-metal hybrid, a song about witnessing a couple partaking in anal, a pop song and some throwaways. Not the ideal first impression, but everyone has to start somewhere. They definitely hadn't found their sound yet; singer/guitarist Goto Mariko growls on the opener like she's writing a screamo parody and then shrieks like a banshee on Romantikku Natsu Modo. Two of the better songs also appear on better releases, and the pop song is super boring, leaving the song about anal as the best song here. Oy vey! Luckily they got better by the time they released...
セカンド (Second)
This is more like it! If you only heard this album, you'd be missing out on so much but you'd still find yourself with three of their best songs: Love Song is more a song about the concept of love rather than a "love-song", Goto sings lyrics like "I was deceived about love/I was taken in my him", before raising her voice to a yell in the chorus. Smell Of The City is a gorgeous closer. But the best song is easily I Want To Hear Your Voice, But I Can't, and at this point I feel I should introduce you to Midori's pianist, Hajime. He occupies this strange middle ground where he sounds classically trained but plays like a lunatic, favouring chaos over precision, and STILL managing to write beautiful parts, especially on that song.
There are good moments elsewhere, like the piano riff to Doping Noise Noise Kiss, but their good-to-insufferable ratio was still a little off at this point, and so we get ridiculous moments like Goto yelling "yes I do, yes I DOOOOOOOOO". But you know what? Most of these songs are good. And it's a short album: only 32 minutes. Brevity would become one of their running themes.
Speaking of brevity, it's EP time.
清水 (Shimizu)
Yes, that T-shirt is official Midori merch. People are wearing that shirt right now.
Six songs here. Two of them are pretty irritating, so let's get those out of the way. Romantikku Natsu Modo originally appeared on First, and while it stood out on that EP, it's not great here. Ezojika Dansu is mostly howling and unpleasant, and not in the good ways that Midori specialise in. However, there are two cool moments: 1) when what sounds like a jet engine appears and utterly demolishes the band, and 2) the bouncy, fun bridge directly afterwards. Too bad these two moments had to appear in such a grating song!
The other four songs are cool. Love Is Sad is probably the purest dose of Midori you'll ever get, straight to the jugular. "ANTA O 1-BAN, ITOSHI TERU!" And then we get jazz-punk straight to the face. The Dog Runs is one of Goto's cooler moments on guitar, and the closer, Goodbye, is pleasant, fun and pretty adorable. That's three great Midori songs, which ain't bad.
But it's nothing compared to what happened next. NSFW album art on the way whoops too late
あらためまして、はじめまして、ミドリです。 (Hello Everyone, Nice To Meet You, We Are Midori)
Their 5-star masterpiece. I first saw the album art in a /mu/ thread and knew I had to investigate, thrusting me into the furious world of Midori. If I've been a little over-evangelical so far, I apologise but it might get even worse here.
This album toyed with me for a good 4 months. Various songs made me pumped, others made me feel dirty, others sounded beautiful in a way that knocked me out. The opener, Suki, is a delicate acoustic tune, designed to lull you into a false sense of security. Directly after that, the most iconic moment of any Midori song happens:
"DESTORAI"
at full volume, and then the band comes in and tears everything to shreds. For the rest of the song, Goto howls, gibbers and screams in ways that humans shouldn't be able to. She sounds freaking deranged. And this is the norm for the following 30 minutes: on the next song Sad Every Day she sounds like she tried to save a loved one from death, but couldn't. The other songs are less grim and more fun, and a few of them are even beautiful, like the cascading 5 Time. Honestly I realise I've been praising this guys a little TOO excessively, so in the interest of fairness I will say that the last track kinda sucks. But that's about it, everything else rules. Basically this is one of my desert island discs and I listen to it all the time. The intensity still hasn't worn off.
So a good album indeed! But did it hold up live?
ライブ!! (Live!!)
Spoilers: it did. All four members of the band at this point - that's Goto Mariko, Hajime, Kozen the naked drummer and Iwami the upright bassist - were furious performers. Goto in particular was a great frontwoman, playing guitar AND singing AND screaming her face off.
But no, this live EP isn't that great. The audio quality is crummy and Goto was clearly exhausted for a good few of these songs (who could blame her tbh?). I say skip it; there are several live videos on Youtube that do the band more justice. Especially this one:
Swing
By this point it was 2009, and they were basically at the top of their game. Little did anyone know they were already in their last stretch as a band. 2009 only saw the release of a live DVD (which I haven't seen yet), an absolutely terrible collab with Melon Kinenbi and a tiny inconspicuous single named Swing. I see it as more of an EP, since it contains 4 songs, three of which are among their absolute best.
Swing itself is beautiful, and another stellar moment for Hajime's piano work - it's him that keeps driving this song upwards. It feels like someone's pushing you WAY too high on a swing and you can't stop them, a very urgent song. Akan!! is a treat if you like Boredoms, which I do. And The End Of Decay features one of their absolute darkest piano riffs, it's really a song with a colossal gravitational pull.
Then 2009 came and went. Sometime in 2010 their breakup was announced, and all that was left to do was release their final album. How did it do?
Shinsekai
Oh it did well.
Shinsekai translates to "New World", but it's also the name of a district in Osaka, with one half modelled after New York and the other modelled after Paris. It's known for many things, including relative poverty, crime, a high homeless population, a flourishing transvestite community and what's known as "the Tower of Heaven". It's also where Goto Mariko grew up.
This is basically a pop album, but it's one that only Midori could make. By which I mean, there's grindcore all over the damn thing, but yet half the tracks are either blissful or catchy. Sayonara, Perfect World is a highlight easily, and an example of one of the noisier tracks; then there's Spring Mellow, a piano ballad in which Hajime gets lead vocals! He has such a soft voice, and it's great to hear him duet with Goto.
It's an interesting album because it really feels like a finale. Like they knew they had to go out with a bang, so they smoothed out all the kinks in their sound and just went for it. Every song feels climactic, like they're building to something. And the sense of closure even permeates the lyrics. Like, there's a stanza in the song Speed Beat which I translate as:
"Tomorrow, if the world is ending, sadness will disappear.
You do not choose me.
How, nice, if, if there is a continuation, I want to kiss in front of people,
Embrace until we break, I'm kidding, romantic"
It's one of the best lyrics Goto ever wrote, I think.
And then they broke up.
Where are they now?
Goto did what every frontman or frontwoman did and started a solo career, which hasn't really taken off yet. Hajime has put out an EDM EP under the name Hajimetal. As for Kozen and Iwami, who knows? I assume they took up desk jobs or something. The band as a whole performed their last concert, entitled Sayonara Goto-San, in late 2010. A DVD came out, and that DVD is the last Midori-related thing you can still buy.
So that's their 7 year run. If you're interested in what their music actually sounds like, sadly it was never printed in the States or the Kingdom, so you have three options: a) get a Japanese import,
download their music from somewhere or c) listen to Youtube videos! I'm gonna list a few down below for that purpose. There's also a couple download links for parts of their catalogue.http://lolhipsterslol.blogspot.co.uk/2011/06/midori.html - some Midori albums for download
http://japansmusicworld.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/midori.html - much of the same