Takeshi Terauchi (寺内タケシ, Terauchi Takeshi, born January 17, 1939 in Tsuchiura, Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan), also known as Terry, is a Japanese instrumental rock guitarist. His preferred guitar is a black Mosrite with a white pickguard. His guitar sound is characterized by frenetic picking, heavy use of tremolo picking and frequent use of his guitar's vibrato arm…
Audio Active were one of the most successful reggae fusion bands to come out of Japan, and were formed in 1987, originally being a solo project of singer Masa. It later stretched out to be a full band in 1991, when 2DD, Shigemoto Nanao and bassist Takeshi Akimoto all joined. Masa had listened to reggae since he was a teenager, and had played (with 2DD) in the ska band Vital Connection, before taking his love of roots reggae and dub music and forming Audio Active, named after an album by Dennis Bovell. Adrian Sherwood began working with the band in 1992, and produced many of their recordings…
Joe Hisaishi, the acclaimed Japanese composer behind some of the world’s best-loved anime films, has announced his new album, Dream Songs: The Essential Joe Hisaishi, will be released on 21 February. On the same day thirty albums from the composer’s extensive catalogue will be released on streaming services worldwide for the first time ever.
"T-SQUARE alpha" started its activities as a unit form of Takeshi Itoh and Satoshi Bandoh 44 years after his professional debut in 1978. The name T-SQUARE alpha has the meaning of plus alpha that something is added freely to the next…
José James spent a decade reshaping jazz with the genre-blurring verve of a crate-digging beat guru, before becoming a solo R&B star. The last couple years he lived in Bill Withers' shoes — recording and touring his legendary songbook for the Lean On Me project. Now, the satin-voiced songwriter's latest is No Beginning No End 2, a sequel to his 2013 album that resurrects the bold eclecticism audiences first fell in love with. After the Bill Withers tour, James recalls: “I wrote a thing on Instagram saying I was thinking about No Beginning No End 2 and people went insane. They wrote thousands of comments about how the first one changed their life. I don't sit around and think 'my work is so important' so that was kinda nice."