Melt Banana

After their last album "Bambi's Dilemma" which shows us pop and punk tunes with MELT-BANANA style, they released a live album under name of MELT-BANANA Lite full of noise. New album "fetch" will be their 7th album as studio recording album.

They started making this new album from January 2011, and the demos were almost finished in March 2011. And that big earthquake struck. They said, "After the earthquake something has been changed and we could not concentrate on the recording and it stopped on the way…"

After a while, they started to face to music
again. "We tried to listen to our own feeling and our own heart. We built up the songs with one sound by one sound, choosing one tone by one tone, connecting, being our natural self."

I guess that's why I feel comfortable listening to their songs.

With releasing "fetch", they are touring in USA/Canada. Since last summer 2012, they have been performing live as duo, and as their tour name "2 do what 2 fetch", they tour as duo for this tour too. It is almost 20 years since they started MELT-BANANA,
and it is quite a challenging change. Yako says, "Using PC for shows, we can have much more possibilities, like we can use more samples and more various sounds of drums and synth. We are still on the way and there are still many things that we need to do and we want to do. So far we are having fun challenging.
Trying new things is always good. ^o^"

I went to see their show several times after they changed
their style as duo, I was quite impressed because I felt no problem with them playing as duo, and I could see them stepping forward to what they explore. And it sounded "live band".

"We had been playing with human drummer and human bassist since we started band, and we ourselves need to feel band sounds on the stage. So we are trying to make the sound
real. It is difficult and can not be the same as real drum sounds, of course. But we would like to keep live aspect and we would like
people to enjoy our show as live performance, and hope people understand what we do and what we try and they enjoy our music."

Check out MELT-BANANA new album "fetch" and upcoming live shows! They always show us their new way and new challenge and possibility.

(text by R.F.)