News round up

Fulfilling one of original aims of this blog, I thought I’d round up all the interesting Maaya Sakamoto related news from the past few weeks and direct you to the relevant discussion. I always post news over at Maayas.net first but I figured it would be a shame not to round things up here, especially now it’s got a spiffy layout.

New album ‘You Can’t Catch Me’ released today!
That’s right, Maaya’s latest offering was released this morning to tears of joy around the globe. There’s lively discussion going on at Maaya’s and at the Jpopmusic.com Maaya thread. I’ll try to avoid it until I’ve heard the album…There are also quite a lot of interviews relating to the album out on Japanese websites and in magazines. I’ve got my hands on the long 20,000 character (very meaty) interview in Quick Japan to start working on so expect that to start soon.

New track to be released in March: ‘April Fools’ – Tomita Lab feat. Maaya Sakamoto
The producer of track 10 of Maaya’s new album Tomita Keiichi a.k.a Tomita Lab is releasing a best album in March, and it will feature a new 5 minute track featuring Maaya. Rather exciting. He’s worked with Mika Nakashima, SMAP and Ken Hirai to name a few. If you have enough interest and money to shell out for the limited edition, it comes with a DVD documenting the creation of the track. Discussion here.

‘Tegami’ to be used as a movie theme song
The new live-action film of web-comic ‘Kimi to Boku’ (You and Me) will be released in Japanese cinemas in May. Maaya will be providing both the voice of the cat (the ‘boku’ role of the title) and the theme song: ‘Tegami’ from her new album! I don’t know why but it feels like quite a big thing for Maaya to be taking part in a live-action film…although it’s just her voice. Anyway! Discussion is part of the Maaya's ‘You Can’t Catch Me’ thread here or at JPM.

Promotional photos
I’ll just pass you on to the websites directly, but there are a lot of pretty photos about at the moment. A gallery of promo photos at Natalie.mu, the preview for the Quick Japan interview is also rather nice (click on the image to see it larger). There is also a larger cover of her new essay collection from everywhere here to have a look at.

New essay collection 'From everywhere' to be released February 21 2011
Following the large cover posted above at natalie.mu I should post this up as news too. Very exciting. Maaya's essays from when she was roaming around Europe last year (and composed 'everywhere' the song while she was at it). deltafour has already made it his goal to completely translate it over the course of the year. So keep an eye on his page.