Good morning. Konore is very good. Have some wake-up.

That one's quite energetic. The next one is chiller.

Konore is one of the members of Controversial Spark, which is the newest project of a man named Keiichi Suzuki who I borderline revere. Keiichi, who's best known in America for writing the Earthbound soundtrack, founded a group called Moonriders in the early 70s that is staggeringly, mindbendingly good. Genuinely hard to comprehend. One of their secrets was that Suzuki founded the band as a collective, democratic enterprise: all 6 of its members wrote a near-equal number of its songs, lyrics, and arrangements, all 6 produced, and all 6 played numerous instruments on most of its albums. All 6 are formidable in their own right—this is the kind of supergroup where pretty much all its surviving members own their own record companies, and were big enough deals that in the 80s each one was managing his own personal stable of boy bands—but the democratic principles of the band were a huge part of how they managed to push into such wild, ambitious territories again and again. Like I said: it's extraordinarily difficult to get a sense of the group's scope, not least of which because each member is insanely productive in his own right, and goes to equally astounding places.

All this is to say that, when Moonriders broke up, Keiichi Suzuki formed another band around similarly democratic principles—but if anything, the new group pushes those limits even further. The five members of Controversial Spark are each spaced out about a decade apart agewise: when they formed, one member was in their 20s, one was in their 30s, and so on, up to Keiichi, who was in his early 60s at the time. (The group is also mixed-gender, whereas Moonriders was all-male.) Thus far, Controversial Spark's albums have been aggressively equal: when they released their Angels of a Feather debut in 2015, they explicitly touted that each band member had contributed a song, with no one writer getting more attention than the rest.

It delights me to no end that Keiichi, who at this point is something of a musical legend, is as selfless with his projects as he is. As a solo artist, he holds his own with any of the Western rock greats, but within Moonriders, I honestly couldn't point to him as an exception to the rule: every member of the band holds their own against him, both in the band and solo. And it looks like Controversial Spark is shaping up similarly, because Konore, who is the youngest member of the group, is fucking brilliant. Her contributions to both albums (and her one song on the EP) leap out: they're energetic, surprising, and push the band to its strangest places. And holy hell can she play a guitar.

If there's any justice in the world, she'll land somewhere big.

As a solo artist, Konore's just starting off—if you've clicked every link in this little post, you've heard more than a third of her entire solo output. And unfortunately, Controversial Spark remains largely inaccessible to Western listeners: their albums don't stream anywhere, and songs off them are largely unavailable for listening. (If you're itching for more, feel free to email me, and we can try to work something out.) But Konore's two EPs are available on iTunes and suchlike, and they're worth the pennies you'd pay for 'em. 

In any event, I hope you're having a lovely morning, and I hope I could help add something nice to it!