Sora

For those who don't like to read: Sora is a really great band. Go for the gold and download.

Sora is:

Kenta Uchida: Gu/Vo

Noriyoshi Mitamura: Gu/Vo

Yusuke Sakamoto: Ba

Nero Yamaguchi: Dr

Sora's music is a little weird to me. It's like they want to be apart of the whole indie/emo thing in Japan, but fuck it, they want to screamo hard as well. Their earlier sounds (primarily the Demo and Doors split) have a much rawer, but that may be lent much more to their poorer recording quality (not that it detracts anything). The great thing going through Sora's entire discography though (and it's a short one) is that, even through their short life, they have managed to up their game quite considerably, as I feel there is a noticeable difference between their demo tracks, and their latest mini album, 耳鳴りとその訳.

Sora - "Mushoku no Keshiki"

For me, the difference not only lies in the change of production quality, but song writing as whole (did I just repeat myself? Probably, but not giving a fuck goes a long way). Their newest (and newest is used loosely, I think this came out in 2010?) mini album 耳鳴りとその訳 shows this way obvious jump in song writing. Not only is the re-recording of one of their demo songs, Sora no Shita, sounding way better, but their guitar parts are also vastly improved. The greatest example of this is in the song Last Days, which has some really killer fucking riffs (no really, super killer, fucking riffs). The interesting part about this mini album is the vocal delivery. Sora has always teetered on the indie/emo delivery and just straight ripping their vocals, but they make a switch on this mini album towards just more indie/emo delivery. The majority of this mini album revolves around this progression in sound. It's a lot more focused on their guitar playing (which I would like to point out here, it doesn't sound as "bright" as the rest of the scene, and instead seems to have a little distortion/or whatever in it. It's really refreshing to hear something different.) and what I find to be some fantastic drumming as well.

Sora - "Last Days"

I have no idea what Sora is up to now. Their website says their still playing live shows, and their twitter is still active. I read some blog post a year or two ago that said these guys were on their way to recording some new tracks, so hopefully they're still up to that. Other than that, download it and get to listening. Also, sorry the 2nd track on いつかのテープレコーダーCDep is shitty quality. It's all I can find because my original download had a corrupted file, and the only available was from some jackass who ripped the cd at 128kbps and 22050Hz (SERIOUSLY, WHO DOES THIS?).

Demo

Doors (only their songs)

いつかのテープレコーダーCDep

耳鳴りとその訳

You can also buy 耳鳴りとその訳 from Go Forward Keep