Chouchou is an indie duo with a pretty solid fanbase and a great, jazzy-ambient sound (think Massive Attack or Morcheeba with some J-Pop hooks) that's about to launch its 10 year anniversary album. (On February 23, to be exact -- follow them on Twitter for updates.) As longtime readers may remember, Chouchou originally launched in Second Life, with the two members performing live in SL from two parts of the world:
Though Japanese by birth, she tells me, juliet Heberle has lived in New York City for the last decade; Arabesque is based in Tokyo, and the two have never met in real life. He transmits his music digitally, she records her vocals over them, and in Second Life, they perform live together while several thousand miles away. "He hears what I hear," says juliet, "so I easily know what he wants for each song without asking him. I think that's why we can grow our music together."
In fact, some years ago they were once rated the top music group in Second Life. So unsurprisingly, this new album features many songs first launched during their SL performances:
"Old songs like sputnik, TRICKER, neverland, gravity, B612, sign, dawn, 空知らぬ雨、空に知られぬ雪, spira, eterna, r.i.p., torso and sign 0 are well-known for SL users," Chouchou singer juliet Herbele tells me. Sad to say, they haven't had time to perform in Second Life in recent years, and their beautiful, immersive music video sim is gone. But their machinima music videos are still online, and they're great -- here's some favorites:
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