CHAI -- N.E.O.

Good ol' Tower Records in Shibuya. If there is one place that I always visit in the Teen Mecca, it is Tower. I did my usual detailed reconnaissance of the various floors although I really didn't stay too long on the 2nd floor with the books and magazines. I used to buy all sorts of entertainment magazines when they were up on the 7th but since getting back to Toronto for good, my interest in them basically evaporated.

Still, the other floors laden with the CDs were fair game. The 3rd floor has all of the J-Pop and in the three times that I visited Tower Records this trip, there was this incessant music by a band called CHAI blasting through the speakers. And the song was "N.E.O." which seemed to possess all sorts of things: aidoru, punk rock, DEVO among others.

And yet, looking at the official music video above, I think it's fairly clear that the members of CHAI (Mana, Kana, Yuuki and Yuna) are a fair bit older than the usual teenyboppers. According to their J-Wiki entry and their website, the band started out in late 2016 but their first album, "Pink", was only released in late October this year. CHAI delves into pop, rock and funk and describes itself as "NEO Kawaii".

"N.E.O." is one of the tracks on "Pink" and the music was relentless at Tower almost to the point where I actually thought about purchasing the album. However I held off....for now.