Orange Range -- Ishin Denshin （以心電信）

 

It's been a while since I wrote about an Orange Range tune. When I did my first article on the band via their hit "Locolotion" (ロコローション) from June 2004, my initial impression of them was that they were more of a hip-hop or hip-pop act. Since then, I've discovered that they have been known as a mixture rock group which combines rock with a plethora of other genres, although I don't think that they've ever infused any jazz to create fusion.

Because that initial impression of Orange Range has stuck with me over the years, I was a little surprised on hearing "Ishin Denshin". I didn't think that there was anything R&B about this upbeat song which was never made into a single but was a track on the band's 2nd original album, "musiQ" which was released in December 2004.

"Ishin Denshin" struck me as being a happy pop-rock tune about a romantic couple who may currently be separated by distance but not by spirit. In fact, it seems so upbeat that I had assumed that it was used as an anison somewhere but such wasn't the case. The other interesting thing is that the song shares the same title with a totally different tune by Yellow Magic Orchestra, right down to the slightly changed last couple of kanji as a bit of a pun. I also mentioned this in the YMO article, but the expression ishin denshin is actually written as 「以心伝心」 meaning telepathy but the title as it is for both the Orange Range and YMO songs comes across as being defined as electronic communication via the heart.

Well, how fortunate then that the mobile phone company brand au via Japanese telecommunications operator KDDI was able to use "Ishin Denshin" as their campaign tune for their products. There's nothing like a cellphone to keep the love connected. As for "musiQ", it hit No. 1 on Oricon for two weeks and ended up as the No. 1 album of 2005. It even currently occupies No. 33 on the all-time album rankings, selling more than 2 million copies.