Two days ago (May 24) the Boom Boom Satellites released their 7th album To The Loveless, and by the looks of the first video to come out of it, for the song “Drain” (to the left), they are still beating hard down the path of transe-rock, techno-rock or whatever variation they prefer these days. If watching the video makes you think that these guys watched the Matrix one day and then more or less decided they wanted to live there, it is not too long of a stretch from the time they formed the band (1997) to the date of the movie’s release (1999), and back then they were still caught up in their early explorations of fusion between spaced out jazz to spaced out rock. So in other words, the BBS sound had not yet given way to the crunching big beat sounds for which they’ve been known ever since their breakthrough album of 2005, Full of Elevating Pleasures, so conjecture on this point may be worthwhile.

The BBS sound carries extremely well live, and the duo of Michiyuki Kawashima (guitar, vocals) and Masayuki Nakano (bassist, programmer) plus a drummer has a rightly deserved reputation for hard-hitting, high-impact shows – a good nighttime slot on the White Stage would not be unmerrited. Still, To The Loveless is something of an event for the band, as it’s been almost three years since their last effort Exposed hit the CD racks. But we can already gauge that hit potential (or at the very least industry support) is high, because at least one other tracks has already appeared in a TV commercial (for Sony Bravia), which of course is the true measure of success for Japanese bands. (And if you don’t love that, check out their soundtrack for this KissMint ad and this KissMint ad and actually there’s a whole series of KissMint ads that pretty much equal their music plus model Rita Ohta. Well, I guess something has to pay for their…how should I put this…preferred state of mind?)