IRONWERK News & Updates

auncia Track Error Thursday, 20 November 2008 00:33 IRONWERK Records regrets to inform you that there was a slight printing mistake on the auncia album Beauty & Slime. The titles for track 5 Risou no Tonari and track 11 Koi monogatari have the trick titles mixed up, the correct names should be   5 Koi monogatari 11 Risou no Tonari   The correct song list would be: Beauty & Slime #1 Delete #2 Beauty Slime #3 Insane #4 Yurayura #5 Koi monogatari #6 pig telling #7 Necropolis #8 Hanairo #9 Hakuchizu #10 Abudara hasyamari #11 Risou no Tonari #12 Freak show #13 6:4 #14 Iys #15 AO to HITOMI SHIRO to KIMI   Apologies from IRONWERK Records for the mix up.

Shopping Cart open Wednesday, 08 October 2008 03:51 IRONWERK Records online store is now open for business. Featuring 3 prerelease albums from auncia, Dice & Joker and ZxIxGxZxAxG. All 3 albums are set to be released on October 31st. Also GREAT News for fans of these bands, first 150 preorders will recieve an autographed picture of the band whos cd they baught. Get 'em quick before they are all gone.   ZxIxGxZxAxG JSHOXX Radio Guests Thursday, 02 October 2008 19:15 ZxIxGxZxAxG JSHOXX Radio Guest Transcript Thursday Oct 2nd 8:00pm Pacific Standard Time: Will re air at JSHOXX radio through Oct 5th at 8:00am & 8:00pm Pacific Standard Time. http://www.jshoxx.com You can also download this transcript by clicking here Makomix: Hello JSHOXX Listeners! This is Makomix of Zigzag, Vocal Hkz: I’m the guitaris hkz Acky: This is Acky, drummer Makomix: we are so happy that we can deliver our first album “Spikey Sound System” to you in the U.S. & in Europe! So we are now going to introduce to you 4 tracks off our first album, with each members comment on the song. Hkz: “eightball”, “eightball” was a difficult song, I think Acky had the hardest time because of the specific drumming details of the song. Acky: YES IT WAS! Hkz: when I recorded the tape, I realized how hard it was, and even forgot some parts of the song, but after the song was recorded, it became a standard play list for our live performances. During the interval the rhythm changes to a 10 beat, and the fans were so surprised because of the sudden change in the rhythm. I really like it Makomix: hmmm not so much ZIGZAG: Laughter from all members Makomix: since I’m the vocal, there’s nothing for me to do since the vocal breaks are so long. Hkz: Acky, what do you think? Acky: When I first heard the song, I was like “what the hell?” it seems so difficult to play drums for. I almost gave up while practicing because it was so difficult, but finally I did it, and it’s a really good song. Hkz: next song is happy? Makomix: wait I haven’t talked yet Hkz: LOL ahhh I’m sorry Makomix: I want to talk so much about this song (Laughter from band) Acky: (to hkz) you’re always trying to skip us (laughter from band) Makomix: If you hear the name of eightball, you associate the name with billiards, but my lyrics for eightball were off a slang term meaning “misfit” or a “sad sack” (a person who means well, but is incompetent, ineffective, and is constantly in trouble) which is us (ZxIxGxZxAxG) (rest of band agrees in joking matter “BAKA DESU” laughter from band) so everyone living with dreams of money or something, so, like the people with dreams or strong beliefs, it makes living more fun, even though they fail or get put down trying to live their dreams. So, basically I want to say is the one who lives their dreams will eventually win. ZIGZAG: Strawberry! Strawberry! Strawberry! Makomix: how many times are we going to say Strawberry? (Laughter from band) Hkz: the foundation of the song was already made, but the chorus part was continuously changed, in order to get the right sound from all vocal, guitar, and drums. I think this song works good for this album. This song represents this album. I like every part of this song. Acky: It has a good Feeling (imitates song beat “gatz gatz gatz”) Makomix time ^o^ Makomix: (ichigo = strawberry, but Makomix uses it as a metaphor for this song title meaning Blood) . We’ve been together so long, if I think of ZxIxGxZxAxG as life work…, by the way the actual title of this song is “hankou strawberry”, and to me I use the word Strawberry (ichigo) to mean blood, which is what gives you life, or with no blood you die. “hankou” means to resist or to defy, but not in this case. I use the meaning of “hankou” meaning to “keep this band together” because it is so important to me. So, I didn’t use the title (resist the blood “hankou ichigo”) negatively, but in positive way. The fans get hyped up when we play this live. The title of this song is Misleading, and it’s complicated, but I put so much positive feeling into the song, that it’s a good live song. Makomix: happy? This is one of our oldest written songs. I used to play music everywhere on the street, and this was one of the songs I played. The band liked the melody, and hkz ended up combining one of his songs with it. After hkz’s song was combined with mine, we really liked it. This is one of our most popular live performance songs. Hmmmm every song is so popular (laughter from band cause he says that about every song) it’s an easy song to remember and has a catchy melody.   Hkz: I kind of got upset after I heard my recording of my voice being so high in the chorus. Makomix: But you’re the only one that could do that. Hkz: during recording I was almost crying, and kept asking Makomix to do it instead of me, or to record my voice lower. (laughter from band breaks out) Also the part is hard, constantly changing beat. Acky: Yes Makomix: We actually had a different version of the song for a single we gave away at our first live performance, and the fans really liked it. Unfortunately because the single is sold out, we are unable to let you hear the older version. Acky: hey I don’t have that single! Makomix: that’s ok I have one at my house I can give to you Acky: thank you so much (laughter from band) Makomix: Our last song Amanajaku Hkz: I came up with this song by just humming a melody one day. Usually you forget bad melody’s you come up with in your mind (Makomix added: true after you go to bed its forgotten), but this one I couldn’t forget. So I strongly believed that this was going be a good song to write. Makomix/Acky: It’s a good thing to strongly believe (followed by laughter) Hkz: To keep the same melody going would be boring so we added a heavy ending. It’s so us (ZxIxGxZxAxG Style) Acky: I like this melody a lot. I worked hard on my drumming for this song, and made sure not to ruin its good melody. Makomix: during the recording, it was easy to sing because of your drumming. Hkz: we work very hard at trying to write good songs Makomix: yeah every song is so important, but this a song that anyone can listen to and enjoy. The theme to this song is about parting ways. I really don’t like those perfect happy ending stories because its not my style, so I originally wrote this song to portray a more wicked sided story, but after I finished writing the lyrics I realized this is a positive song and that I am actually human after all (laughter follows). BUT! In the lyrics I still added the Kirai (hate) Kirai (hate) Kirai (hate) in the song. Makomix: You just listened to 4 songs Eightball, Strawberry, happy?, & Amanajaku from Spikey Sound System. We will be releasing our new album next year, not sure on exact date, but we are currently writing material for it. So please look out for it. We are ZxIxGxZxAxG Bye Bye!   DICE&JOKER JSHOXX Radio Guests Thursday, 02 October 2008 18:30 DICE&JOKER JSHOXX Radio Guest Transcript Thursday Oct 2nd 8:00pm Pacific Standard Time: Will re-air at JSHOXX radio through Oct 5th at 8:00am & 8:00pm Pacific Standard Time. http://www.jshoxx.com  You can also download this transcript by clicking here   Makki: Hello JSHOXX Listeners. We are DICE& JOKER. We are here to introduce you to our soon to be US released album Eternal Insanity   Makki: I am the Vocalist Makki   Shin: I am the guitarist Shin Makki: We are here to introduce and play some songs off our album “Eternal Insanity” for you. Shin: The first song we will like to play is track 2 “Kairi" “Kairi” was the last song we wrote for the album. We finished all the other the songs, but we were not satisfied with any of them being an opening song. So we wrote “Kairi” to be a hard hitting opening song track for the album. Makki: The first track to an album is an important track. Shin: (agreement in Japanese) Makki: The word “Kairi” is an estranged word, and even if we explain it, still many will be confused with its meaning. Because this album is a concept album about “War”, “Kairi” is about mixed emotions that come with in us during these times, such as relationships, general ideas, and existence that we abandon within ourselves. During events as “War”, you ask yourself “where is my self belief, and self ego?” So that’s why we thought this song would be a good heavy opening track. Shin: not only the album, but we use this song to open our “Live” performances as well Makki: pretty much, plus many of our fans really like this song. The arrangement of this song is also different then our other songs, and might be hard to follow… Shin: (laughs) but fans seem to like it and we have fun with this song during our live performance, and watching the reaction of the fans. Makki: Eternal Insanity Shin: Track 4 Makki: Yes Track 4 Makki: This is the first song I wrote for the album. When I wrote this song, I already had a vision of what the album would be like. It was somewhat the image of “War”. Shin: (agreement in Japanese) Makki: I was uncertain of using this concept, because in Japan the concept of “War” is not well accepted. So I was thinking & thinking, and when finished with “Eternal Insanity” I stuck to that album concept. Shin: The word “War” gives a dark image in peoples minds, and if we only talked about “War” the songs would be kind of boring, so we incorporated an original view of the world (in our songs). Makki: Shin played and arranged every guitar track, including sound effects, except the piano on this song (Eternal Insanity) Shin: I think this song has an original atmosphere/feel to it. Makki: yeah I think so too Makki: Corpse Gate, I wrote this song to be a heavy sounding track. Shin: (Laugh) I think you will know when you listen to it. It’s so “harsh” sounding   Makki: We like Heavy Metal music, so I wanted to make a heavy metal sounding song with newer styles added to it. This has a strange origin, but there is JPOP Singer Hamasaki Ayumi, and one day I was listening to one of her albums and came up with this song.   Shin: (Laughs) that’s so off base (Meaning the music style of Hamasaki Ayumi music and Dice & Joker are so far apart) Makki: Nothing related with her (laughs) but still if I listen to that song it will remind me of Corpse Gate, ummmm so there must be something related (laughs) however nobody ever believes me that this song was inspired by a Hamasaki Ayumi song. Shin: (Laughs) yeah, even now we still don’t know how he got this song from that (Hamasaki Ayumi song) Makki: (talking to himself in joking manner) I should double check and make sure.   Shin: During recording there were lots of cross vocal tracks Makki: yeah Shin: It was difficult recording. I remember we had to do it so many times Makki: I had to keep recording: “Hueeeeehh!!” Hueeeeehh!!” if I wasn’t in a recording studio I’d feel really strange (repeating just Hueeeehh Hueeeehh over again)   Shin/Makki: (laughs) Shin: yeah we did that many times Makki: Then we chose which “Hueeehhh” sound for the song Shin: you gotta listen to it   Makki: now the last song we want to introduce is “Ash” This song was a new adventure for us, because it is not a sound we usually compose. I think you all know the band “Red Hot Chili Peppers” we wanted that type of sound with this song (Californication), kind of a Dry Air sound. Shin: The image of California Makki: yeah image (laugh) the Japanese image of California Shin: so so so (agreement in Japanese) (laughs ) to us “Ash” is our image of California Makki: yeah image Shin: I think we came pretty close to the image of California Makki: I want to know if you listeners imagine California with this song (laughs) Shin: yes please (let us know) Makki: Dice & Joker is a heavy and hard band, but for the album we didn’t want just all heavy songs, that’s why I wanted to add this song. This song originally started out with a jam session (influenced by Red Hot Chili Peppers,) and in the beginning the lyrics and vocal pitch didn’t match right.   Shin: (Laughs) Makki: yeah it was so hard to match the vocals to the music, and as a vocalist this song is soo hard to sing, I was getting frustrated, and I would yell out during practice: “WHO WROTE THIS SONG?!” (laughs) then all the band members pointed their fingers at me “You Did” Shin/Makki: (Laughs) Makki: We will be releasing 2 new singles beginning January & February of next year. The experience we got from trying new songs such as Ash (just played), helped us broaden our sound, and making us a better band. Shin: but we will always maintain our heavy sound but with more melody to it Makki: so so so (agreement in Japanese) Shin/Makki: (Laugh because everything is always “so so so”) Makki: but the new singles are not the image of California Shin: (Laughs) yeah not about California, but still we got a good experience from doing “Ash” Makki: For everyone that likes the sound of Dice&Joker, please check out our new band “ALSDEAD”, however I’m not sure when you can hear it on JSHOXX. Shin: eh, but you gotta check it out MAKKI: (English)Check it out, (Japanese) please (using extreme politeness) SHIN: Also, one our members have changed   Makki: yes our bassist has changed Shin: yes our new bass player has joined, and I believe he will bring a new sound to the band. Makki: So please look forward to our new album. Makki: Dice&Joker “Eternal Insanity” everyone please buy it (laughs) “Ciao!” Shin: yes, please buy! (laughs). Makki/Shin: (English) Thank you!   DICE & JOKER End Last Updated ( Thursday, 02 October 2008 18:39 )   News page is now up Sunday, 28 September 2008 18:53 The news page is now up and running. Expect some great news about bands, tours, and other great things. Last Updated ( Thursday, 02 October 2008 18:17 )