Ayu

When it comes to buying albums, you expect the cheapest from me. Considering how easy it was to download mp3s, buying albums was a really stupid thing to do. I remember selling pirated CDs at 5 bucks each and sold 20 or so in sec2 lol. At some point, I had 27gb worth of mp3s and had nearly 400 AYU tracks, including all her singles, all her nonstop megamixes and remixes, bar some extremely rare ones. It's hard to say whether I was really a fan of any artiste with the amount of underground work I was doing with their music. In stoic defense, I stand by the fact that I like the music not the artiste. Anyway, it all came crashing down anyway when the drive died. I believe it did some psychological damage to me.

I think it was Karl who first introduced Ayumi Hamasaki to me in 1999? when she released LoveAppears. I believe that album had Fly High, which made her very popular. It wasn't until Seasons and Evolution when Ayumi really murdered the music industry. They are still very very good.

Her ayu-ro-mix and ayu-trance albums were all top notch. The Ayu-mi-x series (nonstop) was also quite good, but V was quite disappointing. It's amazing how DJs like Above & Beyond (aka Oceanlab), Ferry Corsten, Rank1, Warp Brothers etc even get to work with her music. I remember Tiesto saying that the trick to Vocal Trance was exotic vocals. I guess Ayu was that.

It's hard to say which of her remixes is the best. I still love Surreal (Dub's Floor Mix Tranceport 006) and Unite (Airwave Club remix). The entire Ayu-Trance 3 album was insane, but the best in there imo is Voyage (Dirt Devil's Remix).

Anyway here is the music video of Evolution!



Also a kawaii video of her nearly forgetting her lines on Voyage, again!