Tracklisting:

Side A

1. Starry sky

Side B

1. Reality
2. Sugarless GIRL

Starry sky is capsules seventh 12″ analog single. All tracks can also be found on their album “Sugarless GiRL. It was released on December 13, 2006.

Album Cover:

I’ve never been to extremely fond of Capsules covers, and this is no exception. It’s really dull and boring. Seriously, a blue background with the title of the single on it? I could have done this in 5 minutes with Paint.

The Digital Stuff You Listen To:

Starry Sky makes a sudden introduction with some pretty heavy and “grungy” synth which I actually quite like. The song surprises me even more when a rough electric guitar comes in with a robotic voice saying “welcome to my world”. It gets even better when the more synth comes in and you can’t help but start rocking your head or tapping your feet to this song. It may be a minute and a half, but it feels short. As soon as Toshiko comes in though, I just fall in love with the song even more. Toshiko has a much deeper and rougher voice compared to most other techno pop artists, and in combination with a slightly rough vocoder makes her sound very unique and interesting to listen to. Overall, this song was quite a surprise, and it’s really worth a listen. You gotta love that electric guitar too.

Now on to the B-sides. REALiTY starts off with this cool “mischievous” sound that you often hear in dramatic scenes in movies, and then some awesome funky disco like synth comes in. Now this is where you get to here Nakata make use of stock vocals more, and it actually kinda works in this song. The man singing in this song makes it sound pretty cool, and gives it a different sound. However, while the song is interesting, and the synth is addicting, the song tends to drag on, and I’d like to actually hear Toshiko sing more.

Kay, so this is what really bothered me. Can someone explain to me WHY they made Sugarless GiRL a B-side? Seriously. Sugarless Girl is the REASON WHY I decided to try out their Sugarless Girl album. This song is definitely not B-side material, it’s A-side stuff. Compared to most of Capsules works, Sugarless Girl is more reminiscent of the stuff of Perfume, and I actually think they should delve more into it. For once, Toshiko is actually the main vocalist of the song, and there is no unneeded stock audio going around. The song is insanely catchy, and the fact that Toshiko has a much deeper rougher voice compared to other J-tek acts makes this song even more amazing. Even though the first half of the song is the same as the other half, I don’t really care. It’s catchy, and the most memorable song on the album itself, and in this single. I always seem to find myself singing along to this song because of how simple the melody of this song is, and how…thick and sticky Toshikos voice is. Also, the use of an acoustic guitar in this song was pure genius.

The Promotional Video:

Luckily, there was no music video for Starry Sky, but instead, Sugarless GiRL, which I think was appropriate. The music video is actually painfully simple at some parts (there are parts where there is actually a black and white Windows screensaver being used). However, I loved how they displayed the vocalist Toshiko. I loved how they used those bars that you see on stereos when music is being played to display Toshiko so it looks like certain parts of her are coming up and down. Plus, Toshiko is really pretty, despite looking like a pig/cat at times. The only thing I really don’t like about this video are the short creepy shots of insomniac Nakata.

Overall Rating:

5 out of 5