Over the past couple of years, Morning Musume has been expanding to different markets, and the changes are all too apparent in their long-awaited new release.

Gone are the days of the super cute sugar-laiden pop songs Morning Musume would churn out. This time around, they have even more depth than before. Rather, as much depth as a money powerhouse pop machine can get. The group is known mostly for their catchy pop songs, and all female cast. However, this time around they’ve taken some time to diversify.

Personally, I have a soft spot for those catchy pop songs. I was a little disappointed when the album had a more mature sound, and less of the Morning Musume I grew up with. This time around, I found myself hearing more ballads and even a rock tune here and there.

This album was fairly diverse. From the awesome singles like Resonant Blue and Mikan, to hints of eurobeat with Naichokaumo. Then there’s the ballads like Jounetsu no kiss wo hitotsu that are fairly solid for a ballad in a language I don’t even understand. On the rock side we have Kanashimi Twilight, which blew me away. The song is actually a spirited pop rock endeavor that doesn’t make you feel awkward.

Like with most Morning Musume albums, I will probably finding myself picking and choosing songs to play. I generally enjoy to listen to an album to its completion. I won’t hold that aspect against Platinum 9 Disc; furthermore, I feel that the whole album has some incredibly solid songs — they just don’t really sit well on the same bench.

Morning Musume’s new album, Platinum 9 Disc gets an A-. It might not be that album you’ll want to sit through from beginning to end, but instead view as an excellent collection of thirteen beautifully crafted pop songs.

You can pick up this album at JapanFiles for a mere $10. Also, if you’re near Los Angeles on 4th of July weekend, you can see Morning Musume perform at Anime Expo.

Black Flower Music proudly presents its very first podcast! Featuring co-hosts Andrew and Tony. Just sit back and listen to two dudes talk about geek stuff. We got games, music, tv, manga, anime, and all the cool stuff. BUT NO DINOSAUR MEAT. We’re casual people, so we plan on doing the show every two weeks.  Read the show notes, then we have some downloading options at the bottom.

Intro

What We’ve Been Playing

Segment: Playstation Home has a lot of bad press. What’s up with that?

The Agenda: Games, Anime, TV, Music, etc. In that order. Whatever’s new or interesting.

Oprah’s Reverse Book Club: We reccomend something to each other. Tony says Kaiji. Andrew says Moyashimon.

Housecleaning/Sign Off: This is the part where we tell you how to reach us, etc.

Related Links: The Spoony Experiment | Retsu Purae

Email us: podcast@blackflowermusic.com | Stalk us on twitter

Give us a call on skype at tearsofash, or leave a voice mail at 1-615-713-2016

Itunes

You can either use the flash player, or the direct download from the graphic below:

 01 - No Dinosaur Meat! [1:24:00m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (800)

This is the long-awaited Hyperscan proof of concept! As some of you know, I bought a Hyperscan Fall of 2008. Since then I’ve been following the homebrew scene, since you know…there’s no good games for the thing! These are cheap systems, and have some decent technologies behind them, so it would be interesting to see what could be done with it. Sadly, there was very little documentation about the system, so a lot of it had to be reverse-engineered.  Special thanks to ppcasm for releasing this.

Here’s hoping to a bright future!

For more info: http://bit.ly/riHi9