RAMPANT
Live at Kitahorie CLUB VIJON
RAMPANT
Interview by David Cirone
February 18, 2012
[excerpt]
Hiroko, your performance in “Love Spell” amps up the sexy. The breathing, the tone, it’s pretty exciting and definitely that “something new” you were talking about. What was going on with you when you were writing it?
Hiroko: As far as Love Spell” goes, there’s… well, there were a lot of thoughts about that. Like how to use your breath. You’d get tired of it if I was just perving-out the whole time, so I wanted to figure out a way to make it sexy and still keep it rock. Instead of thinking of the A melody or B melody, I was thinking of lingerie. Really. It starts with white and pink lingerie, as if saying, “Come here, come here…” Then when I drop my tone, that’s when I’m imagining black lingerie with garters and a whip! I’m saying, “Now shut up!”
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RAMPANT
GREEDY MONSTER WANTS ALL
Review by David Cirone
Opening track “Quattro” starts with a deceptively simple drum intro that blends into RAMPANT’s trademark layered guitar sound. The Osaka-based quintet knows how to get the most out of their double-guitar lineup, and the 2-minute instrumental feels like a warm-up for the hard-rock throwdown to come.
“NEED YOU” brings in Hiroko’s vocals with a tongue-in-cheek welcome, “Good morning, my baby.” The song has a familiar structure that could have easily folded into last year’s album BLOSSOM. “LOVE SPELL” is where RAMPANT starts to break new ground. The slick bass intro and heavy guitar riff get you ready for Hiroko’s sex appeal kicking into high gear. Playfulness and danger rolled into one.
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RAMPANT
Interview by David Cirone
October 18, 2010
Osaka-based hard-rock band RAMPANT has become a Japanese-indies favorite with their recent releases CHAIN and CHOICE OF LIFE. Performing regularly with female-fronted bands like Guardian Hacker, Dazzle Vision, and exist trace, the 5-member group is preparing to launch a 19-show tour to support their new mini-album BLOSSOM, available 10.27.2010 on JapanFiles.
For fans already familiar with your music, “RAMPANT” seems to be a fitting choice for a name. How did you come up with it?
Hiroko (vocals): A long time ago, when I was thinking about the band name, I was reading a book about Ryouma Sakamoto. There was a difficult word — “shouketsu” — in the book, and when I looked it up, I found a lot of English synonyms about “momentum,” for example, and the word “rampant” really stood out, so I liked it. I decided RAMPANT should be the band name.
KA+U (drums): And we’ve been building that momentum ever since! (laughs)
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