Soft Ballet
| Soft Ballet | |
|---|---|
| Origin | Japan |
| Genres | |
| Years active | 1986–1995 2002–2003 |
| Labels |
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| Past members | Maki Fujii Ken Morioka Ryoichi Endo Live members Toshio Komiya Tsuguhito Tsukada Wataru Kamiryo Norihiro Isiduka Masanori Mukotaka Shingo Tomoda Takashi Fujita Hitoshi Kusonoki Naoki Hirai |
Soft Ballet was a Japanese electronic group formed in 1986. The group consisted of three members, Maki Fujii, Ken Morioka, and Ryoichi Endo, though they employed extra support members for live shows. While Soft Ballet weren't necessarily chart toppers, they had a strong cult following and were considered pioneers of modern electronic music in Japan in the 90s.
Soft Ballet was officially formed in 1986 when Ken Morioka and Ryoichi Endo (who had already been working together in a band called Volaju) joined with Maki Fujii. Together as Soft Ballet, the trio's combination of light synthpop with hard European-style EBM attracted attention for being a unique presence on the then-current Japanese music scene. After releasing a handful of songs on indie labels, the group was signed to Alfa Records in 1989 and immediately released their debut album, Earth Born. The album proved to be a success and the band toured extensively for it, leading to a concert being filmed professionally and released to home video early the next year. In this time Ken and Maki assisted famed video game composer Yuzo Koshiro with his soundtrack for The Scheme.
In 1990 the band released two albums; First came their sophomore album, Document, followed later by a "mini-album", 3 [drai]. This mini-album was intended as a showcase for each individual member, with Ken, Maki, and Ryoichi each composing and performing a song separately from the rest of the band. The three each came at it from completely different styles- Ken made a relaxing pop number, Maki made a hardcore industrial song, and Ryoichi (with Maki handling the arrangement) put together a slow, ponderous ballad- effectively showing the three completely different sides that the band mixes together to form a typical Soft Ballet song.
1991 saw the band taking a political stance with the release of one of their most successful albums of all time, 愛と平和. The album took a hard anti-war stance (most explicitly against the Gulf War) and displayed this aggression by embracing the band's industrial and EBM influence more than any of their past work. 愛と平和 was Soft Ballet's first album to reach the Oricon Top 10, and this new level of success brought them to the attention of a bigger record company, Victor Entertainment. It was also named one of the top albums from 1989-1998 in a 2004 issue of the music magazine Band Yarouze.
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