Laugh & Peace – Sunny Day

The J-pop rampage continues…. I first came across this song in ye olde PlayStation 1 days (before there was even a need to call it the PS1) when it was featured on a rhythm video game called Vib Ribbon (official site, wikipedia). To you old skool gamers, think Parappa The Rappa, the newer of you think Guitar Hero without the guitar. Anyway, there were a load of great songs on the game that you had to destroy the skin on your thumb in time to, but as ever I knew nothing else of the music for years.

Then, last year I decided to go figure out where the hell all these great tunes came for. Turns out they were produced by the same band, a Japanese J-Pop band called Laugh & Peace (official site, last.fm).

A little more searching led me to downloads of most of the game material and I’ve been enjoying the random broken english and fluctuating tempo ever since (remember, this stuff was made for a game in which you score points for pressing buttons in time with the music, tempo changes make it more fun). I’ve included Sunny Day, seemingly a love song and the only one sung mostly in English, and also the one that stuck in my head most during the years in which I had nothing but a demo of an obscure 10 year old game, but the rest are just as good. If you wanna hear more, check out the Vib Ribbon MySpace page.

– Christopher