IGNITION

IGNITION is ASTERISM's first full album, released by Tokuma Japan Communications on 22 August 2018; the band glossed the title as kindling and burning. Its eleven-track CD came out the same day in a limited first edition with a DVD (TKCA-74647) and a regular CD-only edition (TKCA-74648). Where the two volumes of The Session had leaned on covers, nine of the eleven tracks here are originals; the two covers, Dio's "Stand Up And Shout" and the Beatles' "Helter Skelter", were picked, the members said, from their live set by audience response and their own taste. The trio was HAL-CA on guitar, MIYU on bass and MIO on drums. "BLAZE" and "Warning" were produced by the bassist Bootsy Collins, who also plays bass and adds his voice, with Buckethead on guitar. Collins had shared one of the band's videos on his Facebook page; the band asked him to take part, he agreed and brought in Buckethead. The trio recorded the songs and exchanged the recordings as files with the two, who added their own arrangements. HAL-CA wrote "BLAZE" after being moved by athletes at the Olympics, and it includes a guitar duel between her and Buckethead; MIO and MIYU drafted "Warning", and HAL-CA added the guitars. At 9:41, "DAWN" is the band's first piece of nearly ten minutes, grown by the three from a sketch of under a minute; it opens on MIYU's seven-string bass and moves from a dark, heavy first half towards light. "OVERDRIVE" had been in the live set since the band formed, "Up The Horns!" is the first recording to carry all three members' voices and is dedicated to Mr. Big, and "Disperse" came from an outside songwriter, rearranged by the band with a Japanese-style riff. The limited edition's DVD holds the music videos for "155", "Rising Moon" and "BLAZE", three live performances filmed in Fukuoka, the band's home city, and four recording-session clips. "BLAZE" came out digitally in Japan on 1 August, and the iTunes edition of the album added the bonus track "Guerilla Radio (out set Ver.)".