Live Tour: Yellow Voyage

Live Tour: Yellow Voyage (Japanese pronunciation: [ɾaibɯtsɯꜜaː ieɾoːbojaꜜːdʑi]) is the third live video album by Japanese singer-songwriter and musician Gen Hoshino, released on June 22, 2016, via Speedstar Records. Alongside a tour documentary, the album features Hoshino's performance at Osaka-jō Hall during his Yellow Voyage tour, promoting his fourth studio album Yellow Dancer (2015). Issued in both DVD and Blu-ray versions, the video album was promoted with two performances uploaded to YouTube and received both standard and limited releases, with limited prints coming bundled with a booklet. Live Tour: Yellow Voyage reached number one on Oricon's DVD, Blu-ray, and music video charts, and was certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ).

Live Tour: Yellow Voyage
The album's cover art. In a similar style to the Yellow Dancer cover, it is of a crimson background scattered with everyday objects such as plates, bananas, books, and tape, with the title "YELLOW VOYAGE" in black at the top.
Live album / video by
ReleasedJune 22, 2016 (2016-06-22)
RecordedMarch 21, 2016 (2016-03-21)
VenueOsaka-jō Hall, Osaka, Japan
Length2:56:00
LanguageJapanese
LabelSpeedstar
Gen Hoshino chronology
Yellow Dancer
(2015)
Live Tour: Yellow Voyage
(2016)
Music Video Tour 2010–2017
(2017)

Background

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The Osaka-jō Hall in 2014

Japanese singer-songwriter and musician Gen Hoshino released his fourth studio album, Yellow Dancer, on December 2, 2015.[1] His first album in two and a half years since Stranger (2013), Yellow Dancer focused on incorporating black music genres such as soul, jazz, R&B, and jump blues into Hoshino's previous sound whilst trying to maintain a Japanese pop style, for a result Hoshino described as "yellow music".[2] The album was comercially successful in Japan; it reached the top spot on both the Oricon Albums and Billboard Japan's Hot Albums charts and was certified Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ) within a month of release.[3][4][5]

Alongside the album's announcement on October 14, 2015, Hoshino revealed an accompanying national touring effort, the Hoshino Gen Live Tour 2016: Yellow Voyage, with 11 shows.[2] Two more dates, at the Tokyo Nippon Budokan and Osaka-jō Hall, were later added to the performance list.[6] The Yellow Voyage tour began at the Nitori Culture Hall in Sapporo, Hokkaido, on January 9, 2016, and ended at the Osaka-jō Hall on March 21. The final performance was seen by an attendance of roughly 100,000.[7]

Promotion and release

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On May 17, 2016, Hoshino announced that the Osaka-jō Hall performance of Yellow Voyage would be released as a DVD and Blu-ray video album, titled Live Tour: Yellow Voyage. On the first disc, it would include the show's 21 performances; among the track listing were all songs from Yellow Dancer minus "Yoru", a cover of Crazy Cats' "Sūdara Bushi", and a cover of Akira Fuse's "Kimi wa Bara yori Utsukushi" by Hoshino's alter ego character Akira Fuse. The second disc would feature Odoru, Ima (踊る、今, lit. "Now, Dance"), a 45-minute documentary to the entire tour, and audio commentary from Hoshino and his collaborators were to be included for both discs.[8]

In promotion of the release, the album's performances of Yellow Dancer song "Week End" and Hoshino's debut single "Kudaranai no Naka ni" were uploaded to YouTube.[9][10] Live Tour: Yellow Voyage was released by Speedstar Records in regular and limited editions in both DVD and Blu-ray formats on June 22, 2016.[11][12] The limited editions included a special booklet containing interviews with Hoshino and a conversation between him and choreographer Mikiko.[13]

Reception

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The live album was received positively by Japanese critics. Rockin'On Japan's Shōichi Miyake, who had viewed two of the tour's shows before watching the album, described the tour as composed of "luxurious arrangement and direction", reflecting "Hoshino's serious love for music". He called Live Tour: Yellow Voyage a monumental release for Hoshino, highlighting his evolution as an artist and proving him as an entertainer.[14] Shinji Hyogo for Real Sound [ja] wrote in an article about the album that the tour prioritized music over flashy effects and a video jockey style, which he felt fit with Yellow Dancer's black music themes; instead of utilizing newer technologies and trends, he found the tour's set was simple and constructed with dancers and orchestra as enhancements of its entertainment value.[13] Hamaguchi at Tower Records Japan recalled that finishing the DVD felt like he had been at a concert hall, writing that he was surprised to have been so entertained by watching a video at home.[15]

Commercially, Live Tour: Yellow Voyage debuted at number one on Oricon's weekly DVD and Blu-ray charts dated July 4, 2016—Hoshino's first time on top of these charts—and also reached first place on the combined DVD and Blu-ray music ranking.[16] In total, it charted for 64 weeks on the DVD chart and 54 on the Blu-ray ranking.[17][18] In January 2017, the album was certified Gold by the RIAJ for 100,000 sales, becoming Hoshino's first video album to receive a certification.[19]

Track listing

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All tracks are written by Gen Hoshino expect where otherwise noted.

Disc one
  1. "Why Don't You Play in Hell?"
  2. "Bakemono"
  3. "Yuge"
  4. "Down Town"
  5. "Step"
  6. "Miss You"
  7. "Soul"
  8. "Yume no Soto e"
  9. "Crazy Crazy"
  10. "Ichiryū Musician kara no O Iwai Message"
  11. "Kuse no Uta"
  12. "Kuchizuke"
  13. "Sūdara Bushi [ja]" (Yukio Aoshima, Hiroaki Hagiwara)
  14. "Kudaranai no Naka ni"
  15. "Nerd Strut"
  16. "Sakura no Mori"
  17. "Snow Men"
  18. "Sun"
  19. "Week End"
  20. "Toki yo"
  21. "Kimi wa Bara yori Utsukushi [ja]" (Kenji Kadoya, Mickie Yoshino)
  22. "Friend Ship"
Total length: 2:11:00
Disc two
  1. "Yellow Voyage Tour Documentary: Odoru, Ima"
Total length: 45:00

Charts

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Weekly chart performance for Live Tour: Yellow Voyage (2016)
Chart (2016) Peak
position
Japanese DVDs (Oricon)[17] 1
Japanese Blu-ray Discs (Oricon)[18] 1

Certifications

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Certifications for Live Tour: Yellow Voyage
Region Certification Certified units/sales
Japan (RIAJ)[19] Gold 100,000^

^ Shipments figures based on certification alone.

Release history

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Release history for Live Tour: Yellow Voyage
Region Date Edition Format Label Catalogue code Ref.
Japan June 22, 2016 Standard DVD Speedstar Records VIBL-813~814 [20]
Blu-ray VIXL-170~171
Limited DVD VIZL-985
Blu-ray VIZL-984

References

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  1. ^ "星野 源 / YELLOW DANCER" [Gen Hoshino / Yellow Dancer]. CDJournal [ja] (in Japanese). Archived from the original on July 1, 2022. Retrieved April 11, 2024.
  2. ^ a b "星野源、2年7カ月ぶり新アルバム「Yellow Dancer」リリース決定" [Gen Hoshino to Release First New Album in 2 Years and 7 Months, Yellow Dancer]. Natalie.mu (in Japanese). October 14, 2015. Archived from the original on February 19, 2024. Retrieved April 11, 2024.
  3. ^ "Yellow Dancer" (in Japanese). Oricon. Archived from the original on April 15, 2023. Retrieved April 11, 2024.
  4. ^ "Billboard Japan Hot Albums". Billboard Japan (in Japanese). December 14, 2015. Archived from the original on April 11, 2023. Retrieved April 11, 2024.
  5. ^ "Japanese album certifications – 星野 源 – Yellow Dancer" (in Japanese). Recording Industry Association of Japan. Archived from the original on 2018-09-18. Retrieved 2024-04-11. Select 2015年12月 on the drop-down menu
  6. ^ "星野源の全国ツアー「Yellow Voyage」に武道館&城ホール公演追加" [Gen Hoshino Adds Budokan and Jo Hall Performances to National Tour Yellow Voyage]. Natalie.mu (in Japanese). January 10, 2016. Archived from the original on May 11, 2017. Retrieved April 11, 2024.
  7. ^ "星野源、約10万人動員の全国ツアーがファイナル。「また近々ツアーをしたい」" [Gen Hoshino Ends National Tour to Audience of 100 Thousand: "I want to tour again in the near future"]. Barks [ja] (in Japanese). March 22, 2016. Archived from the original on April 11, 2024. Retrieved April 11, 2024.
  8. ^ ""ニセ明"の熱唱も!星野源「Yellow Voyage」城ホール公演を映像化" [Osaka-jo Hall Performance from Gen Hoshino's Yellow Voyage to Receive Video Release]. Natalie.mu (in Japanese). May 17, 2016. Archived from the original on March 24, 2024. Retrieved April 11, 2024.
  9. ^ "星野源が煽る! 思わず踊りたくなる"Week End"ライブ映像を公開!" [Gen Hoshino Teasing Audience in Dance-Inducing "Week End" Live Performance Uploaded to YouTube!]. Rockin'On Japan (in Japanese). June 7, 2016. Archived from the original on March 22, 2024. Retrieved April 11, 2024.
  10. ^ "星野源、大阪城ホールで"くだらないの中に"を弾き語るライブ映像フル公開" [Gen Hoshino Releases Full Acoustic Performance of "Kudaranai no Naka ni" from the Osaka-jo Hall]. Rockin'On Japan (in Japanese). June 7, 2016. Archived from the original on April 11, 2024. Retrieved April 11, 2024.
  11. ^ "星野 源 / Live Tour 'Yellow Voyage'" [Gen Hoshino / Live Tour: Yellow Voyage]. CDJournal [ja] (in Japanese). Archived from the original on April 11, 2024. Retrieved April 11, 2024.
  12. ^ "星野源 - Live Tour 'Yellow Voyage'" [Gen Hoshino - Live Tour: Yellow Voyage]. Victor Entertainment. Archived from the original on February 13, 2024. Retrieved April 11, 2024.
  13. ^ a b Hyogo, Shinji (August 7, 2016). "星野源はどう音楽を伝えてきたか? 兵庫慎司がライブを素材に考察" [How Did Gen Hoshino Come to Convey His Music? Shinji Hyogo Highlights His Live Performances]. Real Sound [ja] (in Japanese). Archived from the original on February 28, 2021. Retrieved April 11, 2024.
  14. ^ Miyake, Shōichi (July 2, 2016). "完全体になった星野源の、体現" [The Embodiment of Gen Hoshino's Complete Form]. Rockin'On Japan (in Japanese). Archived from the original on May 7, 2019. Retrieved April 11, 2024.
  15. ^ Hamaguchi (November 30, 2019). "Live Tour 'Yellow Voyage' <通常盤>" [Live Tour: Yellow Voyage (Regular Edition)] (in Japanese). Tower Records Japan. Archived from the original on December 5, 2023. Retrieved May 12, 2024.
  16. ^ "星野源、映像作品でも1位獲得! オリコン映像ランキング主要3部門で1位に" [Gen Hoshino Tops Charts with Video Album! Takes First Place on Oricon's 3 Major Video Charts]. Rockin'On Japan (in Japanese). July 2, 2016. Archived from the original on April 11, 2024. Retrieved April 11, 2024.
  17. ^ a b "Live Tour 'Yellow Voyage' (DVD)" (in Japanese). Oricon. Archived from the original on April 11, 2024. Retrieved April 11, 2024.
  18. ^ a b "Live Tour 'Yellow Voyage' (Blu-ray)" (in Japanese). Oricon. Archived from the original on April 11, 2024. Retrieved April 11, 2024.
  19. ^ a b "Japanese video certifications – 星野 源 – Live Tour 'Yellow Voyage'" (in Japanese). Recording Industry Association of Japan. Select 2017年1月 on the drop-down menu
  20. ^ "星野源『Live Tour 'Yellow Voyage'』" [Gen Hoshino: Live Tour: Yellow Voyage]. Amuse Inc. Archived from the original on January 6, 2021. Retrieved April 11, 2024.
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