Oreskaband is certainly an oddity; their first CD, Ore, is a fun, entertaining musical effort that is easy to enjoy, but hard to recommend.
Ore, you see, is Japanese Ska music.
Now, Ska isn’t so much reliant on vocals as some other forms of music, and this works as a boon to Ore. The lyrics, while wholly unintelligible to anyone who isn’t a fluent Japanese speaker, SOUND cheery and upbeat, which works well with the music. The ska music itself is very good, and does the genre justice. It’s all very upbeat and catchy, and even if you’re not a fan of the genre, the music is infectiously fun to listen to. Oreskaband definitely knows what they’re doing, and Ore shows that well.
That said, assuming A.) you are a fan of ska music, and B.) you are okay with the Japanese lyrics, there’s one major issue with Ore that bears noting: it’s only slightly more than fifteen minutes long, and all but two of the tracks are less than three minutes in length. It’s a very good CD, but even as a debut effort, that’s mighty slim as full releases go. If you’re a fan of ska, or Japanese music in general, you’ll most likely find Ore to be worth the investment, but otherwise it’s hard to recommend a disc that’s really over before it gets going. And that’s a shame, too: Ore is otherwise a fun, enjoyable CD even if you’re not a fan, and aside from its length is well worth checking out just because there’s not much else that does what does, let alone as well as Oreskaband does it.
Website: Oreskaband
