That’s right Crushers! Both Johnny Gioeli and Jun Senoue will be attending this years Summer of Sonic festival at ‘The Pavilion’ in London on the 7th of August, hosted by ‘The Sonic Stadium.’ The official ‘Summer of Sonic’ 2010 blog has been updated with the news confirming the attendance of our favourite singer and guitarist, and here’s a snippet of the juicy bits;

Jun and Johnny will also be answering any questions you might have in a Crush 40 Q&A event on stage. They will also be available for a quick chat in the afternoon in a meet and greet session, where you can bring along your Crush 40 memorabilia to have signed!

Not only this, but we are delighted that Crush 40 will be treating Summer of Sonic fans to a very special Summer of Sonic Crush 40 performance on stage at the end of the show, playing a selection of fan-favourites that will rock you to your core!

A massive thank you to Adam ‘T-Bird’ Tuff and Kevin Eva for their special part in bringing Crush40 to London, and another massive thank you for all the other ‘Summer of Sonic’ organisers for putting sweat and tears into organising the only true Sonic event for hardcore fans. We all owe them a drink.

For the full story, head over to The Official ‘Summer of Sonic’ blog!

-Martin

Crush40.net

One of our forum regulars Jenn (djtifaheart) was lucky enough to attend a live performance from Jun’s side-band ‘Kazaly’ and has started a thread with a complete run-down of the show! Kazaly features Shikyoh Iwasaka on vocals, Jun Senoue on guitar, Nabeo on bass and Act. on drums.

The show began at 7:00pm at ‘The Live Station’ in Meguro in Tokyo. Also, a Jun Senoue performance isn’t complete without a couple of live Sonic songs, and Jun didn’t disappoint. He performed a live acoustic version of ‘Sonic Heroes’ and ‘Believe In Myself,’ which he later confessed to Jenn was done especially because he knew she was going! Which meant she also got to meet the man himself. He certainly knows how to treat his fans! For the full review and a mountain of pictures, head over to djtifaheart’s thread in the JunSenoue.com forums…

RadioSEGA is hosting a ‘music from Jun Senoue’ special this Friday (28th May) at 9PM UK time (GMT+1), and RadioSEGA DJ ‘ResidentSD’ is taking requests right here in the JunSenoue.com Forums! As it’s a SEGA radio station it will feature Jun’s work with SEGA games exclusively, so no JxJ / Kazaly etc but there’s still a huge database of tracks to choose from. If you’re stuck for choice, be sure to check out the playlist!

For details on how to listen to RadioSEGA and request a song, click here! (you must be a JunSenoue.com member to request a song via the forums).

Update: Requests are now officially closed due to the overwhelming amount! I’m sure that even if you didn’t get a request in on time, your song will be in there somewhere. Or at the very least, you’ll enjoy the rest of the tracks! Remember, tomorrow (Friday) at 9pm UK time, which is GMT +1. Timezones can be found here (UK is listed under ‘London’).

Update 2: If you missed the show, you now have the opportunity to download the two and a half hour podcast along with the hour and a half ‘XTRA’ podcast that was cut due to time restraints! The show was absolutely fantastic, and props to ‘ResidentSD’ for the professional and entertaining execution of it, not to mention the support of Jun Senoue. Hopefully we’ll see another Jun Senoue themed show! Until then, you can download Friday’s podcasts here. Enjoy!

-Martin

Just a quick update to say that the forums are down for the moment due to a silly SQL database error. I’m out of town until tomorrow but I’ll have them back online soon!

The forums are back online!

Martin

As promised, here is the final part to the Tokyo 2010 interview with the fan-submitted questions and a couple of extra pictures! Enjoy…

T-Bird: Ok Jun, I’ve got some questions from the fans here! First off is from ibbod0; how did you meet Johnny and the rest of Crush 40?

Jun:  Wow, good question…actually, I was a huge fan of Hardline. Usually when I compose the songs and write the melody, I think about who would make a suitable singer for the song or a good singer for the melody or something like that. With the song “It Doesn’t Matter”, the original version for Sonic Adventure, it has a very high note-melody. When I was writing it I thought Tony Harnell would be the ideal singer, and in the end he performed on that song; this in now my way of composing. Talking about “Open Your Heart”, I had Johnny in mind, but I did not have any direct contact with him. Actually my friend who lives in Los Angeles knows Doug Aldrich [The guitarist for Whitesnake these days! – T] . For a short time Doug played in one of Johnny’s previous bands, Brunette, and I knew they still had a good relationship and that Johnny had appeared on Doug’s first solo release [on a track called “Face Down” on the album Alter Ego – T]. That meant maybe Doug could get in contact with Johnny, and so I asked my friend to get in contact with Doug, then Dough got in contact with Johnny…and that’s how I first got in touch with him.

T-Bird: Ok, so SoA, Admin for the js.com forums asks, if say you had to replace Johnny, and of course that would be an impossible task, who would you ideally want as your dream replacement?

Jun:  Replacement?

T-Bird: Yes…if you had to.

Jun: That would mean Crush 40 would be disbanded, seeing as Crush 40 is the teaming of Johnny and myself, in which case you would need to find a replacement for both of us! The lack of me or lack of Johnny would mean…yeah (laughs).

T-Bird: Great answer – I honestly don’t think you could replace him either! Thirdly, Sonic1991 asks how did the collaboration with Emma Gelotte, Tinna Karlsdotter and the legend that is Marty Friedman [Legendary because he was the guitarist on my favourite Megadeth album! – T] come around for the track “With Me”?

Jun: I wrote that song for the final boss in the Black Knight, and I so first I tried to find the female singers for that song. One of my friends in a Japanese record company takes care of dealings with All Ends [Tinna & Emma’s band], and so that’s how I got in touch with them. With Marty, although he was now living in Japan, I didn’t know him personally. I didn’t know his manager or any of the other business guys who dealt with him, so I asked him directly. Originally I planned to ask him to play all of the guitar stuff, but when he came into the studio, he said “hey, we should just keep these backing tracks!” We booked the studio here in Tokyo to record the lyrics and Marty’s guitar solo, but then the other guys came into the studio and wanted me to change the key, so I said “please give me one hour!” Since we use Pro-Tools, it was easy enough to raise the track one note, but it did not have very good clarity. We changed the key digitally anyway, then tracked the vocals, then Marty tracked his guitar. I went back later on and tracked all of the backing guitar in the correct key.

Originally my idea was to have that song in a lower key, and in fact we [Crush 40] did the demo in that much lower key, and that was featured on the Sonic and the Black Knight “Face to Faith” album and it is much heavier. (Ha! I was right after-all! – Martin)

T-Bird: I think a lot of fans liked hearing a heavier version…and thanks for sharing the story! Short question: BlueLightning asks, what was your first guitar?

Jun:  He wants to know my first electric guitar? Actually, before I started playing electric guitars, I got an electric bass, since I was into Duran Duran at the time.

T-Bird: Haha! That’s awesome!

Jun: Andy Taylor the guitar player didn’t play any solos with Duran Duran or anything and the bass player was so much more…

T-Bird: …Interesting?

Jun: Yeah! Originally I played the keyboard, but the drummers and the keyboard players were always at the back of the stage, and I always wanted to be one of the guys in front of the stage. I’m not good at singing, and I was not interested in singing, so I picked up the bass. However, after watching some MTV videos by the band called Ratt [Rock history lesson right here kids! – T] and Night Ranger, I got really into those bands, and so my very first guitar was a duplicate of the guitar the Ratt guitarist had…and I still have it.

T-Bird: Do you remember what make it was?

Jun: I think it was Fernandes, but these days I’ve replaced the neck with a performance neck…I will post a picture of it sometime!

T-Bird: Haha! Definitely! So, Sinister Swiss asks after the remixing of the Angel Island Zone track for Super Smash Brothers: Brawl, have you considered going back and reworking any other classic songs from those classic titles?

Jun: Interesting! It  was very fun to do the remix for Angel Island, and also I made another arrangement of Sky Sanctuary from Sonic 3 for the Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games, and if I get a chance I want to try to do more of those kind of remixes.

T-Bird: Any particular tracks?

Jun:  Ummm…talking about Sonic the hedgehog 3 music…*starts humming*

T-Bird: HAHAHA! YEAH! Death Egg Zone from Sonic & Knuckles! I think that would make a lot of the fans would love that!  I know we’ve covered this in the previous half of the interview, but Michelle Palmer asks if you are considering any tour dates?

Jun: As I was saying, I am going to try and organise some Crush 40 dates around August time.

T-Bird: Ok, last question…Hawkz asks, what would you say has been the defining moment of your career?

Jun:  Hmmm…I’d have to say there are several. The first one is back in ’96, the moment I teamed up with Eric Martin. It was a very special moment for me. From that point I started trying to find direct connection with the artists, and that’s the way I’ve been doing it for years now.

Both Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2 are very important games for me and very important titles for me, since Sonic Adventure was the very first time I was the sound director for a Sonic title, and I changed the sound of Sonic music drastically. With Sonic Adventure 2, some of us moved to the States, which changed our lives, and this time around we tried to make the music for the American market. It was very fun, and a very special time for not only me, but for the team too.

Finally, with Smash Bros. We provided several pieces of Sonic music to be used in the game, and lots of new fans – by new fans I mean the players who did not have any experience playing Sonic games – listened to the music for the first time while playing the Smash Brothers game…to me that was a great experience.

T-Bird: Lots of fond memories, and I’m sure a lot of fans hold some of those moments close to their heart too! Thanks loads for taking our questions

Jun…hopefully we can talk to you again soon with more burning questions!

Hey guys!

I know a lot of you have been waiting for this so as a joint collaboration with JunSenoue.com and The Sonic Stadium, I’d pleased to reveal the interview that took place in Tokyo, Feb 07th 2010.  Forum VIP and TSS writer ‘T-Bird’ got the chance (one again!) to sit in the interviewers chair with our favourite guitarist armed to the teeth with fan questions, a tape recorder, calamari, fries and a two pizzas (go figure). Also present was Jeriaska of Gamasutra.com, his weapon of choice being a digital camera. Congratulations to JunSenoue.com Forum members Ibbod0, Bluelightning and especially Sonic1991 who won a copy of the Sonic Heroes ‘Triple Threat’ album for his top question! Again, thanks to T-Bird for handing out that generous prize!

Anyway, here’s the first part of the interview, with the fan questions and another few photos tomorrow!

T-Bird: So Jun, how are you, and what projects have been keeping you busy?

Jun: I’m working on several projects, at this moment I can only tell you that I’m working on Super Monkey Ball: Step and Roll which was released this month. I was not the composer; I took care of finding the singers and talent in a similar way I did for Sonic Unleashed and Sonic the Hedgehog 2006. The composers were Tomoya Ohtani and Mariko Nanba. There are eight vocal songs which meant I had to find eight singers; In the end these were two Japanese singers, three North Americans and three from Europe, with the genres of the tracks focusing on dance and club tunes.

T-Bird: To sort of follow on, can we expect any new material from you this year? I think “The Works” went down exceptionally well last year, and the burning question on everybody’s lips is when is the second Crush 40 album due out?

Jun: Yeah…we [Jun and Johnny Gioeli] are discussing when we should start work on the next album, or the next show. Originally I had a plan to do other Crush 40 shows here in Tokyo in early May, but Johnny is quite busy with Axel Rudi Pell [the German rock act Johnny performs with] so maybe we will get around to doing some shows. We had a TGS (Tokyo Game Show) performance in 2008, and a lot of kids wanted to be there. Unfortunately they could not attend as the event was during school time, so the aim is to do some shows during the summer or spring vacations.

T-Bird: Wow, that’d be very cool for the Japanese audiences! I think one of the most impressive soundtracks from last year was the Sonic and the Black Knight OST on the principle it was so musically diverse – how did you go about getting in touch with Tommy Tallerico, and what was it like working with him and Richard Jacques amongst others?

Jun: Talking about Sonic and the Black Knight, I ideally wanted to work with the guys who provided the songs to previous Sonic titles instead of teaming up with the SEGA composers I usually team up with. I asked Richard Jacques, then spoke to Howard Drossin. Talking about Tommy though, he was not an original Sonic composer. I’ve known him for years and we are good friends, and I thought this would be a good opportunity to team up with him and have him as a composer on this title. Tommy provided us with ten ideas for tracks, and basically I selected three ideas from his list. He composed one of them from the start to the finish, and then the other two tracks I used the ideas and took care of them, arranged them and tracked the music with my band. It was a very fun experience!

T-Bird: I bet! Ok…(laughs) I guess this would be a good time to bring up Sonic the hedgehog 4 Episode 1 which has just been announced this week. Any thoughts? Anything you can tell us like, are you involved with the soundtrack?

Jun: Uhh…Ok. My answer is this; I hope I can tell you all the details in late spring or early summer!

T-Bird: Haha! Ok, I guess we will just have to wait then! As we mentioned before, you’ve heard of the Summer of Sonic. In 2008 we had TJ Davis and Richard Jacques, last year we had Bentley Jones return to perform…any chance in the near future for a Crush 40 appearance?

Jun: Talking about the shows we’ve done so far: with had a TGS performance back in 2008, and for that we played along with some backing tracks. For our next shows in Japan (more later!) we plan to have full band. If we come over to the UK, we will probably do something similar to what we did at TGS, but yes, we [Jun and Johnny] will be talking about it! …

That’s it for today folks! The fan questions will be online tomorrow, along with a few more SLR high-resolution pictures!

Thanks, Martin.

Hey guys,

firstly, I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas! I can’t believe how quickly 2009 has gone by, especially the last few months. Mind you, the wait for all 3 brand new Jun Senoue / Crush40 related CD’s helped! I want to say a special thank you to everyone who ordered at least one of the CD’s, it’s you guys who help make sure there’s more. I’m certainly looking forward to the next batch! To anyone who is still wanting one, we still have personalised copies of both ‘True Colors’ and ‘The Best of Crush40′ in the official JunSenoue.com shop (See here for details).

So what does 2010 hold? So far, a lot. The Official Crush40 website will be online the 1st quarter, and Jun’s currently working on several projects that have yet to be announced. I have a few more plans for the shop also, and I have a very good feeling about this year! Anyone who hasn’t joined the forums so probably do so, as news is updated there before it hits the main page! If you hang around long enough, you’ll become a ‘JS.com Forums Exclusive Member’ and starting from January 1st, have first pick at all future CD’s and Merchandise. So what are you waiting for? Join here!

Last but not least, I want to thank Jun for giving us all this amazing opportunity to own a personalised CD, including all the little extras and the late night trips to the local Post Office to make sure we got them as soon as possible! I also want to thank each and every fan who read and contribute to JunSenoue.com, along with everyone on the FaceBook / MySpace / YouTube pages for the continual support. I also couldn’t have managed without the support from Benji, Pamela and Shane who make sure the forums are fun, informative and safe, every day!

Have a happy New Year Crushers! See you in 2010

Martin / Jun

That’s right guys, ‘True Colors: The Best of Sonic the Hedgehog Part 2′ is now available in the JS Shop for pre-order! Jun has purchased 50 copies like before, and again is happy to personalise your CD and sign it! The tracklist and details on how to order are as follows;

01. Un-gravitify
02. Dreams of an Absolution
03. Throw It All Away
04. E.G.G.M.A.N.
05. Waking Up
06. This Machine
07. Fly in the Freedom
08. My Sweet Passion
09. Believe in Myself (SA2 Version)
10. Unknown from M.E. (SA2 Version)
11. Theme of E-102γ
12. Cosmic Eternity – Believe in Yourself
13. Look-a-like (Short Edited Ver.)
14. Sonic3 MegaD Mix
15. Lazy Days -Livin’ in Paradise- (Original Demo – Mixed with Ted Poley)
16. All Hail Shadow (Hybrid Mix feat. Mike Szuter)
17. Dreams of an Absolution (Starry Night Remix)
18. Open Your Heart (K-Klub Remix)

To head over to the forums for details on how to order, CLICK HERE!

Hey guys,

Jun has purchased another 50 copies of ‘The Best of Crush 40 – Super Sonic Songs’ and they’re now available to purchase via the JunSenoue.com shop! For details on how to order you own copy, please visit the forums here! Each copy is $30 and we accept PayPal only. Shipping price is dependent on your country, but you will see the total price before paying!

Once you have pressed the ‘Pay Now” button in PayPal, you must press ‘Return to Merchant’ otherwise your order will not be recieved!

Also, anyone still wanting a copy of ‘Jun Senoue – The Works’ can purchase an unsigned copy at YESASIA.com!

Thanks, Martin

[paypal-donation]

Hey all,

Want to own a signed copy of “The Best of Crush 40 – Super Sonic Songs”? We currently have very limited numbers in stock! I must also stress that we do not currently have any more copies of “Jun Senoue – The Works” left, although hopefully it should come back into stock soon.

Anyway, for details and instructions on how to order your signed copy of “Super Sonic Songs” by Crush 40, please see here!

Make sure to follow those instructions word for word, or your order will not be accepted!

SOLD OUT!

Thanks to everyone who ordered, Martin