Aira Mitsuki - ロボットハニー

When she first debuted, Aira Mitsuki was criticised for heavily borrowing influence from the more successful Yasutaka Nakata-produced electro-pop trio Perfume as her music, videos and even choreography shared a number of striking similarities with theirs. Originality and innovation aside, Aira's music instantly won me over, and whilst Perfume went on to release a slew of singles after their chart-topping "GAME" album that didn't quite meet the same standard set by the infectious "Polyrhythm", Aira began her campaign of catchiness with "China Discotica", soon followed by "Colorful Tokyo Sounds No.9".

Once again with the title track from this single, it's an instant toe-tapper. I remember seeing the music video and being extremely excited about my copy of the single arriving. However, in a desperate attempt to compete with Nakata's refined engineering, the mastering engineer responsible for this release managed to overcook a brilliant piece of pop music into a complete mess. It's painful to listen to on a portable MP3 player at maximum volume, as the track has been brickwall limited to an utterly ridiculous -6.8dB RMS, which means your listening experience is impaired by audible distortion throughout the track. So, what was probably a bouncy but dynamic arrangement to begin with is now a 4 minute 30 wall of sound.

Poor Aira, squashed by weapons of the dreaded loudness war.