I don’t know how many times, since way back when I first heard the OST for the “Honey and Clover” movie, I’ve tried to find out who James Wendt was, and really got nothing beyond his involvement in that project. I absolutely loved his voice and wanted to see if there was anything more out there by him. With the release of the “Darker than Black” OST I got a few extra songs, thanks to the fact that when Yoko Kanno finds an artist she likes to work with, she will use them more than once; Maaya Sakamoto and her have been involved in lord knows how many projects together.
Then after what has probably been months of having given up, I’m sitting in work listening to the “Honey and Clover” movie soundtrack, and when ‘Scooters’, one of four songs he sung for the movie, came on, I decided to click on the Last.FM icon in my taskbar tray and see if anything had been updated there…
“Lead singer of the Swedish rock band Staireo…”
This band was formed back in 1999 and are pretty well known. Why hadn’t this come up on any of my searches? And I don’t restrict searches to certain languages as that would obviously knock out Japanese pages, so I’m surprised I didn’t run into some Swedish sites. At least then I would have been a step further, maybe figuring out he was Swedish and not American as I had assumed.
Ah, well, all is good, as I finally know this guy really exists (I was wondering if it could be some alias or something) and I now have a new band to listen to. I especially want to pick up the Japanese release of their (I think) second album, ‘Multi de la Tjossa’, as the bonus tracks are covers of the two songs James Wendt sung for “Darker than Black”, ‘Deadly Work’ and ‘Blend In’, both of which I adore the original versions of.
Another interesting fact: Staireo tracks have been used as themes for the Japanese broadcast of C.S.I.
Visit Staireo’s official website
Visit Staireo’s official Japanese website
