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NAME: Olivia Lufkin |  BIRTHDAY: December 9th, 1979  | BIRTHPLACE: Okinawa, Japan  | Blood Type: A

Olivia Lufkin (aka “Olivia”) was born on December 9th, 1979 in Okinawa, Japan, and has always been interested in singing since she was a little girl.

Olivia first became known when she was discovered by the boss of Rising Productions which was the company responsible for other top J-POP artists such as Namie Amuro, Speed and MAX.  After Olivia came on board, she was put into a group called D&D (Dance & Dream) with two other girls (Aya and Chika) and they ended up releasing five hit singles before Olivia broke off to pursue a solo career.

Since early 1999, Olivia has released eight singles, two albums and four mini-albums, wildly varying her style of music.  With her latest album The Lost Lolli, her sound has solidified into a more rock sound than past outings, and hopefully we will see more of this sound from Olivia in her future releases.

Song titles with indicate Windows Media audio sample |  Song titles with indicate Windows Media video sample.

1st Single
I.L.Y ~desire~
02.03.99 Release
AVDD-20300 / 1,200Yen
1. I.L.Y ~desire~
2. Hanabira
3. I.L.Y ~desire~ (instrumental version)
4. Hanabira (instrumental version)

2nd Single
Re-ACT
05.12.99 Release
AVDD-20308 / 1,200Yen
1. Re-ACT
2. Rolling Stone
3. Re-ACT (instrumental version)
4. Rolling Stone (instrumental version)

3rd Single
Dear Angel
10.06.99 Release
AVDD-20339 / 1,200Yen
1. Dear Angel
2. Remember me?
3. Dear Angel (English version)
4. Dear Angel (instrumental version)

4th Single
Dress me Up
04.19.00 Release
AVCD-30091 / 1,200Yen
1. Dress Me Up
2. So Beautiful
3. Pass Me The Sugar
4. Dress Me Up (English version)
5. Pass Me The Sugar                                       (English version)

5th Single
Dekinai
07.26.00 Release
AVCD-30111 / 1,260Yen
1. Dekinai
2. Escape The Flames
3. Slow-Mo
4. Dekinai (Down to the floor mix)
5. Pass Me The Sugar                                       (Heat in beat mix)

6th Single
Color Of Your Spoon
10.04.00 Release
AVCD-30141 / 1,260Yen
1. Color Of Your Spoon
2. Grapefruit Tea
3. Lettuce Garden

7th Single
Sea Me
12.05.01 release
CTCR-40097 / 1,050Yen
1. Sea Me
2. Africa

8th Single
Into The Stars
09.04.02 Release
CTCR-40131 / 1,050Yen
1. Into The Stars
2. Ballerina

1st Album
Synchronicity
12.06.00 Release
AVCD-11883 / 3,059Yen
1. Solarhalfbreed
2. Walk On By
3. Dear Angel
4. Color Of Your Spoon
5. Escape The Flames
6. Dress Me Up (English Version)
7. Soulmate
8. Dekinai
9. Grapefruit Tea
10. Crystalline
11. Liquid Skies
12. re-ACT (Album Mix)
13. I.L.Y ~desire~ (Album Mix)
14. Mint (Bonus track)

2nd Album
Internal Bleeding Strawberry
02.21.03 Release
VECD-89141 / 1,575Yen
1. Sea Me
2. Solarhalfbreed
3. Into The Stars
4. Dress Me Up
5. Grapefruit Tea
6. Color Of Your Spoon
7. Internal Bleeding Strawberry

3rd Album
Merry & Hell Go Round
06.27.03 Release
CTC1-14270 / 1.575Yen
1. Spiderspins
2. Denial
3. Blind Unicorn
4. Cupid
5. Sugarbloodsuckers

4th Album
Comatose Bunny Butcher
09.12.03 Release
CTC1-14271 / 1,575Yen
1. Celestial Delinquent
2. 026unconscious333
3. 57Sto R M03
4. Devil’s in me
5. Bliss Forest

5th Album
The Return Of The Chlorophyll Bunny
12.03.03 Release
CTC1-14286 / 1,575Yen
1. Dreamcamp
2. skip to a little
3. Purple Box
4. Under Your Waves
5. Space Halo

6th Album
The Lost Lolli
02.18.04 Release
CTC1-14326 / 3,059Yen
1. Alone in our Castle
2. Fake Flowers
3. Blind unicorn
4. Devil's in me
5. Celestial Delinquent
6. Space Halo
7. SpidERSpins (Lost Lolli Mix)
8. 026unconscious333
9. Under Your Waves
10. Dreamcamp
11. Denial
12. Sea me (English version)
13. Into the Stars(Live Arrangement version)

Interested in purchasing any of Olivia’s music?  Go to one of the best online places for Asian music - YesAsia.com

The Lost Lolli
This album is more focused bag of Olivia goodness with many moments of greatness. Olivia is really finding her sound in this album and it shows in many of the tracks from the whimsical ballad Space Halo to the rocking tunes of SpidERspins and Fake Flowers.  On the flip side, Blind Unicorn is probably the worse track on the album with Olivia speaking in a monotone voice most the way though with hardly any kind of melody to speak of.

Some interesting facts about this album is that Olivia sings entirely in English even though it is a Japanese-marketed album (a poor marketing choice?) and in addition a few of her albums had “exclusive” Tower Record store distribution due to some deal with her producer (another poor marketing choice?), but it seems that you can get this album in particular at retail besides Tower Records. One can only wonder if she is making the right decisions for her music career as it seems that she is becoming less and less popular as time goes on.

As a longtime listener of Olivia, I found this album quite good and I’m glad that she has settled down with her sound for the most part. Olivia’s music is an acquired taste, as it can take repeated listening sessions to really get into it, but at least for this album is is easier to get into if you are new to her music.

Synchronicity
For the first-time listener to Olivia, Synchronicity may be hard to get into, and for fans of Olivia, you will probably wonder what the hell you are listening to. Olivia is all over the place with this album - Walk on by sounds like a grunge band with bad recording equipment (easily the worst track on the album), Dear Angel, Color of your Spoon, Dress Me Up and Dekinai are your standard pop/rock tracks (with Dekinai being the best of the bunch), then you have your semi-trance/experemental/ballad tracks such as Liquid Skies, Crystalline, Grapefruit Tea and Soulmate.  Olivia just seems like she is trying to find her sound and is just screwing around with various styles to see what sounds half way decent.

Olivia’s latter album The Lost Lolli is a much better outing than Synchronicity and won’t leave you scratching your head after the first few tracks. One thing that is unfortunate about Synchronicity however is that 7 out of the 14 tracks are from previously released singles...normally this wouldn’t be a problem, but when you release 6 singles before your first album, you are paying for music you already paid for (if you were already a fan of Olivia).

Overall, Synchronicity is a compilation of 7 previous singles with the new songs just adding weirdness into the mix.  If you want to really get into Olivia, track down The Lost Lolli and leave Olivia’s experimenting behind.

Click on any of the photos for a larger version (must allow pop-ups to view)

Visit Olivia’s official web site at Avex

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