2007 release  ** "NEWS is a new work, whose ingredients, on the surface, are quite simple. Lukas Simonis wrote the music, while Takayuki Kawabata wrote the lyrics, which are featured on the CD cover, and also spoken or sung, in Japanese or in English. Simonis plays the guitar, which mostly appears as "sound" (the main exception being an arpeggio sounding halfway between Thinking Plague and Pink Floyd which appears more than once in the track titled Original NEWS), and also "effects", which judging from their timbre to me sounded for the most part as being the fruit of FM synthesis; he also did the studio work and the editing. On this rich background, we have Miki Sugiura on vocals and Kumi Otte Kondo and Nina Hitz on cellos. The (very brief) liner notes also talk about group "improvisations", which didn’t add much to my understanding of the music. The work appears as being quite longer than it really is (about thirty-five minutes), which has to be taken as proof of the material having great variety and density (though textures often have a "light" quality), not as proof of great tedium. It’s mostly the vocal parts, I think, that could constitute the main obstacle for those who are not accustomed to this kind of vocal approach; while cellos (arco or pizzicato, very often playing actual melodies), and some recurring melodic arias (the first tracks are almost organized like a suite), will be convenient entry points for the listener. And even those tracks where it’s easier to spot the "artificial" in action – for instance, the track titled Remixx – succeed in involving the listener without being too disconcerting. The paring of female vocals and cello reminded sometimes of the most recent album by Haco, Ash In The Rainbow but NEWS has its own personality."