June 26, 2008 - (Kanagawa) -- Hiroshi Kondo, a Japanese traditional music player for Kabuki theatres, released his first indie album called "Once The Sky Was Blue" containing 4 original pop songs at Apple iTunes Store throughout the world. Although Hiroshi Kondo is a Japanese traditional musician with more than 20 years of professional careers, he has been writing so-called original Beatles-pop songs as well. He wrote hundreds of high quality pop songs but most of them were never released to the public; therefore, this is the first chance for music fans to discover new Beatles-pop with exotic Asian flavors.

"I started writing pop songs when I was around 10 years old. Since then, I wrote so many pop songs but never officially published them. Now, after 35 years, I decided to release them one by one hoping there would be some people found my songs worth listening to. People often compare my songs with the works of The Beatles, Paul McCartney and John Lennon and indeed I love The Beatles and John & Paul more than anything :)" said Hiroshi Kondo.

Hiroshi Kondo tours the world regularly for Kabuki performances and at this moment, he devotes himself into Japanese traditional music; however, since his first album was out to the world, he would spend more time into writing and performing pop-songs for the public audiences from now on.

The artist page in iTunes is
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewArtist?id=284344299

The physical CD is also available at CD Baby (http://cdbaby.com/cd/hiroshikondo) for those who prefer the better sound quality than digital downloads.

You can listen to some of tracks in the album at
http://www.myspace.com/hkondo

Evaluation CDs are available for media, press, podcasters, bloggers, etc... upon requests.

The album is released through Bananafrog Records Label,
http://www.bananafrogrecords.com/

PRESS CONTACT
Bananafrog Records Label
kgoto ( @ ) bananafrogrecords dot com