• Split release: Tommy February6 (above) and Tommy Heavenly6 (below) are the creations of The Brilliant Green singer Tomoko Kawase. She has brought them together for her new album, 'February & Heavenly.' The release features seven songs by each persona, which gives the album an overall feeling of two extremes — light and dark.
    Split release: Tommy February6 (above) and Tommy Heavenly6 (below) are the creations of The Brilliant Green singer Tomoko Kawase. She has brought them together for her new album, "February & Heavenly." The release features seven songs by each persona, which gives the album an overall feeling of two extremes — light and dark.
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The pop music industry — it’s enough to turn anyone into a schizophrenic. And Tomoko Kawase is perhaps J-pop’s most fragmented personality of all.

Rising to fame in the late-1990s as the singer in top-selling Kyoto guitar-pop band The Brilliant Green, she went solo in 2001 under the name Tommy February6, a super-cute throwback to the British and European chart pop of the ’80s, with a subtly subversive streak. And then in 2003, she went solo again — this time as the darker Tommy Heavenly6, playing Avril Lavigne-esque commercial pop-rock that soundtracked countless anime.

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