Yasuharu Takanashi has been writing the music inside Naruto Shippuden and Fairy Tail for close to twenty years, and on Friday 2 October 2026 he plays it live in the UK for the first time. His band Far East Groove take over Dingwalls in Camden Lock for one night, the only British date on a ten city European tour called “The Battle For Glory”. Doors are at 7pm, the band are on at 8pm, and the room holds 600 people. The organisers bill the tour as an officially licensed concert, so the Naruto Shippuden and Fairy Tail music is performed with the permission of the rights holders.
Yasuharu Takanashi's Far East Groove
Anime score music handed to a working metal band for one Friday night in Camden- Address
- Middle Yard, Camden Lock, London NW1 8AL
- Admission
- Regular £36, VIP + Meet & Greet £72
- Starts
- October 2, 2026, 7:00 PM
- Ends
- October 2, 2026 9:30 PM
More about the event
- He was in rock bands before he was in anime
- He played keyboards on Hellen’s album Talon of King in 1985 and Planet Earth’s Big Bang in 1993, and later joined Musashi Project, the unit credited on the original Naruto soundtrack albums.
- Nine JASRAC International Awards
- Eight for the Naruto Shippuden background music, most recently in 2026, and one in 2017 for Fairy Tail. The award goes to the Japanese work that earned the most royalties from outside Japan that year.
- His game credits run alongside the anime ones
- Genji: Dawn of the Samurai in 2005, the Super Robot Wars Scramble Commander series, J-Stars Victory Vs in 2014 and Dragon Raja in 2019.
- He has written for metal players before this band
- Beyond the Quest, for Fairy Tail 100 Years Quest, was recorded with musicians drawn from Battle Beast, Firewind, Kreator and Yes.
- The same composer scores Pretty Cure
- Alongside the shonen titles he has written music for several series in the long running Pretty Cure magical girl franchise.
Twenty years of anime scores, from Naruto Shippuden to Record of Ragnarok
Takanashi is one of the most heavily credited composers working in anime. The Anime News Network encyclopedia lists well over a hundred series and films carrying his name, and the range is wide: Fairy Tail from 2009, Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Crystal from 2014, Hell Girl, Zombie Land Saga, Record of Ragnarok, Bastard!! Heavy Metal, Dark Fantasy, and Boruto: Naruto Next Generations.
His catalogue is on Spotify, which is the quickest way to hear the material the London set will be drawn from. The Naruto Shippuden and Fairy Tail soundtrack albums are all on his artist page.
The Naruto credit needs a little care, because the two series had two composers. The original Naruto, which ran from 2002 to 2007, was scored by Toshio Masuda, and Takanashi worked on it as part of Musashi Project, the unit credited on the soundtrack albums. That shared credit is why Sadness and Sorrow has three different composers attached to it. When Naruto Shippuden began in 2007 Takanashi took over as composer, stayed with it through to the end of the run in 2017, and carried on into Boruto. So the Naruto music most likely to turn up at Dingwalls is Shippuden music rather than the themes from the first series. For a sense of how those cues sound before you go, we took one of them apart, the Shippuden track Utsusemi, in our guide to twelve pieces of anime music worth hearing played live.
Here is one of his Shippuden cues in the band’s hands. Standing Upon Rumbling Ground comes from Naruto Shippuden Original Soundtrack III, where it is credited to Takanashi and YAIBA, and this is Far East Groove playing it live in Spain in 2025.
The seven musicians in Far East Groove, and where else you have heard them
Takanashi formed Far East Groove in 2024 on a single idea: take anime score music out of the studio and give it to a working metal band. It played live for the first time in 2025. All seven members are booked for London, and the line up on the official project page is international and drawn mostly from European metal.
- Yasuharu Takanashi, keyboards. He fronts the band with a keytar rather than standing behind a rig.
- Juno Luke, vocals. Also a member of Tweyelight, Beyond Sørrow and BLiND OWL, and sings in Japanese, English and Spanish.
- Nozomu Wakai, guitar. A Japanese guitarist and producer, known for Sigh, for his own band DESTINIA, and for Ashrain. He also works as a designer.
- Jesper Anastasiadis, bass. Bassist with the Finnish band Turisas, who has also played with Korpiklaani.
- Tuomas Rounakari, violin. Holds a Doctor of Music degree from the University of the Arts Helsinki, and spent years as the violinist in the Finnish folk metal band Korpiklaani.
- Tino Jäntti, drums. Plays in Kosto and Vanguardian, and drummed for Sigh on live dates in September 2026.
- Funta7, synthesiser and manipulator, which means running the programmed and sampled parts. A composer in his own right, with many anime songs and J-pop productions to his name.
Three of the seven come out of the Finnish metal scene, and that is worth noticing, because it explains a good deal about how the arrangements sound. Finnish folk metal has spent twenty years solving one particular problem: how to put a violin and a keyboard next to a distorted guitar so that all three are still audible. An anime score sets exactly the same problem.
The band post tour news on Instagram, Facebook, X and TikTok, which is where any late change to the London night would show up first.
Score cues, opening songs, and why the difference matters on stage
Anime music comes in two kinds, and fans often mean different things by the phrase. The opening song is the pop or rock track at the top of the episode. It is performed by a named artist, it changes every season or two, and people stream it in full. The score is the instrumental music inside the episode, written by the composer to sit under the action, and most of it lasts between one and three minutes, because that is how long the scene lasts.
Far East Groove is built on the second kind, and that is what makes the live version a different object from the recording. A score cue is short, usually built on one repeating figure, and designed to stop when the scene stops. Hand it to a seven piece band with a singer and you have to find it a proper ending, room for a guitar solo, and something for a standing audience to hold onto for longer than a scene lasts. The pieces get stretched. That is the whole exercise, and it is the clearest difference between this show and an orchestral anime concert, where the arrangement stays much closer to the recording.
Takanashi’s own writing makes the translation less of a leap than it sounds. The Naruto soundtracks already set guitar, bass and drums against shakuhachi flute and taiko drums, a mix that was unusual in a shonen series at the time and is close to standard now. Moving those cues onto a metal stage is a change of volume and emphasis more than a change of language.
Takanashi films some of his own studio sessions, and this is the one for the piece titled NARUTO Main Theme ’16. The Naruto main theme originates with Toshio Masuda and the original series, which is part of what makes a Takanashi studio version of it worth watching. The instrumentation described above is all there in the room.
If you want to hear the orchestral treatment of overlapping repertoire, a full symphony orchestra plays Naruto, Demon Slayer and Studio Ghibli music at the Royal Festival Hall on 25 September, a week before this show, and again at Symphony Hall in Birmingham on 15 November.
Naruto, Fairy Tail and a set kept as a surprise
Dingwalls bills the night as “an explosive fusion of anime epicness and the power of live metal”, which is the promoter’s wording rather than ours. The two franchises named on every listing for the tour are Naruto Shippuden and Fairy Tail. No setlist has been published for any date. When we asked, the organisers told us that Naruto and Fairy Tail music will make up the main part of the London set, and that they are keeping the rest as a surprise.
We put the setlist question to Takanashi himself and he would not be drawn either. He did tell us how a ninety second score cue becomes a live song, along with who really wrote Sadness and Sorrow.
What is known is that the material is road tested. Far East Groove’s first European run was in 2025 and took in Finland, Italy and Spain, including the Rock Imperium festival. Team-MAX, Takanashi’s own company, describes that Rock Imperium set as the first time a Japanese soundtrack composer had played the main stage of a major European rock festival. The London arrangements are built on those 2025 live versions, though Team-MAX says some parts may change for this tour.
This is the Fairy Tail main theme from that Rock Imperium set, and it is the closest thing to a preview of the Dingwalls night that anyone has published.
October is an unusually strong month for Japanese heavy music in Britain. Two weeks after this show, Boris play Pink in full at Concorde 2 in Brighton, on the last British date of their own European tour.
£36 tickets, the £72 VIP meet and greet, and doors at seven
Tickets are sold through Snapticket, the official ticket shop for the London show, and both types appear once you click Buy tickets. A Regular ticket is £36 and a VIP + Meet & Greet ticket is £72, both including VAT. Booking fees are set by the ticket seller rather than the organisers, so check the total on the payment screen before you commit.
The London show is presented by Colorless Inc., MACK PROJECTS, GoodKabl GmbH and Team-MAX.
The VIP ticket gets you in an hour early for a meet and greet with Takanashi between 6pm and 7pm, and it includes an autograph and a photo. You are welcome to bring your own merchandise, autograph boards or other items to be signed, but Takanashi cannot sign unofficial anime goods, such as fan-made art books or counterfeit merchandise.
Timings for everyone else are straightforward. VIP ticket holders go in at 6pm, general doors are at 7pm, and the band are on stage at 8pm. There is no support act, and the organisers told us the set runs about 70 to 90 minutes, depending on the talking between songs and how the night goes. That puts the finish at roughly 9.10pm to 9.30pm. No official finishing time or curfew has been published.
Neither the organisers nor Dingwalls have published an age limit for this date, but the organisers say the venue’s own rules may apply. If you are planning to bring someone under 18, ask Dingwalls before you buy at info@dingwalls.com, because tickets for gigs of this kind are rarely refundable.
Cosplay is welcome. The organisers ask you to leave at home any replica knives, guns or other props realistic enough to worry other guests or staff, and suggest a simple test: if you could carry it down the street without anyone looking twice, it should be fine. Dingwalls’ own safety rules have the final say.
Tour T-shirts will be on sale. The organisers are arranging card payments at the stand where they can, but that depends on the equipment and signal on the night, so bring some cash as well. There is no blanket rule from the band on phone photos during the show, so follow whatever the venue staff tell you on the night.
Dingwalls, Camden Lock, and a room that has been open since 1973
Dingwalls sits in Middle Yard inside Camden Lock Market and holds 600 people. It opened in 1973 as Dingwalls Dancehall and has been a working gig room ever since, which is why a composer with well over a hundred screen credits ends up on a stage this size rather than in a concert hall. The venue’s own information page covers the building, the sister room Dingwalls 2, and the canalside bars.
The nearest station is Camden Town on the Northern line, a short walk north through the market. Chalk Farm, also on the Northern line, is a similar walk from the other direction. If you have not been to Camden Lock Market before, it is worth arriving early, and there is food and a terrace bar on site.
Dingwalls
Ten cities, eight countries, and one British date
“The Battle For Glory” runs from 30 September to 14 October 2026. London is the only British date and it falls second on the itinerary, between Helsinki and Warsaw.
- 30 September 2026, Helsinki, Finland, On The Rocks, with Night People
- 2 October 2026, London, United Kingdom, Dingwalls
- 4 October 2026, Warsaw, Poland, Hybrydy
- 5 October 2026, Berlin, Germany, SO36
- 6 October 2026, Munich, Germany, Ampere
- 8 October 2026, Milan, Italy, Legend Club
- 9 October 2026, Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland, L’Amalgame
- 11 October 2026, Paris, France, Pan Piper
- 13 October 2026, Barcelona, Spain, Wolf, with Strangers
- 14 October 2026, Madrid, Spain, Revi Live, with Strangers
Support acts appear on three of the ten dates, Night People in Helsinki and Strangers in both Spanish cities. The organisers have confirmed there is no support act in London, so Far East Groove have the night to themselves.
Yasuharu Takanashi’s Far East Groove play Dingwalls, Camden Lock, on Friday 2 October 2026, with doors at 7pm and the band on stage at 8pm. Regular tickets at £36 and VIP + Meet & Greet tickets at £72 are on Snapticket.
