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While Takako has been described as the female Cornelius, her sound is much more simple, clean, and not nearly as sample-reliant. However, this stellar EP finds her getting the remix treatment from Buffalo Daughter (who manage to make that ubiquitous Liquid Liquid sample sound fresh again), Land of the Loops, Trans Am, Pulsars, Portastatic (Mac of Superchunk), and Sukia. Takako's sweet voice holds the whole thing together beautifully. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
The dronier, gentler (but not necessarily quiet!) side of Japanese garage rock maniac Shinji Masuko (DMBQ, Boredoms) is revealed here via the guitarist's new project, Moan, a duo with vocalist/keyboardist/bassist Makiko Toba (Water Fei). Waves of shoegazing distortion push needles way into the red on opening epic "The Murmur Of The Zodiac Voices", and it's a beautiful thing. Over 26 minutes of drifting, droning psychedelic soundscapey guitar graced with floating female vocals. It's obvious why they called themselves Moan. Parts sound like Boris at their most blissed out, other passages could be the heavy psych guitar explorations of Ulaan Khol.
With that massive track alone, the disc is already well worth the price of admission, but the murmuring continues on the lovely slowcore song "No No I", Moan dialing down the volume, getting moodier and even more melodic, before Shinji unleashes some searing distorted guitar like he's having a Tokyo Flashback or something in the second half of the song.
The remaining two tracks on the disc, the folky "Soda Song" (Shinji using effects, we assume, to create an effervescent "soda" sound that bubbles along in the background) and the equally-effervescent-even-without-soda-sounds "My Noctiluca Town" are also both individually interesting and pretty and mesmeric. Quite recommended, all in all.
We'd often thought that 'Moan' would be a good name for a funereal doom project, but with a record this fantastic (if non-funereal) we don't mind that Shinji & Makiko snagged it.
Psychedelic pioneers in their home country, The Mops (great name!) were one of the originators of the Japanese GS (Group Sounds) scene. They were among the first in Japan to experiment with psychedelic studio effects like flanging and phasing, as well as with
Jagjaguar scores major points with us by reissuing here in the USA yet another of the albums by wonderful Japanese outsider-folk-psych duo Nagisa Ni Te. They've previously brought us the band's more recent album "Feel", and now they delve into the past to make 1995's "On The Love Beach" available at a non-import price. Lovely, folky, sunny-yet-melancholic psychedelic pop rock. If you like Ghost, or Neil Young, or Nagisa Ni Te's pals Maher Shalal Hash Baz -- or even the mellower stuff by Acid Mothers Temple -- this band ought to please you greatly. Their songs are works of fragile beauty, with innocent-sounding Japanese vocals, acoustic strumming, and lilting melodies. There's some fuzz bass here, some tuba there, and some shimmering guitar feedback when needed. The liner notes include English translations of Nagisa Ni Te's cryptic love-song lyrics.
If you're not already hip to Nagisa Ni Te, there's also a "best of/rarities" comp out on the Geographic label you should be aware of, called "Songs For A Simple Moment". You can read our review of that disc for more background on the band, and that collection would be a good starting point, although both Jagjaguar reissues are equally fine introductions to the band -- all are certainly recommended!
"Songs For A Simple Moment" is an introduction to the musical world of Shinji Shibayama. Since 1992 Nagisa Ni Te has released four records of honest, fragile psychedelic folk. With ties to Maher Shalal Hash Baz, whose members have at one time or another
With a revolving host of guest musicians, the core of Nagisa Ni Te centers on Shibayama and his partner Masako Takeda. Drummer Ikuro Takahashi, most recently of Fushitsusha, had once been a major part of the lineup, but has recently, mysteriously retired from music altogether. But that's another story...
In the Japanese psych underground, there is a strange coexistence of feedback/noise and earnest, heartfelt acoustic folk. Nagisa Ni Te embrace both aspects and combine the two at times. Think a more naive version of Tim Buckley or Neil Young. And if you're at all familiar with the brittle psychedelia of Shizuka, or the primitive guitar feedback freakout of the obscure '70s psych gods Les Rallizes Dénudés, you will definitely want to venture forth. From the fragility and innocence of "Star" and "They" to the shattering, feedback drenched Rallizesesque live rendition of the twenty minute epic "The True Sun", this comes highly recommended as an introduction, and is a great companion to the growing output of Nagisa Ni Te! (Even if you're already a fan and have their Japanese import cds, you'll probably want this for the rare/unreleased/live tracks included.)
Another lovely outing (their fifth album, if we've counted correctly) by one of our favorite bands from the Japanese indie-psych underground. While the duo of Shinji Shibayama and Masako Takeda have had their moments of Neil Young/Les Rallizes Denudes style slash-and-burn guitar storm in the past, with this album (and their previous disc Feel) they've been concentrating more on the quiet, mellow, melodic side of psychedelia... This is some ever so wistful, slow-moving, "heartfelt folk music" that features the sweet, sad voices of both Shinji and Masako singing their fragile tunes over a backing of strum and shimmer. Various guests augment the core Nagisa Ni Te duo, with sundry instruments employed, including electric and acoustic guitars, bass, mandolin, organ, electric piano, glockenspiel, mellotron, percussion, and such oddities as "backwards cymbal", "uncertain piano" and "electric desert guitar" (that's what it says the liner notes, which also provide English language translations for the band's Japanese lyrics). We said sad voices above, but really much of this expresses hope -- Nagisa Ni Te are a springtime band with memories of winter. So very pretty, lazy Sunday afternoon listening for fans of the softer Pastels, Belle & Sebastian, Ghost, and Maher Shalal Hash Baz sort of thing...
We've always been big fans of the warm and shimmery sounds of this great Japanese psych-pop outfit but somehow their new album is making us fall in love with them all over again and it's proving to be quite possibly their best outing yet! We love how the band are able to evoke those hard to describe lingering moments on lazy Sunday afternoons, or the feeling of walking along the pier as the sun slightly reflects against the slow moving waves and all your other thoughts just fade away. Tapping into the great tradition of Japanese psych-folk/pop that folks like Melting Glass Box and Happy End first explored in the '70s, and even reminding us at times of that great Milton Nascimento record Clube Da Esquina that we gushed about last list. As always we hear the influence of the dreamy passages of Neil Young records, especially On The Beach, which we've been listening to immediately after this record pretty much every single Sunday since Yosuga came out. Highly recommended!
Featuring the singer from Limited Express (Has Gone?), Ni Hao! is an all-girl Japanese art-rock trio: two on bass, one on drums, all of 'em on vocals. Lots and lots of vocals, in complex arrangements. The whole shebang is quite energetic and precise, and should appeal to fans of Limited Express and Ex-Girl. Includes a spirited cover of the Ramones' "Do You Remember Rock 'n' Roll Radio?" and also three bonus computer-only video interview clips with each of the band members (in Japanese with English subtitles).
Yay! It's pretty cool that Norway's Smalltown Supersound has put this out, a disc collecting two previously released (in Japan only) eps by this Japanese all-girl avant-rock unit. We'd found out about this band a while back, and had wanted to stock their stuff, but sometimes importing cds from Japan is a daunting task. So our procrastination paid off, as now we have this handy disc, easily available. (It's also pretty cool that the Heartworm Press label has also just issued this on vinyl!) So what's the deal with this band? A mostly instrumental guitar/bass/drums trio who are psychedelically skronky, generating massive walls of distortion underpinned by propulsive no-waveisms. They're not a Japanese "noise" band like Merzbow or Hijokaidan, but certainly get plenty noisy. We could compare 'em at times to the likes of Afrirampo, Lightning Bolt, Melt Banana, Deerhoof, (early) Blonde Redhead... actually Nisennenmodai makes the reviewer's task a bit easier by naming several of the tracks of the Neji ep (2004) which begins this disc after some of their musical heroes, which to a degree they emulate: "Pop Group", "This Heat", "Sonic Youth". The "This Heat" track definitely has the nervous tension and percussive percolations we love about that band, whereas "Pop Group" is ultra-angular and extra-noisy...
The Tori ep (2005) that occupies the second half of this collection continues those themes - in fact, they do one of Neji's songs again, the densely rhythmic "Ikkkyokume", probably a signature track for the band as it so well represents their trance-inducing intensity, love of volume and minimalist song structure. Tori's first track "Kyuukohan" is tightly wound, repetitive number full of crashing cymbals, chiming guitar, and bass throb... building, building, building relentlessly to a massive climax. The next song, "Kyaaaaaa", incorporates yelping vocal shrieks and even more noisy feedback guitar. And so it goes, getting ever noisier, more throbbingly repetitive, a distorted, enthralling onslaught of explosive splatter/scatter rock indeed! We'd love to see 'em live someday, apparently there's crazy costumes and stuff, but that seems hardly necessary given the sheer energy of their music.
The limited double LP version is a handsome gatefold, on white vinyl. It's already sold out at the label, apparently we got their very last copies... act fast!
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Boredoms guitarist Yamamoto's trio has made their poppiest record yet and still it kicks ass, never sickly sweet at all, just excellent chiming guitars alongside a whole lot of that genre-twisting racket we already love Hatoba for perfecting. This is the US version of the import, and it has an extra song NOT on the import.
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This is Omo's, second major label effort, not scheduled for US release. Their records keep getting better and better, this one reaching new heights of toothy melody and sludgy sweetness, along with their usual tour through the murky depths of rock's weirder edges. Yamamoto (of Boredoms), Tsuyama and friends explore new post-rock-electronica realms...
We have always loved Yoshimi, whether she's bashing the skins in the Boredoms, hanging out with Kim Gordon in Free Kitten or kicking up a serious ruckus in OOIOO, her main love these days. Hot of the heels of their latest outing Taiga comes this scorching remix e.p. courtesy of Yoshimi's Boredoms cohort Eye Yamatsuka. He takes the Roberto De Simone inspired standout tracks Uma and Umo and turns them into hot flashes of an African influenced late night rave that we wish we could be at. The other two tracks are the original versions from Taiga.
Oh, oh, eye oh oh! Drummer/trumpeter/vocalist/Flaming Lips mascot Yoshimi P-We's other main gig besides the Boredoms is back with their first album since 2009's Armonico Hewa. Over the years, OOIOO has honed both the playfully melodic aspects of their sound, and their sheer rhythmic prowess, into something simply magical. Gamel is something even more extra-special though, probably our favorite from the groop since their early outings Feather Float and Gold & Green near the turn of the millennium. As the name suggests, this album takes a lot of inspiration from Javanese gamelan music, in fact adding two actual gamelan players to the core group, OOIOO herein melding the tinkling, metallic (actual metal, not heavy metal) percussive sound of the gamelan with the band's usual tight grooves, vocal chant and electronic textures. They were somewhat "tribal" before, now OOIOO verges on exotica! It's gorgeous, dense, detailed, funky in a funky way, bright and colorful, absolutely captivating right from 10 minute opener "Don Ah" through all eleven kaleidoscopic tracks. Super recommended!!
Both the compact disc and limited double vinyl versions come in gatefold sleeves, the vinyl with a free download card.
If you're looking to get to dreamboat island there really is no better way than to go with the Pastels & Tenniscoats as your dreamy and breezy ship captains. We're not sure how Glasgow legends Pastels and Tokyo's Tenniscoats linked up but it makes complete perfect sense as they each have perfected soft and soothing twee escapades like no one else. Pastels have been around the block, beginning in the 1980's where they helped usher in a new refreshing sound that would influence folks across the globe and plant the seeds for labels like K records. Tenniscoats have been around for the last few years and ever since we heard their pastoral and blissful take on hushed pop we became big fans. Our love of them only increased when their singer Saya performed at an instore here at AQ with Satomi of Deerhoof in their side project OneOne. This is truly a collaborative effort with members from both bands playing on every track and vocals trade off quite nicely and equally between each group, but all together the sounds of each band mesh with each other so well and with such ease that nothing feels forced about the combination of these two groups. So perfect that the artwork inside features a picture of the groups together sitting on such lush green grass, as we always want to be laying in some scenic peaceful park starring into the sky when we hear the dreamy sounds these groups create. Dreamboat island, we have arrived!
Wherein the Japanese trio play with Junglish beats along with their normal Bacharach-inspired pop.
Swank new disc from these Japanese pop faves.
Compiles the series of 12" remixes of material from P5's Happy End Of The World album, plus a couple of new remixes... Remixers include The Automator, Dimitri From Paris, Oval, 808 State, Sean O'Hagan (High Llamas), John "Plunderphonics" Oswald, Saint Etienne, Momus, Gusgus, and others.
John "Plunderphonics" Oswald and Oval take a stab at it.
Sugary dance-pop you know and, possibly, love -- from the land of the cute, Japan. Much more frantically punchy than their past releases. This is the soundtrack to your dream holiday in Tokyo as you rush about scooping up as many last minute souvenirs. Cruising through scenes of super-bounce glitzy pop to frenetic jazzy numbers to full-on boogie fever to brief, weird, almost sinister (for Pizzicato 5, that is) segments. All kept aloft by the soaring horns, strings and tambourine. Includes three bonus tracks not available on the import version. And as usual wonderfully stylin' photos and packaging. Go go jetsetter!
They sure do make some of the oddest, fluffiest confectionary treats in Japan, and PuffyAmiYumi is no exception. Although Allan has shown an immense aversion to these J-pop gals, we've got their "Illustrated History" album just released domestically on Hoboken's Bar/None Records (originally on Epic Japan). Sounding not unlike a Hello Kitty pinball and pachinko game arcade at the height of sugar-rush hour with super-slick, huge production that puts Britney, Christina and company (not to mention their record exec. handlers) to shame. As flawless, sweet and crisp as a strawberry Pocky stick. This is not deep. This is not complex. This is not difficult. What it is though is unfathomably cute, sparkling, exuberant fun. And unlike their American pop star counterparts, Puffy jumbles together their sackful of music styles with complete reckless abandon. From song to song, they hop about delving into the vaults of 60s girl groups, surf rock, ABBA ("True Asia"), samba ("Sigh Of Love"), The Who circa-Tommy ("Jet Police"), rumba, Beach Boys summer pop, disco ("Electric Beach Fever"), straight up rock'n'roll... you name it! With bountiful horns, hand claps, tambourine, and a troop of backing singers to boot. Love 'em? Hate 'em? Place your votes! Also includes a bonus video of "Boogie Woogie No. 5" that eerily resembles a Gap khakis ad with its crowd of dancing boys on a stark white backdrop.
An avalanche of Japanese sticky sweets. These two gals have been at it for a while now - since '96 to be exact. Yumi and Ami are definite J-pop sensations with their own toys, clothing and tv show, but have relatively only recently drawn attention on this side of the Pacific. And although they've had to change their name over here - adding Ami Yumi - because of another artist who doesn't even go by that name anymore, they've made quite a splash at that. This is their fifth album bursting at the seams with their buoyant, bizarre mish-mash of musical styles - slick'n'dance-y, sunny surf-y, pop-a-billy, Chipmunks-y... you name it. Malcolm McLaren, Pizzicato Five and Fantastic Plastic Machine have all joined the Puffy parade. Will you be next? Perhaps more cute than should ever be allowed? Decide for yourself... avoid like the plague? Or embrace with ultra glee?
As much as we'd prefer not to, we're sure some of you would appreciate if we started this review with one of those AQ alerts. Goes something like: BORIS ALERT!!!! BORIS ALERT!!!! NEW ON INOXIA!!!! BORIS RELATED NEW RELEASE!!!! Okay, so now all you Boris obsessive can skip right to the buy button and move on, you're probably gonna want this, cuz A. it's on Inoxia, and B. it's produced by Atsuo from Boris! Oh, and let's not forget C. IT'S LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!!
For the rest of you, who need more than a loose Boris connection, this is in fact a pretty awesome slab of drifting droning acid psych. No huge pounding sludge, or blown out fuzz rock, most of the tracks on Pinhole meander aimlessly, wandering from fluttery folks, to ambient drift, and back again, with the occasional squall of distorted buzz.
The record opens with a thick wash of blurred guitar, dense and swirling, groaning waves of distortion flecked with streaks of feedback, while beneath lurks a playful little melody, gently swaying peacefully beneath the sonic turbulence. Then suddenly, the record shifts gears, and we're floating weightless through some sun dappled glade, lilting detuned guitars unfurl gentle melodies all wistful and abstract, WAY off in the background some tape hiss and crumbling distortion. It's very spare and lo-fi, wreathed in sparkling solar flares and soft focus reverb, sort of like a druggy mix of Jandek, Loren Connors and the Durutti Column. Elsewhere reverbed guitars sway suspended in clouds subtle delay, nursery rhyme melodies and hummed / mumbled vocals draped over a shimmery crystalline latticework of delicate drifts of sound, super simple and unobtrusive percussion as well as barely audible field recordings. Now and again, the band launches into some super aggressive strumming, kicking up dense clouds of high end skree and blown out free noise fuzz, but even at their noisiest, Rollo are never far away from settling back down into another long stretch of soft psychfolk shimmer. Good stuff for sure. Not necessarily sonically something Boris fans will automatically love, although some of this did remind us of Boris at their dreamiest and most abstract, but fans of Japanese stuff like L, Maher Shalal Hash Baz, Masaki Batoh, Eddie Marcon and the like will be in heaven.
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From the land of Cornelius, Buffalo Daughter, Pizzicato Five, and the like (Japan, specifically Tokyo), come space/pop/electronauts Spoozys. Silly, fast guitar and synth based beat-o-rama, like robot B-52s dancing with a hyperactive Kraftwerk. Undeniably fun.
Perfect Place To Hideaway is the second full-length album from way-cool Japanese psych scene vets The Stars, a band featuring former members of Tokyo flashbackers White Heaven. Guitarist Michio Kurihara (also of Ghost) is perhaps the best known -- you may recall we recently reviewed his fine solo album Sunset Notes, another Pedal Records release. This ain't White Heaven mark II though, as their inspiration stems not so much anymore from west coast '60s psych like The Doors and Quicksilver Messenger Service but just as much from downtown NYC in the '70s -- Television, No Wave, and maybe even avant-disco dance music... But don't worry, The Stars first and foremost are a guitar band. And guitars can be dangerous things. Much of the time, The Stars are happy just demonstrating the truth of that statement. But there's shiny pop moments here that let singer You Ishihara act the crooning rock star, and some simple blissful ones too. These varied six tracks include the moody groove of the 11-minute "Subway (aka Night Walker)", the crashing, apocalyptic, distorto stomp of "Ice Blues" (THE track for those who want to hear Kurihara wail White Heaven style), the angular repetition of "Double Sider", the too-funky "Lemonade", the placid instrumental "Electron Spin Carnnival", and gentle coda "The World I Left Behind".
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Finally took Eric of Giant Robot's advice and listened to this toothsome collection of their first 2 EPs. Excellent! This Japanese boy/girl duo cross My Bloody Valentine with Galaxie 500 into a thick sweet mixture, and add dreamy girl vocals. Every time we play this in store, someone asks "Wow, who is this!". Richly melodic. Very appealing on even the first listen, especially if all the new "drone" music is too spaced out for you.
New from Zorn's Tzadik label, a 1988 live recording from this Japanese "avant" pop girl duo. They sing, one plays violin, the other a Harry Partch style 43 tone organ. Thus, the obi says: "Microtonal pop for the 21st century!" By "microtonal" do they mean shitty '80s jazz fusiony crap? Well, some of this is quite pretty, and a few parts are wheezy and weird, but cute and fluffy and
We remember first getting a glimpse of the sweet charm of Japan's Tenniscoats a year or so ago when we heard their track on the children's comp Songs For Nao. We had only been able to get a copy or two of Live Wanderus, never enough to list until now. Before we had even heard the record, the dreamy cover art had us super curious as to what we might find inside.
We ended up loving Tenniscoats' take on naive pop. A LOT. A little more dreamy and meandering than some of their sonic brethren like Maher Shal Hash Baz and Nagisa Ni Ti, Saya's sweet hushed vocals and tasteful trumpets and sax, guitar, drums and piano help to create a nice dreamlike atmosphere, a perfect serving of daydream twee. These are live recordings from shows throughout Japan over the last few years, and the recordings sound great, nice and warm, like you were right there in the room while they were playing, sitting on a blanket in the dark with your head on the shoulder of a good friend. So nice!
We loooooooooove the spare and wistful dream pop of Tenniscoats (See, we can put as just as many "o's" in "love" as we do in 'doom'.). Although we must admit, it took us awhile to really get into Tan-Tan Therapy as this time around they collaborated with Swedish band Tape along with other Swedish musicians, resulting in a much broader and much more lush production but also with an even more somber and melancholy feel. The chamber pop instrumentation of horns, woodwinds, organ, cello, zither and glockenspiels along with some subtle electronic flourishes definitely provides richer textures, but we were kind of missing at first Saya and Takashi Ueno's more spare and naive side that comes closer to their Maher Shalal Hash Baz roots. But this release is definitely a grower, and one with each new listen we are loving it more and more.
This ain't that new of a release - it came out in 2011 - but we hadn't yet reviewed it, and when we got some copies back in the other day, wondered, why the heck not? Haven't been able to stop listening to it lately, it's so dang electrifying and infectious. What we have here is a killer collection some of the best tracks recorded by one Takeshi Terauchi, who in the mid-'60s was known as Japan's "King Of The Electric Guitar". In fact, he may still be.
We all know what instrumental surf music guitar sounds like, give it a Japanese twist and you have "Eleki" (what they called electric guitar music). The "Tsugaru" of the subtitle refers to traditional Japanese folk songs, which were also adapted to the '60s rock n' roll invasion. Badass guitarist Terauchi was a pioneer of the Eleki craze, building his own gear, playing to crowds of screaming young girls with his bands The Blue Jeans and The Bunnys. So just imagine a Japanese version of Link Wray and/or Dick Dale, all exciting, exotic surf twang and groovy fuzz. There's some achingly romantic, folk based melodic moments, and we like that, but the best parts are when Terauchi is ripping it up on his fretboard to surfy, psychedelic excess!
FYI, they fit 25 tracks on the cd, and 14 on the vinyl.
Shugo Tokumaru crafts some of the most endearing, clever and catchy pop we've heard in a long time! Carrying on a great tradition of Japanese pop that is nuanced yet so damn playful and impossible not to fall in love with. What makes him and this record so special is how easy and effortless he makes it all seem. Whether using toy instruments to joyous perfection or using his soothing voice to swing the melody of a song back and forth, this is someone who is both a skilled songsmith and a wide eyed daydreamer. The songs and spirit of Exit make us think of some amazing creative pop combination of Haruomi Hosono, Rob Crow, Gruff Rhyss, Cornelius and Vetiver. The range on Exit is astounding, from short caffeine fueled recess anthems to more introspective daydream blissed out gems. That's why the more we listen we really keep thinking of how Shugo Tokumaru seems so much like a Japanese version of Rob Crow, as so many songs on this record could totally fit in sound and style on Heavy Vegetable, Thingy or Pinback records. It's rare that someone is able to be both so playful and thoughtful with the songs they create, but Tokumaru proves with this batch of playful delights that he's in that upper class of truly great pop songsmiths, every song a hook filled gem with an undeniable heart of pop gold. Highly recommended!
For several years now, Frans De Waard has been commissioning artists to recycle the sounds of his own recycling sound project Kapotte Muziek. Up until now, the series had been exclusively based upon the live recordings of Kapotte Muziek; but Japanese field recording expert Toshiya Tsunoda took hold of the studio works found on the 1992 cassette Vier Stukken. Given the terminal obscurity of much of the original source material, how much or how little any of the remixing artists put into the recordings is up for debate. Probably Frans, Tsunoda, and maybe ten other people in the world will know the answer to that riddle; but for the rest of us, it ultimately doesn't matter, as this is a great recording. It appears that Tsunoda took that Kapotte Muziek cassette to the Nagaura Bay in Yokosuka City, Japan (mentioned as the recording location on the sleeve) and played that cassette back in a number of contexts on that beach. Sometimes, playing the sounds through a bottle which acts as a rudimentary frequency filter, other times quietly situating the cassette sounds against the distant wash of the surf and birds, and others blasting the source material quite loudly. While these actions are readily discernable, others are not so easy to figure out, such as the suggestive crackling on the first track. Yeah, the detective work can be quite compelling; but fortunately, Tsunoda gives us plenty of reasons to keep on listening.
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It would be very easy and all too dismissive to simply say: Tujiko, Noriko is like a craftily fragmented Japanese Bjork. Granted that is what immediately springs to mind when hearing the first track of her fourth release (her third for Mego), but delve a little further and you'll be rewarded with a more defined idea of her own sparkling magical loveliness. If you're not familiar with Ms Tujiko, that initial description does give you a basic sense of her sound - an endless building up and stripping away of layer upon layer of swooping childlike vocals, swirling dreamy washes and delicate melody fragments. Her singing also brings to mind Kate Bush as well as the criminally undersung Canadian art pop singer Jane Siberry (check out the seventh song! apologies, I couldn't locate its title). Alternately soft'n'breathy, often almost birdlike, and considerably more robust. Furthermore, the title (in Japanese: Hard Ni Sasete) certainly doesn't evoke visions of her fantastic electronic dream pop world. Make Me Hard. Huh? Puzzling! The packaging consists of nine loose individual square panels of photography, collages, liner notes and lyrics, but be sure to bring your Japanese translator along for the ride 'cause it's all in Japanese.
As the title states, this is a new album by Ms Noriko Tujiko on her own. Following recent fine collaborations with the likes of Lawrence English and Aoki Takamasa, Solo offers up more unstructured gossamer wisps of Japanese electronica coupled with her Bjork-esque cooed vocals. Her albums are like flipping through old photo albums or alternately like looking out the window of a train, catching glimpses of faces and passing scenery. So nice.
For fans of Janis Joplin and/or Flower Travellin' Band... a reissue of the 1968 album from this Japanese Sixties psychedelic act, who later morphed into Seventies hard rockers and massive AQ faves Flower Travellin Band. This early incarnation of the FTB had a mostly different lineup, including female vocalist Remi Aso who does her best Janis (and Grace Slick), singing in either a delicate waver or a screeching wail, wow. And The Flowers back her up like Big Brother, total pros. There's also a male singer, Chiba Hiroshi, who belts it out on such songs as "Hey Joe". Yup there's lots of then-contemporary covers on here, including stuff by Hendrix, Cream, Jefferson Airplane, and Janis Joplin. So you've gotta be into the classic rock - with a Japanese twist. Apparently Uchida had just returned from a trip to England, hanging out there with John Lennon, and this record was his first attempt to take the Japanese "Group Sounds" scene into a new, more psychedelic acid rock direction to emulate the hipness happenin' in London and San Francisco at the time. The band got attention for that - and for their naked album cover photo, the band loitering about in an idyllic meadow someplace, in the buff, though any band members (ahem) who happen to be facing toward the camera also happen to be reading newspapers or magazines for some reason... Of course, Uchida pulled this stunt again with the first FTB album that came out a few years later, with the naked band on the cover riding choppers down the highway.
Besides the cover, the first thing anyone would notice about this album is the charming intro skit, at the beginning of track one, wherein a guy tells a giggling girl about this great new band from Tokyo, "these six guys and this chick", who "do some really fantastic Big Brother And The Holding Company stuff". And he's not kidding, as the rest of the record proceeds to prove. And let's face it, these are great songs, you might not want to hear the versions played on your local classic rock radio station ever again but the Summer Of Love seems a lot cooler when we're tuning in via Tokyo.
Numbered, limited cd edition in the usual Phoenix manner.
From mind-expanding psych drone to extended folk meditations to (opium-)poppy songcraft, "Amaterasu" is all you need for at least a few evenings, nights, and/or mornings of audio-induced bliss. Subtitled, somewhat misleadingly, "A Musical Panorama of Japan", this compilation is hardly an overview of everything from Taiko drumming to J-pop. Not at all. Rather, it's a collection of stuff from the psych-pop-folk-drone underground in Japan, in keeping with Fractal's previous releases of Japanese origin like Acid Mothers Temple -- and many AMT-types appear here as you might expect! It's a really fine collection indeed, well worth the 32 bucks to anyone enamored, as we are, of the retro-psych scene that's currently so vibrant in Japan, as previously documented by PSF's Tokyo Flashback compilation series for instance. There's sixteen tracks in total here, many of them pushing ten minutes in length, and thus spread over two discs. The fragile melodicism of Mineko Itakura, singing solo backed only by her own acoustic guitar, is for us the gorgeous highlight of disc 1, though there's plenty else on here quite worthy as well: Overhang Party, Mitsuru Tabata, Space Machine, Makoto Kawabata, Seiji Nagai (ex-Taj Mahal Travellers), and Kengo Iuchi. Disc two is also packed with cosmic-calibre talent, featuring Chie Mukai, Masayoshi Urabe, Kousokuya, Totsuzen Danball, Miminokoto, Jun Kuriyama, Naoaki Miyamoto, and more Mineko Itakura (yay!). Almost everything is exclusive to this compilation, which comes complete with English language liner notes by the knowledgable Alan Cummings, who explains the concept behind the compilation -- Amaterasu is the Shinto sun-goddess, and her mythology was the inspiration for these songs. Quite recommended.
Since 1991, Japanese label PSF has brought us six volumes in their essential underground psych-rock-noise-improv sampler series Tokyo Flashback. Now they've released a new compilation that's similarly cool, but broadens its geographic scope to include artists from Korea and China as well as Japan, most of whom we'd never been exposed to before. Some of the only familiar folks appear on the very first track, a live-in-Tokyo "improvised trio showdown" featuring Chinese guitarist Li Jianhong (of the noise band D!O!D!O!D! who have a disc out on PSF, and who also had his own awesome solo cd on aRCHIVE recently) teamed up with free jazz drummer Shoji Hano and High Rise guitarist Narita Munehiro, both from Japan. That's an amped-up freakout as you might expect. There's also a noisy D!O!D!O!D! track on here too, but beyond those, it's all new names to us. From Korea: Mustangs, Kim Young Jin, Amature Amplifier, and Soonie. From China: Mafeisan, Xiao He, Li Daiguo. From Japan: Kiyasu Orchestra, Sato Yukie, Yoshiteru Koga Jizo. Also there's a boy-girl Japanese-Korean project called 10, whose track "U-A-U" is a hissing, droning, throbbing backdrop to bizarre vocal expression.
All the tracks are interesting, it's an eclectic mix of experimental/underground styles, from full-on noise chaos to mellow, minimal acoustic guitar balladry, all sorts of stuff... ferinstance the energetic squawk of Kiyasu Orchestra's psychedelic free jazz exotica sits side-by-side here with the Mustangs' sixties style garage psych rock. And perhaps most surprisingly, there's even a dreamy, indie-folk cover of John Lennon's "Imagine" by Korean chanteuse Soonie at the very end of the disc.
The booklet boasts brief liner notes about each contributor, in four languages (English, Japanese, Korean, Chinese). Let's hope that this Asian Flashback is just the start of another series! PSF's antidote to all the mass market J-pop, K-pop, and HK-pop karaoke blandness out there.
Lots of folks probably have no idea what Pinky Violence movies are, but avid readers of the aQ list, might have scene (or hopefully bought!) several records by a local turntablist called DJ Female Convict Scorpion, whose name is in fact borrowed from one of the more famous Pinky Violence series of films.
In the late sixties, traditional gangster movies in Japan were replaced with "Pinky Violence" movies, which embraced nudity and violence and bondage, women in prison, women gangs, who often fought topless, low brow, lowest common denominator, maybe, but many of the films infused the sex and violence with plenty of subtle social and political critiques, and as you might imagine, they caught on, and became a sensation. Often psych rock bands like the Jacks or the Flowers were tapped for music, but just as often, a small cadre of composers created the strange sonic hybrids that were the soundtrack to some of the most over the top films you'll ever see.
From Western style Morricone soundtrack music, all strings and whistles, haunting and ominous, to sultry smoky jazz, groovy fuzz funk, and full on psychedelic garage rock, the sounds here are all over the map. In some ways this could have easily been an installment in Sublime Frequencies' ever expanding catalog of world musics, so varied and catchy and wildly exotic. Jazzy drums underpin fluttery flutes, crunchy fuzz guitar all tangled up with woozy porno funk, sexy sax, wah wah guitars, soaring strings, Eastern melodies, all wound into groovy cinematic funk jazz, xylophones and marimbas, horn sections, strange sound effects, wild drumming, it's hard to imagine how this stuff hasn't been sampled to death by DJ's. super funky, but WAY out there and psychedelic, sometimes dark, but more often jubilant and unhinged and FUN.
Super extensive liner notes, with a history of the genre, the soundtracks, the composers, and of course the starlets, and besides simply being a killer collection of funky soulful cinematic sounds, hopefully it'll get some folks out there to track down some of these amazing movies...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Japanese artists cover their favorite Kraftwerk tunes. Participants include Melt Banana, Zeni Geva, Buffalo Daughter and a bunch of others we're not familiar with, but who seem to be part of the Japanese avant-pop electronica scene. The whole thing is great, absolutely recommended.
Along with Funky Frauleins and the French Sixties Girls compilations, how could we resist the allure of Nippon Girls, a swinging mod-tastic compilation of hip-swaying and frug-dancing femme-fronted big beat gems from sixties Japan? We couldn't, and you probably can't either. The cd came out a few years ago, but the vinyl version only just got released so we thought we should finally review this especially after the success of another Big Beat disc, Nippon Guitars, we reviewed a few lists ago. Feeling the influence of Western pop music in the sixties (including Bossa Nova from Brazil and Ye Ye from France), Japanese musicians capitalized on the new sound often by lifting popular songs wholesale and rewriting the lyrics. But the enthusiasm with which these sexy and soulful songs are performed and arranged make them pretty outstanding in their own right. Acid-y guitars, cinematic orchestral flourishes, and sharp and dynamic arrangements are just too infectious to be ignored, especially by beautiful women who look and sound this fantastically fierce. It's party time!
Note: the cd version contains the full 25 tracks while the lp version only covers the first 12 tracks from 1967-1969. We assume there will be a follow-up volume 2 vinyl comp with the other tracks.
Along with Funky Frauleins and the French Sixties Girls compilations, how could we resist the allure of Nippon Girls, a swinging mod-tastic compilation of hip-swaying and frug-dancing femme-fronted big beat gems from sixties Japan? We couldn't, and you probably can't either. The cd came out a few years ago, but the vinyl version only just got released so we thought we should finally review this especially after the success of another Big Beat disc, Nippon Guitars, we reviewed a few lists ago. Feeling the influence of Western pop music in the sixties (including Bossa Nova from Brazil and Ye Ye from France), Japanese musicians capitalized on the new sound often by lifting popular songs wholesale and rewriting the lyrics. But the enthusiasm with which these sexy and soulful songs are performed and arranged make them pretty outstanding in their own right. Acid-y guitars, cinematic orchestral flourishes, and sharp and dynamic arrangements are just too infectious to be ignored, especially by beautiful women who look and sound this fantastically fierce. It's party time!
Note: the cd version contains the full 25 tracks while the lp version only covers the first 12 tracks from 1967-1969. We assume there will be a follow-up volume 2 vinyl comp with the other tracks.
We've been trying to list this for ages now (we listed its predecessor, the Ongaku 70 comp, late last year), but our distributor kept running out, and then eventually it sold out totally and went out of print. Well, it's finally repressed and available again, but who knows for how long, so grab a copy before they're gone, cuz this stuff is so good, and so crazy, some of the coolest and weirdest minimal electronic and no wave music we've ever heard, and most of the groups were totally unknown to us. Sure there's Phew and Riuchi Sakamoto and Tako, but then there's also Daisuck & Prostitute, Gunjogacrayon, Lizard and so many more. For those of you who remember that awesome So Young So Cold compilation of seventies and eighties cold/new wave music from France, well, imagine an even more warped and whatthefuck Japanese version and you've got Ongaku 80.
The sounds here are so varied and so all over the map, there's no way to really describe it as a whole, so might as well go track by track. EP-4 starts things off with "Robothood Process", which is in fact quite robotic, sounding a little like Herbie Hancock's "Rockit" at 16rpm, a funky bassline, little flurries of percussion, a weird machinelike voice, streaks of feedback, tolling bells, all wrapped into ramshackle groove. Sakamoto's "Riot In Lagos" takes the new wavey prog of Yellow Magic Orchestra (Sakamoto's group), and pulls it apart into something more robotic, unwinding long streaks of dubby rhythms, and a stuttery almost hip-hop groove, wreathed in all manner of beeps and bloops and synth blurts. "Modern Beat" by Lizard might be one of our favorites, a militaristic beat, some spidery guitar melodies, buried crooned vocals, lilting melodies, but over the top super loud dubbed out drums and a thick super distorted low end buzz, that erupts every once in a while like a squelchy rib cage rattling pppppthhhh, not to mention some squiggly Bollywood melodies. Portray Heads offer up "Elaborate Dummy", which is a killer slab of futuristic electro-punk with sweet crooned girl vox over the top, pulsing and pulsating synthscapes that should have fans of Zombi, Umberto and all the rest flipping their lids. Gunjogacrayon channel early P.I.L. and the Slits for a noisy chunk of super rhythmic punkfunk, wreathed in all sorts of effects and guitar scrabble and garbled wild vox.
Flip the record over, and things start off with "Urahara" by Phew, a weird bit of stiff robotic funk, with cold sung/spoken female vox over theremin like melodies and an almost Kraftwerk like arrangement. Tako's "Funk Of The Hostage" is indeed funky, bit a sort of sinister soundtracky funk that slithers and swaggers, a creepy bit of stuttery broody psychedelic spacefunk, with processed vocal garble and shards of squealing feedback and fractured melodies, as well as flurries of atonal piano, and bursts of distorted yelps and swirling FX. The awesomely named Daisuck & Prostitute almost sound like they could be some sort of proto-Ruins project, progged out scrabbly lurching grooviness, peppered with horn bleats and strangled guitar squiggles, all beneath dramatic vox, the song slipping from frenetic skitter, to grooving post punk. Shinobu's "Earth" is another track that sounds like a mutated version of HH's "Rockit", this time pelted with all manner of spaced out swirl and stuttering swoosh, a collage of sliced and diced sonic fragments raining down on a mesmerizing sci-fi synth groove, with some bizarre bellowed vox. And finally, PTA's finish things off with their epic "Woo-Guy After Dark", which weds post punk guitar jangle to tribal percussion, swoonsome synth swells to sweetly crooned female vocals, a slow build to something that more resembles a lost Bollywood soundtrack or some strange Southeast Asian cassette reissued on Sublime Frequencies, the song slipping from dense and percussive to swirly and ethereal and back again, all the while super rhythmic and hypnotic.
Phew! So good, and so awesomely crazy and over the top! So totally recommended. We definitely can't say how long these copies will last, or if we can get more once they're gone, so better probably to not risk it. You have been warned!
Seventeen tracks including stuff by The Lookers, Cannanes, Some Velvet Sidewalk and others, notably the much-raved-about Japanese contingent of Kirohito, Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her and Loud Machine 0.5.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Another edition from this playful series. Warning: there are some painful easy listenin' tracks (for instance, track 3) that seem to have somehow escaped the quality control and the remix knife, and that are not even tolerable on the kitsch level. Nonetheless, many others kick some groovy ass butt, and are perfect for gettin' down and doin' the funky slide through the racks of your chosen chi-chi boutique. Frivolous Euro-fun. Like a revved-up, house-y Charles Wilp. Fans of Arling and Cameron... ahoy!
Subtitled, "The Return of Spectacular Japanese Clubpop".
Anticipation was high for this collaboration between Yoshimi (Boredoms, OOIOO, Flaming Lips guest) and Yuka Honda (Cibo Matto)... But unfortunately this turned out to be pretty much a total throwaway of a record, this sounds like Yuka and Yoshimi got set loose in an instrument store and just futzed around with the toys, like, y'know, playing the piano with two fingers and trying out the mikes, etc. With absolutely no actual songs to speak of, it's sometimes atmospheric and pretty, at times reaching towards Miles Davis style quiet cool, but no amount of sampled bird calls can make up for how tossed-off this album sounds. A complete disappointment, especially considering how much we like and respect their other work with their other projects, and a little insulting that they expect us to pay money for this album because it doesn't sound like they put any actual work into it.
MPEG Download: "La Donna Ni Demo Des Kinna" [/audio/yoshimiyuka.mp3]
