Englanding #18 : The Rock

What did you do on Friday night?


Devil and Casey Jones made a Rock delivery. Ka-POW! Have some ear damage!

Thanks to everyone who came to our one-off reunion, we had a blast! Maybe see you in another few years!

Moments from Wild Zero

Wild Zero is a fantastic zombie b-movie starring the Japanese Rock 'n' Roll legends Guitar Wolf.

What's it about?




It's about Rock 'n' Roll.

Those are actual subtitles from the movie by the way, which is amazing on so many levels it's like God's own multi-storey car park.

I might have been born yesterday, but I stayed up all night.

GodDAMN that El-P record that came out two years ago (I'll Sleep When You're Dead) is good. Really, really good.

His production still sounds like I believe regular hip-hop will sound in twenty years time and when he's dropping lines like the one in the title of this here post he's pretty much unstoppable. Fantastic video too. I wanna go back in time to 2007 and slot it into my best of the year list.

More hip-hop I've been listening to this week: Eyedea and Abilities. Now that I'm using Media Monkey to listen to stuff I keep digging up old rekkerds that I haven't listened to in forever, and one of them was their self titled second album. When I got it I was hooked in by Now (it's streaming on their myspace, check it out), which is just by far the best track on a pretty solid album that didn't really blow me away. There's too much posturing, and it's really hard to put my finger on why that doesn't work for me there, I mean, posturing is in no way a bad thing in hip-hop terms. I think it's maybe something to do with the fact that they most certainly have the skills to pay the bills, but being a champion battle rapper and champion scratch artist, it's like they set out to make an album that played to their strengths, that maximised their potential and... maybe they could'a just made a better album if they relaxed a bit and not locked themselves in a classic, but limited, hip-hop paint box. Anyway, after five years or whatever off doing a million different things they're back, and the press release says back to the battle rapping and scratching, which is entirely misleading because they've made a much more interesting album than that.

That's not even one of the better songs on the new album By the Throat, which is a blast. It's short, punchy, it obeys no formulas, it's not in any box (well, kinda the modern indie hip-hop playpen I guess) and it sounds like a record made by people with inspiration rather than people toiling to make the most of their gifts within the genre in which they're expected to perform. Everything's messier and noisier, nothing fades out and songs are cut off before their natural end point, there are lots of fuzzy guitar noises that never lapse into actual rock riffs (barring a couple of shaky straight-punk sections) and great beats and good lines and most importantly of all they get the most out of every track and then they kill it. The previous album, like many, many rock and hip-hop records works with the assumption that a track should be yay-long, regardless whether the song is good enough to keep the attention for that long. This is one of my biggest personal bugbears in pop music - the so-so chorus that still gets repeated four times at the end of a four minute song in the hope that momentum might give it extra mass; the third or fourth verse in a song where the point's been made in the first, filled out in the second and there's nowhere else for it to go. Christ I wish people would think about what structure would make the song better, rather than dragging the song out to fit some trad-skeleton. By The Throat is execptional in that way. There's a track about gun control and he makes his point in the first verse and that's it. Done in one verse. One minute forty four seconds, and it's as complete as every other song on the record. Awesome.

Heh, white guys rapping. Now for rock, Pitchfork, god bless it's little cotton socks turned me onto Health, and their second album Get Color is very good. This is the best song though, and the video is exceptional:

So it might be slightly downhill after that. Apparently they used to be accused of jumping on some noise-rock bandwagon (oh man, they must've smelt the billions in gold bullion you can make from noise-rock these days!) but while you can see their influences, I think the sound they've carved out for themselves here is pretty unique. Despite sounding like a car-plant trying to romance a circular saw and play the dums at the same time the record flows really, really well. They keep up the same sonics almost all the way through and there's a great balance of focus and freedom.

Wow, I had a good music week. I also got the Beta Satan album (you can buy it easily, not just through itunes! off their myspace there) which is fantastic. Some of Beta Satan used to be Tiger Tunes, who made Denmark awesome with their electronic indie music, and Beta Satan are just like Tiger Tunes except ROCK and with a lot of swearing and a hilariously surly attitude. Their NSFW video is:

I mean, I saw NSFW, but as always it depends where you "W" and whether you care what people think of you. They have a song called Maths and Chemistry with a repeated refrain of "Politics Politics" that I find incredibly amusing for no reason I can consciously fathom.

Pitchfork (and some guy on a message board) also told me to get XX by The XX but in this case I can't be all that enthusiastic about it. I mean, it's a good downbeat electro pop album, and I'll certainly listen to it for background music when I'm trying to do something else (oh! backhanded dis! I don't mean that as bitchily as it came out), but it really, really sounds like The Blow to me. Except it's more downbeat and it's really trying to be classy and aloof and touching and down to earth at the same time, and The Blow are much more carefree and, frankly, much better. Hmmm, I wonder how much of it comes down to the fact that the girl who sings for The XX sounds exactly like Khaela Maricich of The Blow? Maybe my senses are being misled by that. It is funny that on a couple of duets the slightly affected vocals of the boy from The XX make him sound exactly like Har Mar Superstar. So, essentially, if I hadn't known what I was listening to when that track came on then I would've sworn on my pirate ancestor's grave that it was an old Blow song with guest vocals from Har Mar Superstar.

Oh man, that's a lot of writing about music! It was fun though. See you around!

Rising Sun Rock Festival 2009 in EZO

Bang! Take that Ishikari!

For the second year in a row I attended the mighty Rising Sun Rock Festival in EZO (ezo is of course the old name for Hokkaido but you knew that, right?) and for the second year in a row it was awesome. Rising Sun is only Japanese artists, as opposed to the big festivals on the main island which feature really huge international artists that force the Japanese bands to play second fiddle. There are advantages and disadvantages, but since I like a lot of Japanese music, it's great for me.

Last year's festival was fun but trying. We put up with torrential rain followed by scorching heat but it was made worth it by the interstellar line-up (if you like Japanese music that is) and generally great atmosphere. This year the weather was just peachy, not too hot and not too cold for the most part, and although the line-up wasn't all that amazing there was still plenty of awesome acts to slake my musical thirst. In fact, I kind of enjoyed not having someone to see every hour. It meant I could spend time just chilling out and even taking naps instead of running around like a crazy person trying to fit everyone in.

My hypothesis was that last year was the 10th anniversary so they just burnt the trust fund and stacked the bill as much as they could. This year therefore, spending was more frugal with the superstars mostly veterans (and often tucked away from the main stage oddly enough) and probably less choice overall. Certainly the electronic and hip-hop bills were a shade of last year's (if there was any hip-hop at all that is) so I felt sorry for Olivia who ate that up last time.

The atmosphere was great again, and the organisation (getting there and getting in) seemed to be way better. We were better prepared too, and since I booked a camping space right at the start we were pretty centrally located. And again - the toilets. I'll reiterate that when you think about it squat portaloos are a lot better than sitting portaloos, and the toilets at Rising Sun never ran out of paper. Incredible.

Another head scratcher this year was that all the food I had was really good. Y'know, for festival food. I don't know what was up with that, but I'm pretty happy about it. Smokers were well provided for with a glittering smoking oasis and cigarette girls in silver hot pants; the merch line was a trek in itself; people were getting very silly trying to collect all the 1" pin badges; and I didn't try out the karaoke stage, but I saw a couple of awesome performances there. Oh and this year I got a free towel from docomo so that I could wear a towel around my neck like 90% of the people there do: to block the sun, or to mop up sweat, or to fashion a tourniquet for any serious wounds.

I had a good festival, and here's what I saw:


Polysics were just as incredible as I hoped they would be. They weren't in the orange jumpsuits, it was even better than that. They were dressed in airline uniforms as pilots and cabin crew, and they put on a fantastic performance, especially their emotionless keyboard player and the guitarist who must have gone beyond the point of exhaustion he was running around so much.

I saw a little bit of HiGE and felt like I'd been sucked back in time to a Pop Will Eat Itself Concert or something. There was a drum machine, one guy with dreadlocks, one guy shouting through a megaphone and some catchy hard rock guitar. That was just the intro though and after that it settled a little into pretty catchy early nineties rock. I'll have to check them out a bit more, because the only thing I have of theirs is a one track experimental album that hardly sounds representative now.

Guitar Wolf were incredible. I mean, they're Guitar Wolf for crying out loud, I'd heard so much about how good they were live that I kind of expected to be let down a little. But ohhhh no, they were amazing. I think most of my ear damage for the weekend was done here, and there was an awesome extended "Kick Out The Jams" (I think, I couldn't be sure) where Guitar Wolf dragged a guy out of the crowd, onto the stage, gave him his guitar and pick in fake slo-mo and had that guy just pound the shit out of his guitar and go crazy. At the end of the set Guitar Wolf was on the barricades hanging into the crowd and drooling spit and snot all over people. Incredible.


I loved Capsule too. Yasutaka Nakata is kind of a music genius. His electronic music is so damn dense and satisfying and the singer looked so stylish and completely out of place at some dirty rock festival. Her dress was hypnotic too - it was very billowy and flouncy and seemed to move completely independently of her body. However by 1am on Friday night I was sorely flagging and Capsule were relentless - they would not stop their electro-pop onslaught! It was kind of like being force fed ice-cream for just a little too long. Only a little too long mind you.


On Saturday we kicked off with Beat Crusaders who have grown on me more and more since I devoted a couple of posts to them a while back. I like a lot of their songs now so I really enjoyed their set, and I loved the fact that their lead guitarist was dressed exactly like Eddie Van Halen. He introduced himself as Eddie Van Halen to a bemused reaction from the crowd and was immediately taunted by the lead singer.

The singer from Dragon Ash looks so manly, but the two dancers that they had were... somewhat less so. I only watched a couple of songs of theirs and to be honest, that was probably a couple too many.

Mi-Gu probably drew the smallest crowd I saw, but they (she? I'm not sure if it's the name of the band or her stage name) were (was?) awesome. Really fun, interesting electronic / space / indie / something.

I sacficed Sakanaction, who I really like, to see Midori who were just jazz/punk/noise madness. The keyboard player could not sit still, to the extent where sometimes he was just getting up and walking in a circle around his keyboard, and the singer climbed up the metal lighting frame at the side of the stage and jumped backwards into the audience. This is where the rest of my hearing damage came from.

Shibusashirazu Orchestra were my find of the festival. They're apparently a free-jazz group, but it sounded more like rock-opera to me and I was slowly drawn towards the stage as soon as they started warming up. Let's see they had live painting, three separate sets of dancers, three different vocalists and three or four guitarists along with a central orchestra of horns and strings and live painting and weird video art and fire breathing and someone using a circular saw to grind sparks into the air and the coolest goddamn conductor in the world. And it sounded good.

Eastern Youth were one of the first Japanese rock bands I heard, so I thought I should see them even though I'm never sure if I really like them or not. I had a nap that was so deep it would be better described as a one hour coma, and coming out of this stupor exactly when they started I lurched zombie like towards the tent they were playing and was really impressed. They played one of the few songs of theirs that I've listened to over and over again and a bunch of stuff I didn't know but which sounded great. I'm going to listen to more of their stuff now I reckon.

Finally I saw Mass of the Fermenting Dregs, who I looooove play the last slot on the Green Oasis stage. They're a really fantastic rock band who just seem to be enjoying the hell out of every moment and they're awesome and I want them to be really famous. I wish they'd been closing out the festival rather than The Pillows who played the final performance and who suck. Oh boy do they suck. I've always been ambivalent towards the Pillows, but after seeing them play properly now - they really suck.


But the festival didn't suck. It's the best festival I've been to IN THE WORLD (counting Glastonbury, which I attended the year a hundred thousand people jumped the fences, and which I'm sure is much better now, but at that time I described as "the worst place I'd ever been to") and god knows what'll be happening next year but I hope I can go again.

EZO or DIE!

Q: Rock music? A: Rock Music

Chris sent me an mp3 of the first track off the Fucked Up album. It:s so good, that I can't even bring myself to download it illegally, I'm hoping I can actually track down a copy this weekend. And of course that made me listen to nothing but beautiful rock music for the last few days, and of course that is good for the soul like you don't even know.

That track's called Son the Father, and I can' find a video of it, but here's an infamous recent TV appearance by them on MTV Canada where the presenters seem to have been shipped in from the early nineties. The actual music here doesn't come across very well, but what the hell huh?:

And then here's Cows with Mine and Organized Meat. Mine has possibly the greatest lyrics of any song ever: "If you can lay eyes on it - it's mine! it's mine! / if you can walk upon it - it's mine! it's mine!" and later on "if you can latch on to it - it's mine! it's mine! / if you can eat or screw it - it's mine! it's mine!"

And then here's the Blood Brothers with one of the best album openers ever.

Doesn't that feel better? It does to me.

Alex, Andy and Katsuhiko Session: Mizukusai

Here's one of the tracks from the session last week with Andy and Katsuhiko. It's a crappy messy track, but that's how we wanted it. Not much Katsuhiko on this one I'm afraid, but there's more of him later for sure. It's called Mizukusai, which doesn't mean stink-water, despite the literal translation.




- - -

And you can download it here.


I want to do a lot more of this, it made me dizzy and happy. Andy's already posted another one of the songs on his blog here, but I'll put the links for all of them up here at some point, and one or two'll be on Loom this week too. Ah, cross-posting, or as I like to say, "Spreading the love".

Alex Loves Zazen Boys: crayon fun edition

Recently I had to teach some very young kids, which necessitated the use of wax crayons. Now, it's been many, many years since I used wax crayons, and the moment I touched them to the paper the sheer joy of making those big streaks of colour was wonderful.

Also, today I looked at my last.fm page for the first time in months, and was surprised to see that my recent all-out adoration of Mukai Shutoku and Zazen Boys has rocketed them to the top of my favourite artists list.

How could I possibly combine these two apparently chalk-and-cheese concepts? Easy, I went to town and bought some wax crayons and drew a picture of Yoshikane Sou a.k.a. Casio Man, the lead guitarist of Zazen Boys.


I kinda went a little overboard on the colours there. Then again I do have twenty different colours to choose from, how could I be expected to stick to just black for his clothes and pink for his ridiculous sun glasses?

Alex Recommends Comics! Phonogram

So I like comics, and sometimes I think it's worth banging on an old bass drum about something I think people outside that cannibalistic niche of the geek market would like. Phonogram is an awesome comic that will pretty much knock you down if you're an American with an interest in British indie music, or if you're a British person with any idea at all about guitar music in the nineties. Yes, that means Britpop, but don't run away yet.The first of six issues was collected into a book that you must buy. Especially since it seems to be only seven bloody quid at the moment.

The story by Kieron Gillen takes a love/hate of Britpop and its various descendents and smushes it up with the idea of people using music to make magic (literally, to cast spells). It's perfectly pitched to make the supernatural elements seem as natural as possible for the most part, after all that's what pop music does - it transports you and transforms the world around you. The art by Jamie McKelvie is just wonderful too; I always have a soft spot for artists who can really nail facial expressions, and although his action can be kinda stilted, his characters and faces are among the best in the business. Also it features Luke Haines acting as a guide through the Britpop-dreamtime, so that's awesome too.

And (and this is the important bit) Phonogram 2 is going to launch at the end of the year. I really want it to be as succesful as possible, so when it finally does bust out I want you to find a comic store near you that sells it and buy a copy of each issue as it comes out. Sadly you can't pick up comics at the newsagent or whatever anymore, you've gotta hunt them down at a comic book store, but there are plenty of those still around at the moment so go do it. Here's their advance flyer, click it to view it properly:


Heh, "With the ears".

FIST OF MAP!

I spent all night bashing out this baby, so I'm posting pretty much the same thing on here and Loom tonight (albeit here I'm keeping my prose less concise and enigmatic... sort of). Chris asked me to do a logo for Heroes of Cartography an absolute age ago, and I finally got something to start with:


The map is an old OS map of Snowden, and the background and fist colours are spotted from that map. If they're happy with it I'll probably toy around with it a lot more, layout, texture, font, colour... It's like a wikipedia vortex, once you start you just get sucked further and further in.

Saturday Night with Medications

Riiiiiing

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiing

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing

Hello?

Yeah, it's me, Alex.

Yeah, that's right, I'm phoning it in today.

OH! SNAP! Because no mortal man can blog well considered items seven days a week without going completely bug-fuck insane, today I present Devin Ocampo's Medications playing Domestic Animals from the Burn To Shine DVD:

Which reminds me, I really have to buy all of those DVDs. Even though the quality of the bands sometimes varies, they're still super-awesome. Burn To Shine is the brainchild of Brendan Canty from Fugazi. He goes to different cities in the US, gets a bunch of pretty high quality local indie bands to play a song each during the last day of a condemned house, records it all, and the next day the house is demolished. It's fun and cool in so many ways, I can't recommend them enough. I just looked, and didn't even realise they were working on Louisville and Seattle ones. I'm stoked to check them all out (I only saw the first two in DC and Chicago), but it is worth bearing in mind that Magik Markers play on the Louisville one and they were one of the worst bands I've ever seen. I've read so many people raving about them I should really give them another shot, but when I saw them they had literally nothing to redeem them. They were just abject. Gah.

Zazen Boys: Judo ni-dan Matsushita Atsushi

a.k.a. "J-rock Weight-loss!"

Zazen Boys... week?... continues tonight as we look at their awesome drummer Matsushita Atsushi (Atsushi is his first name). Mukai, the Zazen Boys' main guy always seems to introduce him as "Judo ni-dan Matsushita Atsushi", meaning he's a second dan blackbelt in Judo, meaning he could probably fold you like a napkin. Matsushita was a session drummer who joined the band after their second album, when their first drummer Inazawa Ahito (formerly of Mukai's previous band, the legendary Number Girl) left. He's an astounding drummer, but today we're looking at the notches on his belt, rather than those on his sticks.

On his first release with the band, 2005's Himitsu Girl's Top Secret, he was... paunchy to put it lightly:


That's right porky, hang your head in shame...

God! I don't know what came over me! It's never fun to make fun of fat people. That one just slipped out. I swear. No more cheap jibes. Anyway, on Zazen Boys III in 2006, his first full album with the band, he's looking a little lighter and that chin is coming up...


No jokes about how many cows gave their lives to put that jacket together. Fast forward another year and a bit, to Zazen Boys' last single I Don't Wanna Be With You at the very end of 2007:


HOLY FREAKIN' CRAP! That lanky fellow in the orange jacket is the same guy that was in the cowskin tarpaulin less than two years before! Now that is some impressive excercise/diet regime right there. Was it just drumming? Zero carbs? God, that's pretty inspirational - he should do infomercials or something! Last month at Rising Sun I told a couple of people "Yeah, Zazen Boys should be good. They've got a fat drummer too", and when he walked out I assumed they'd changed the line-up again. NO! Not a double, or a twin - the same damn guy!

Their new album is out next week, and I'm assuming that the band photo will be three guys and a stick figure. Judo ni-dan Matsushita Atsushi, I applaud you.

Heroes of Cartography

If you were a wise man (I mean, I know that's a hopelessly optimistic opening clause, but bear with me here), you would waste no time in hightailing it over to www.heroesofcartography.com to download the first EP from the hot-live-rock combo Heroes of Cartography.

Yes, I'm still in a band with them technically, but being completely unbiased it's still awesome stuff. I'm super happy to find that they're making me jealous with this new rocking-out-ity. Goddamnit guys!

So go, download, enjoy and if you're in Birmingham this weekend go check them out live at the Sunflower Lounge. I'm certain something farcical will be in the works.

Oh, sweet rock!

Also apparently someone pushed Noel Gallagher over during a show in America. You can find the video for yourself, but I for one find that simply delightful! Bravo American! From what I've been reading recently, Noel Gallagher has finished his hiatus of "not being a cock" and returned to his old ways of "being a bit of a cock". Oh well, nothing lasts for ever, huh?

Oh also this is my hundredth post on this blog. It feels good to spend it promoting my friends' awesomeness and calling Noel Gallagher a bit of a cock.

Let's just call this Zazen Boys week shall we?

This is what happens when you put love out there - you get love back. Even the crazy Tower Records guy camped outside my appartment know this, but it's not getting him anywhere yet. Chris emailed me that the NME featured a bunch of live Zazen Boys clips from when they were recording their album in New York with Dave Fridmann. Wonderfully, they played a free show at a nearby bar and so now I (and, by extension, you) can watch them kicking the crap out of a bunch of people who have no idea who they are. It comes in seven chunks, I'll link to part 2 here because it's Himitsu Girl's Top Secret which is awesome, but I strongly recommend you check out the whole thing, especially part 3, which is Daruma, the best track on their last single and awesomely you can hear someone yelling "Freebird!" just before it starts. Also part 5, Cold Beat is phenomenal:

St. Vincent

Apparently it's my job this week to make some quick posts about awesome music. Yeah, me and twenty thousand other internet goons, but I don't make the rules man, I just... concede.

Tower Records still exists in Japan you know. It went bust in America and Europe but in Japan - still going strong and a huge part of the music industry here. They sponsor pretty much everything that has anything to do with music. The saturation of their "No Music, No Life" slogan is like a case study in memetics. There's a guy right outside my appartment right now waving one of those stupid yellow hand-towels and chanting his ass off. I'd close my window but for some reason we're getting a second summer in Hokkaido and it's hot as balls.

However while they've got the best stock of import CDs, I don't really head to Tower for anything except the latest western releases. I'm glad I popped in this weekend looking for the new Vast Aire album though (no luck there). They were having a clearout of tons of western CDs that hadn't sold, so I could pick up a few things I forgot about at half price. And one of those CDs was Marry Me by St. Vincent.

Here's is my review: "It's awesome", now less yapping and more watching the awesome music video:

Wow! But in Japan they don't say music video, they say PV, standing for "Promotional Video" isn't that interesting? Yeah, I know. You're welcome. Again.

Zazen Boys

The new Zazen Boys album (produced by Dave Fridmann interestingly enough) comes out on the 17th September! Hot damn I'm excited, and even though I'm pretty sure it's not gonna match up to their previous records, at least they're taking their sound on some kind of geek odyssey into the heart of 1980s hedonism. Their new video is also awesome:

V∞redoms

So I mentioned that I saw the V∞redoms (thank god for the copy & paste function that frees me from finding out how to type that infinity sign) at Rising Sun Rock. And I mentioned they were awesome, but here's a little more. They played first on the dance stage on Saturday, for 20 minutes longer than almost everyone else that weekend. They had four drummers with full kits (including Yoshimi P-We), Yamantaka Eye and another dude helping out on guitar, electronics and tuning Eye's farcical seven necked guitar.

Yes, the seven necked guitar, according to wikipedia called the "Sevener". Sadly I couldn't find any good photos of it online, but luckily I found a video from Portland this year. When I saw them setting up I thought: "Whoah, that things huge, he's going to need a stepladder to play it." Of course he didn't, because he just hit the thing with sticks:

It's like he thought "guitars sound great, but I just like hitting drums so much... wait a second..." Obviously beating on it with sticks tends to knock it out of tune, so for a while the other guy's job was to retune it. The sun was searing too, so Eye was wearing a huge farmer's hat too, that added to the whole... insanity of it. Seeing them was very special for me since I've wanted to see the Boredoms/V∞redoms for years now, and they actually played Birmingham, my hometown, about a month after I left for Japan. That's kinda annoying to be honest, so now I feel like the world's been set to rights a little.

Rising Sun Rock Festival 2008 in EZO

So hey! I went to an honest to god camping Rock Festival!


The last full on camping rock festival I attended was Glastonbury, many years ago, the year that David Bowie played and as many people jumped the fences as paid to get in. I still hold the opinion that while the music was wonderful, that was the worst place I have ever been in my life, so I kinda doubted I'd ever attend one of these things again. However, this is Japan, so while there are a number of things that you'll never be able to get away from at festivals (too much walking, crowds, unhealthy food, bad weather, camping etc.) it was wonderful really. The campsite was fairly quiet at night, which was symptomatic of a wider civility that the Japanese bring to rock festivals - i.e. don't act like a cock to other people. Crime never seemed to be an issue. The toilets never ran out of toilet paper. Seriously, the whole weekend... that's incredible. And although you did have to cope with using the Japanese squat versions of portaloos - think about it and that's actually cleaner and more hygenic than seated western style toilets. Do you see? I can draw you a diagram if you want.


The weather was pretty hard to stick. When we arrived it was raining, and it only got heavier while we were trekking around looking for our campsite and setting up our comically tiny tent (we had to buy one the night before as it turned out we couldn't borrow the one we thought we could). The sky for the whole first day was a dark grey ceiling that made the whole thing feel like an indoor event. The second day was glorious sunshine and inevitable sunburn.

The festival is a two day event, but the second day runs until 5 in the morning so that you can see the sun come up. This meant that at 4.30 in the morning the headliners Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra hit the main stage in gleaming silver suits and while there were still plenty of people packing out the main standing area and going crazy, there were many people lurching around like slack-jawed zombies and praying for the first shuttle bus home.


There were lots of fun Japanese festival things like a small karaoke stage, a weirdly spectacular smoking area, an endless merch stand with a section for every artist, and collectable pin badges. This last thing was pretty interesting, there was a big row of gatcha-gatcha (bubble) machines, selling random 1" pins for 100 yen each. Every artist had a pin plus the festival had a bunch too, and collecting them all was quite a task so next to the machines was a whole tent for trading the badges, and people were taking it very seriously. As someone pointed out, it's pretty much rock-fest-pokemon.


The music was incredible too. I was pretty much desperate to go just to see Tokyo Jihen, Shiina Ringo and Zazen Boys and none of them let me down. I didn't bother taking snaps of them playing, they wouldn't have come out and they wouldn't have captured how great those artists were. Tokyo Jihen performed in robes while Ringo wore a kimono with the Tokyo Jihen logo and sang through a megaphone. The musicians were phenomenal and Ringo's extremely restrained, stylised performance was great. For her solo performance the next day she reworked some of her biggest songs for piano and string quartet, everyone dressed like doctors, and it was also great. Zazen Boys however... holy crap. I'm not too sure about their last single (their new album is out next month) so I wasn't sure what to expect, but they absolutely blew me away. Tighter than the tightest thing you can think of, their songs "Stop & Go" - as their singer joked - with brutal, thrilling intensity. A lot of Japanese rock music is in debt to western music to a large degree but Mukai, their leader, has carved out something unique and to me they have to be one of the best rock bands in the world. Yuki also became their new no. 1 fan too, that's how good they were.

Buffalo Daughter, in the lovely Crystal Palace building, were incredible too. Bloodthirsty Butchers despite the awesome, screaming guitar of Hisako from Number Girl, only reinforced my opinion of them as "pretty good". DJ Krush was incredible. The Vooredoms (Boredoms, whatever) were amazing. Mr. Children... kinda sucked.

And of course, it was a rock festival, so there was lots of hanging out with good people too, and sitting on the grass, and dozing in the shade. It was really a pretty great way to end my holiday.

My flickr set is here, for a lot more of the experience!

The Three Pilliars of Western Civilization: Coffee, Rock and Wrestling

I really started to love coffee a few years ago, so this is the first of probably many posts about that dark, heady mistress. Coffee. During the week it's fuel, and my tristes with coffee are perfunctory and business like. But on the weekend I like to really spend some time with coffee, you know, lavish some attention on it. Oh coffee... come here you...

So I keep track of places here that serve good coffee, and believe me that'll be a whole series of posts in the future. While the coffee boom took root in Japan just as much as it did everywhere else, coffee here probably isn't as good as the States or Europe overall, and finding great, strong coffee isn't all that easy.

But anyway, as well as looking for coffee in the real world, I keep my antenna up online, so I immediately noted a fun story in the Guardian that Megadeth frontman (or as I like to think of him, former Metallica guitarist) Dave Mustaine had launched his own blend of coffee.

What are you waiting for?

But not only that, it seems that while Mustaine gets the column inches, he's only one side of this currently three-headed hydra, as you can also get your buzz-buzz on with the help of former WCW and WWE wrestler Goldberg, and Anthrax drummer Charlie Benante.

That was the point that I realised I had to post this, because if I don't then Bunny will, and I'll have been scooped by my own sister. As it is: Hey Bunny! Goldberg has his own coffee and it's called Jackhammer Java!

I really wanted to find a review of some of these blends from independant sources, but the best I could find online was a bunch of people going "Dave Mustaine's got his own coffee! Sweet!" or "Dave Mustaine's got his own coffee! Fffnnnaaar!" Which means I'm sorely tempted to try them myself, although they are a bit dear. Anyway there's plenty of hilarity to be had by clicking around the Legends Cup Coffee store, so go right ahead, but to be honest I don't think the concept of Dave Mustaine's Coffee is all that ridiculous. Guy likes coffee I guess.

Dave Mustaine's Decaf Coffee though? That is fucking hysterical.

More Monobright Exclusive Blog Content!

As in content for the blog that I'm not putting on facebook. It's probably ridiculous to go into this but I mostly just post on facebook and later put the stuff here. And putting stuff here is a bleedin' headache partly because of the different gmail/blogger accounts I have, and partly because blogger is such an ornery piece of software to use. What takes me two minutes to upload on facebook takes twenty minutes here. And it's not like anyone's reading this anyway...

Oh hey, look! I just used the Most Written Blog Sentence Ever! Now I feel like I've accomplished something today.

Anyway back to the band. When I was looking into bands with Chris at Christmas (the two of which are unrelated), we checked out a couple of Monobright songs. He wasn't too impressed, but I liked the intro to one of their songs, so I kept them in mind. So it turns out that for a Japanese indie band they have a pretty freakin' high rate of rock-to-suck, and they come from Hokkaido! Which, I don't know how I didn't know before. Anyway, they were one of the bands that I recommended to my Dad when he came to stay, he loves them and pointed out to me that they are actually playing at The Great Escape in Brighton... England! What a small, small world we live in.

A brief biography can be found here. It gives you some nice information and some lovely phrases, but I'd have to disagree with the "nothing that sets them apart" bit. They have some great chord sequences and off-key countermelodies that really make some of their songs crackle. I like them a lot, and they're a lot better than most Japanese indie, which I assume is why they're hitting The Great Escape. Also, I just checked, and like I thought the guy who wrote that likes L'Arc-en-Ciel who are a particularly wretched kind of awful.

So here's a live performance of a great song:



God, that guy just cannot keep his mouth closed can he? I'd hate to sit across from him at an all-you-can-eat buffet. And here's their latest video, which like an earlier video that I saw benefits from looking pretty cheap and shoddy. I just like the concept, all washing machines should be powered like this:

Japanese Rocks! : Number Girl, Zazen Boys and Toddle!

So finally I thought I’d write about some of the Japanese music I’ve been listening to since I’ve been in Japan. And what better way to do that than to start with some bands that I was listening to before I came to Japan? It’s like recycled MENTAL content kids, but it’s all you’re going to get for now.

Number Girl were a turn-of-the-century indie-rock band from Fukuoka Japan that started really poppy, and ended pretty dubby and experimental. They’re one of those great bands where you can hear them pushing forward on each album, never sounding quite the same. Their first two records are heavily indebted to all those eighties indie-rock godheads, The Pixies, Husker Du, Sonic Youth, Jesus and Mary Chain and so on... They even have a song called Pixiesdu, which is just gratuitous frankly. Even so, they’re great albums, and it gets even better when the sound starts spreading out, the rhythms get more syncopated and the reverb goes absolutely mental on their later albums.

I’ve posted a video of them playing Omoide In My Head, which is off their first album, but which turned into a set closer for their entire career. I hate long songs, but this one I love. I’m going to learn it for karaoke! Yes! They look super geeky too! Yes! They have a woman in the band (Tabuchi Hisako, first names last remember!) who plays LEAD not BASS! Yes! This is “Rock” and the location? Japan!



After Number Girl broke up, the lead singer and songwriter Mukai Shutoku formed Zazen Boys, a band that sort of picks up where Number Girl left off. I like Zazen Boys, and I admire them enormously because frankly they really don’t sound like anyone else, but I have a hard time loving them. Mukai really tries to distill out the dynamics of rock music with Zazen Boys, so half the time it’s enormously spacious, echoing, brooding music; and the other half it’s tense, pounding riffs, played in demented time signatures with ferocious intensity. That side of Zazen Boys has some of the best stop-start, tension-and-release rock music ever.



So Mukai Shutoku formed Zazen Boys, developing the percussive, dynamic side of Number Girl, and Tabuchi Hisako formed Toddle a couple of years ago, developing the melodic indie-rock side (she also joined another band as an additional guitarist, Bloodthirsty Butchers, who… I’ve only heard one album by, and I want to check out some of their more recent stuff after she joined, coz what I heard wasn’t great). I like toddle more than Zazen Boys, but there’s not so much to say about them. It’s great indie-rock that combines really loud, fast guitars with melodies of longing and dreaming. Unsurprisingly, that’s my sort of music.



Stay tuned! Next time Japanese Pops! : Shiina Ringo and Tokyo Jihen