Alex vs. JUNGLE LIFE February 2010

Every now and then I think I'm gonna grow out of music. Like, I'm just going to suddenly not feel like finding out who's popular or who's any good anymore and then I'll just keep up on the bands I like and let the rest just wash over me. Hasn't happened yet though. While I've missed out on a zillion new bands from America and England I try to keep up with whatever new Japanese music is out there, and after watching a bunch of music shows over the weekend I was all geed up like "OK! That swas all shit!" (it was) But there's got to be lots more good stuff out there, right?

Thus: In a coffee shop on Sunday I picked up the February 2010 edition of JUNGLE LIFE a free indie music magazine (basically UK's The Fly in Japan, right down to the format).

And now, I'm going to go through every single band, listen to 'em write about 'em and give you a myspace link. To be perfectly honest my hopes are not high going into this, but I'm willing to be surprised and there is at least one band with cute girls, so there's always that. I'm limiting myself to bands with features or interviews, and I'm not gonna face the myriad albums that are reviewed at the back, for the sake of my own health. Consider this a State of Japanese Indie, Feb'10 bite-sized sampling. Here we go...

HY - HY are a big indie band. They had a Music Lovers showcase on TV the other day introduced by manzai rising stars (still rising? they had a shaky period but they're hanging in there) Audrey, and I've seen them promoting their new single and album on many TV shows. Of course, they suck. They suck... mightily. The kind of soft droning indie that is perfect for when you don't really want to listen to music, but you just want a few hooks which sound like other hooks that you used to like. Ugh. Their myspace puts them under rock/J-Pop/Hip-Hop and if they have anything that actually approaches hip-hop I will kill and eat the surviving members of Run DMC. They have some songs sung by their female pianist, and some sung by their male guitarist. That's as good as it gets. From the looks of things, all their album covers suck too.

STANCE PUNKS - Are a well established punk band, and they make that very authentic melodic punk that many bands make in Japan. I mean they do it well and listening to them now, if I had to make some kind of ranking of Japanese trad-punk bands, I'd put STANCE PUNKS pretty high on that list, but unless you're a huge punk fan... you don't need for there to be so goddamn many of them. Still, if you like punk music, like good old fashioned double kick drums and shouty vocals - check this lot out.

aobozu (藍坊主) - Up-tempo J-indie rock. Going by their myspace not too bad... and in fact might grow on me. When Chris came to stay with me (soooo long ago now!) he commented that he couldn't get into the vocals on a lot of Japanese bands because they were so studied and uninvolved, or sounded so to his ears. You could probably say that about this lot... but I kinda like them. On their myspace go for Gymnopedic - it loses me at the chorus, going for the key-change sky scraping chorus that is just massively over-used in Japanese pop music, but it sounds pretty good. On reflection this lot aren't great, but they've got something going on.

Flower Companyz - This lot have been going for twenty years! Their (possibly 2nd) Best Of... is coming out and they don't have a myspace, so I went by youtube. Fun pop-rock. Didn't bug me but didn't really grab me, middle of the road and kind of cheesy at times, but you can't really hate a band for that. Man, that makes it sound like I'm going through this trying to hate these bands, when in fact the opposite is true... sigh.

kariyushi58 - The first song of theirs I listened to was exactly the same as the last song by Flower Companyz that I listened to, which was a little surreal. Again, happy pop-rock with that faux-reggae beat that pretty much guarantees you a summer hit in Japan and goes down pretty well in the US too. We Brits don't get it because it only works on people who come from a place with real summers. Kariyushi58 are not very good. They sounds a little bit like Weezer at times.

Takeuchidenki 竹内電気 - Again, no myspace (which means that this project is already three times as hard as I thought it would be) so going by youtube. Again with the upbeat pop-indie. This lot are better than the last two though, but still have that energetic good-times vibe that doesn't sit well with the sour British disposition I'm saddled with. I kid, but it's a very American sound - these bands would do well over there. Takeuchi Denki clearly don't take themselves very seriously, which is always a good thing, and I kinda liked some of the songs. But not all of them. By any means.

My Way My Love - Oh wow, My Way My Love are one of those big indie-ish bands (in this case a kind of psych-punk, noisy as hell rock band) who I've never bothered checking out because I didn't get a good vibe offa what I knew about them. Turns out they're pretty good! In a good way. I'll check them out for real sometime! Looks like they've got an album out in the UK too...

The Back Horn - The Back Horn are a big deal rock band that I caught a little of at Rising Sun two years ago. Not terrible by any means, but the kind of professional stadium rock (Japanese style) that I'm not all that interested in. Check 'em out though, by all means.

Fact - Wow these guys got it going on in American and Japan already! English language lyrics and pretty typical American emo (mid-stage emo, that is). Super-professional, very accomplished, I'm sure they'll be huge. I hate it, but I'm happy to admit it's a personal thing and yr mileage may vary. When did Myspace start doing this thirty second sample length thing? I mean, it's perfect for what I'm doing today, but it would probably bug me if I actually wanted to, y'know, listen to music.

General Head Mountain - Chart friendly indie-rock from this lot. Their hearts are firmly stiched to their sleeves, their BPMs are cranked and they sound very earnest, if not all that interesting. Not a thumbs down, would have been good for a sixteen year-old me I reckon. Now, I'm old and cynical and I think they suck, but what do I know.

soulkids - Basically it's pretty easy to come off as sounding ok when you make that slightly angsty emo-ish radio rock. But to step up from there to being a really, really good band is really, really fucking hard. That's why I dismiss most radio-friendly rock out of hand, and it's only occasionally that I spot something that really chimes with me. This lot aren't bad at all. They're not up there with the best and I'm not sold, but they're one of the bands on this list worth checking out if you like kinda popular indie-rock.

Tokyo 60 Watts - Phew, after those last few fast, rocky bands it's a relief to find a more classy, mid-tempo indie-pop outfit. Nicely crafted songs, foot off the accelerator... that's better... ONLY JOKING! I don't like the sound of this lot much, but they do sound like they can take you on a hammond-driven rocket to a very nice dinner party. If that was where you wanted a rocket trip to. Seems like a waste of a rocket trip to me.

Good Dog Happy Men - I still think it's quite nice that there's a Japanese group named after a Bill Frisell album, but these guys (from their one track on myspace) sound like snivelling curs, rather than good dogs. See what I did there? I exaggerated to make the joke work! But really, they do suck. My least favourite band so far.

Taro Kobayashi - Wow again, much more 'rock' than I expected from a solo artist, but Myspace's 30 second clips pretty much stop me from forming much of an impression. His first "album" has four tracks... does that mean the tracks are really long? Or is it not really an album? Doesn't sound too bad, kinda big, catchy rock music... not what I'm looking for though.

Soul Junctions - They look like very nice boys, and they seem to be playing very nice jangly pop music.

Kinoco Hotel - Oh my god. At least they're girls. The sheer indie-boy-ness of the list so far was getting to me... And they're a retro-psych-pop outfit too. And wearing marching band uniform things? Frank Zappa on their friends list? Kinda awesome. The music's not too bad either, and since they're one of the few bands stepping outside of the indie-rock spectrum so far (in order to go back to the 60s admittedly) I'm going to give them a gold star. Check-them-out-why-don't-you-do-that-very-thing.

The Cokeheads - Oh God. What a horrible name (worth noting that there's also an ad for Cokehead Hipsters later in this very issue. What?! Japan! You don't even know what a cokehead is!). I like that it's sloppy, punkish indie without being the kind of trad-punk I was rambling about earlier. Possibly even worth checking out! And I like that they aren't limiting you to 30 second snippets (I realise now that it must be the band's choice, not myspace, sorry myspace). Adorably they still have "Tom" as their friend on myspace. Awww... Maybe they were too busy doing cocaine to change their friends list... I DON'T THINK.

Jina - Oh my God! Kula Shaker are up at the top of their friends list! Crispin Mills, you'll always have fans in Japan. Indie rock that isn't bad, but I don't feel compelled to write home about it. Perhaps you will feel differently.

DOES - Ah, back to the... 45 second clips this time. More radio friendly than the last two, in a way that I find predictably boring. I like their album cover, but their music gives me the "Mehs".

Spank Page - Spank Page's page in JUNGLE LIFE is a picture of some phone booths and a poetic message that I kinda liked. Their music is reverby indie-rock by the book, but one of the bands that I would slap a 'not-too-bad' sticker on, were they being stocked in my farcically judgmental record shop.

Half-Life - Indie-rock, again the heart-on-sleeve always reaching for the most dramatic, emotive button they can push. They have an '80s Version' of a song on myspace that sounds not at all 80s. Anthemic might be a good word to describe them, but I've already heard them three times already under different names on this list.

wash? - Fairly spacey, but not as spacey as you would think to look at them. I was expecting noisy, psychedelic-ish music, which you get a little, but not too much, to their credit. I mean, it's not too far into navel-gazing psychedelia - it is pretty noisy. I liked the slacker chant track and SLOWDANCE and you can listen to whole tracks on their myspace which I'm starting to love them for. If you know Japanese music, a bit like HiGE maybe? Maybe? I'm not sure. Final justice = GOOD AND GETTING BETTER WITH EVERY LISTEN.

Supe - Metal! Nu-ish, but not terribly so. Still - not my bag now. The vocalist has a perfect American accent, so I'm sure they travel well.

KiLLKiLLS - Emo-punk-metal thing for kids. They look about fourteen and sound pretty catchy to be honest, but... you know.

Haysay Josay 平成女性 - Another one of those bands that was irritating to track down, look 'em up with the kanji on youtube (this video is fun for the way the kick drum is so loud it makes the camera lose focus). I never know what to call this music - not primitivist, but really simple, untaught, rock by people who just decided to start a band without learning any instruments (I assume!). Sometimes I'm really in the mood for this and sometimes I'm not. I can't decide with this lot, but of course I like 'em a lot better than 90% of this list. Fun.

Andou Yumi - I'm a little thrown as to why Andou Yumi is in amongst this clutch of indie boys, she sounds very MOR... almost easy listening... Is there an anime connection? To be honest it was kind of a relief, even though it's not my thing at all. Oh wait... are we getting into the nods to pop and the mainstream now?

Okumura Kyoudai 奥村兄弟 - Oh my God it is the pop section! This is a band with two brothers who have to still be in school. The kind of thing that you can't criticize for fear of crushing children's dreams. The elementary school kid on the tea-box drum thing is pretty awesome though, and I assume they don't have a myspace because exposing kids like this to the depravity of myspace would be unthinkable.

Saru Da Concrete (猿ダコンクリート) - Yeah, I'm not sure how to romanize that one. Is it 'Monkey The Concrete'? Saruda? Is that a word? I was hoping for something a little weirder, but like Ogre You Asshole their names promises more than they actually deliver. Complex, sophisticated indie-rock to be sure, but the kind of thing that doesn't grab me so much. Worth a look perhaps. I'd put 'em in the same box as Sakanaction, but I like Sakanaction more.

The Royal Sweetest Embalming - Look at that name. Imagine what it takes to transpose that into Japanese phonics. Can you imagine what kind of music they make? No, it's not very subtle, but it's not as cheesy as I expected, which is something at least. Pop-rock like GLAY or L'Arc-en-Ciel but not as bad... probably. Did I mention that I shout at the TV every time L'Arc-en-Ciel come on recently? Christ, I hate them.

FLiP - I'm starting to think there's actually a reason that Japanese bands drop to lower-case for 'i's beyond a mere stylistic choice. It happens pretty often... does it mean something? A group of four girls making poppy alt-rock. Not bad, but again, not all that great. There's a touch of early Shiina Ringo in there that I like, but it's just a touch and it's the more traditional side of her rock music, rather than the magic that I love about her. So-so.

Wait... that was the last one? Obviously, there are harder things to do, like competing in the Moguls in the Winter Olympics, or wrestling a bear, but that did actually take longer than I thought. Then again, I did find an indie band I liked - wash? - and I did catch a few others - Kinoco Hotel, My Way My Love, The (shudder) Cokeheads, poooossibly Takeuchi Denki - that I'll keep an eye on.

And you read it! Didn't you?

I found more great music for you.

Chris told me to get the new Gallows albumcoz it was awesome. I remained sceptical because I did hear the first album and I don't think I was all that impressed. In fact, I'm pretty sure I wasn't. Still this:

Is incredible. There ain't no dystopia like a British dystopia, and Gallows have embraced this kind of concept-sound whole heartedly. They're laying on the suits, the boots and a kind of British punk sound that makes their new record sound like more than the sum of its parts. I'm a sucker for that mass-male-chanting shit too, and it's a shame that they cut the swearing from that video, because some of the expletive asides are my favourite bits. I mean, seriously, I want to hammer this home, because people have been flogging the dead horse of semi-mod wannabe-laahhhndan-gangster bad boy bullshit for years. But this new Gallows image (and yeah, despite their dislike of "hairstyles" this is as much an image as anything) is the first time I've actually found it in the slightest bit exciting. I'm sure it's been done before, but fuck it, they do it well.

The second St. Vincent album, from earlier in the year, is stranger and less catchy and better than her first, and this video:

...specifically the bit where the drums and synths kick in for the first time, is mesmerising. I mean, seriously, it starts off and I'm like: oh yeah, this is what St. Vincent sound like... ho hum... HOLY SHIT! Fuck yeah Annie Clark!

Englanding #10 : Good Music

I'd like to thank Fate for sorting me out. Almost as soon as I wrote that whiny 500th post about not seeing any good music I found the following! Of course I'm not seeing any of these as videos anywhere, or advertised anywhere, any they're all old artists so I'm not seeing any good new music but... maybe one day huh?

Charlotte Hatherley's new album New Worlds is awesome, astonishing, I love it, she's amazing, continue ad infinitum. On first listen it's better than her first two solo rekkids which I both loved. Very smart, unique sounding guitar pop:

Oh GOD I just saw that there's a video for her song Siberia from the last album, which I love so much. Have to post that too:

SHE'S AMAZING AND SHE'S GETTING MORE AMAZING. CHRIST.

Luke Haines' new album is a double, and a) I love double albums and b) I love Luke Haines therefore x) I'm happy. The first disc is much like his last solo release - well written, slightly glam, slightly baroque guitar pop with great lyrics that is ill served by its glossy production. I like it, but I don't think it'll convert anyone. The second disk on the other hand has six creepy songs and three spoken parts of a sneering, spiteful, downright horrific story about a London art critic. It's exactly the sort of story you'd expect from Haines, but that doesn't stop it being hideously well executed and the whole disc becomes a mesmerising hiss of a record that reminds me of the best bits from his Christy Malry soundtrack.

HE'S AMAZING, BUT I CAN'T FIND A VIDEO FOR ANY OF THESE NEW SONGS.

Ash:

FUCK YES! A song every two weeks for a year, each of them standing alone so they'll have to be able to walk as singles without other tracks to back them up, only thirteen quid to download the lot, GENIUS. I bought the subscription and I hope they make a shitload off this, although I guess time will tell. It's just the kind of forward thinking engaging with the internet that every fucker should be doing but most aren't. Also they're doing an A to Z tour of the country.

THEY'RE AMAZING!

And, honourable mention since they're not British, and I was mostly aiming for the Brits here - the new Flaming Lips record is also phenomenal. Really, I'm so happy that Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots did well for them, but it was boring as hell and turned me off them so much that I didn't even bother checking out At War With The Mystics. This one is so good, it's not even like a return to form, it's like a new form that they never had before and I think I'll be listening to it a lot. If you read any reviews that are like: "Well, it's not as good as their last few... it's like a step back..." then you are reading a review by someone who is clearly in the wrong profession.

AMAZING!

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!

Sound on Sound

I've been listening to music. From Japan. Y'know, Japanese music:

Odani Misako - Odani Misako Trio

ITEM! Website ITEM! Myspace

I've been going through some DVDs of the Rising Sun Rock Festival I went to last year and Odani Misako's track Kiero really caught my ear as something I wish I'd seen at the time. So I went out and blow me down if I didn't pick up her last album, which I think is a collection of songs recorded with her new trio. Not sure though, Kiero appears on an earlier CD too. She's a piano-pop singer-songwriter and on the whole she's very good. Her songs make me smile, and I'm still coasting on the spiralling wonder of Kiero. It's one of those songs where every movement it makes is natural and surprising and thrilling.

Boredoms - Super Roots 10

ITEM! Website ITEM! Myspace

It's the Boredoms, it's great, but yes you can pretty much guess what the boredoms sound like at this point if you know them at all. Wonderful, but not the exhillerating, exhausting spectacle I saw at Rising Sun. The Lindstrom remix is amazing though. Man, I feel like I'm underselling it. It's really good.

Teriyaki Boyz - Serious Japanese

ITEM! Website

I'm only one listen through the new Teriyaki Boyz album but it seems pretty good. It's fucking laden with big name American guest appearances but they don't make it feel like some shonky fashion project for the most part. That said, while Kanye seems into it, and Pharrell is fine, Adrock provides the intro and outro shouts and just like on the first album... he sounds a little awkward. Or not awkward, just it doesn't sound very good. Well, other than the Adrock tracks the beats seem good on a first listen, and it's a fun album. Work That is kind of shit though.

アーバンギャルド

I was poking around Tower Records yesterday listening to a whole bunch of records and these guys stood out.


Urbangarde (see what they've done there?) are an arty noise-pop band (or a noisy art-pop band, you decide) who play "Tokyo Virginity Pop". This virgin thing seems to come up a lot, it's a thematic concern of theirs that I'm not very clear on, not being to understand most of the press about them but we can assume that... they like virginity. Elements like the giant kewpie doll costume and aggressive sperm (yes I know), the red and white spots, the dripping Japanese flag all work pretty well together to make a distinctive identity and artistic message. Here's the video for the first track off their new album:

The thing is that off the bat, I don't really like Urbangarde. That sing-song intro is so Deerhoof it's untrue (and people know Deerhoof in Japan) and after that... I think I'd rather be listening to Polysics? But they've got a lot going on, and I'm certainly not going to write them off straight away. I thought they were a fun band to point out though. Instead I bought The Residents' Commercial Album for half price. Half price! I've been looking for that for years! I'm going back to aching now.