CLEAR AND REFRESHING

A review by me of eccentric funk-punk/prog/mutant blues/jazz/whatever band Haimidori's debut album is out now in The Japan Times.

Japan's main free English language magazine Metropolis has a feature on the "Best Japanese Songs" in the latest issue featuring contributions from a number of Japan-based music folks. Friends of mine like Cal Lyall, David Hickey, Daniel Robson and Fashion Crisis event compadre James Hadfield all have excellent contributions, and if you scroll down pretty far, you can find me spouting guff about P-Model.

Big news this past week has been the fire at an izakaya in Koenji. There's more over on the Call And Response blog about why this is important.

Review of the excellent new Yolz in the Sky album up on the Japan Times web site now, complete with huge amounts of girlish swooning and numerous militaristic allusions to its Germanic qualities.

A couple of months ago I met with musician, producer and author Saeki Kenzou for an interview, part of which appeared as part of a couple of features I wrote for The Japan Times on the Drive to 2010 punk and new wave festival at Shinjuku Loft. The event forms part of a series together with 1979's Drive to 80s and 1999's Drive to 2000, all of which focussed on Japanese punk and new wave music. I wasn't able to use all of the interview, and I was forced by space restrictions to cut, edit and paraphrase more than I would have liked, so here's a slightly less edited version of the interview.

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In my capacity as the head honcho and sole staff member of Call And Response Records, I was interviewed back in May about Japanese music for an article on venerable UK news organ The Grauniad's web site. Fabulous publicity for the label, natch, so I can overlook the fact that the writer has just cut and pasted an (occasionally clumsily) edited version of my answers into his piece and then claimed for themself whatever pittance C.P. Scott's descendants pay for my work.

I nevertheless have a problem with the way the sentence "Shibuya-kei is the only scene anyone really speaks about here." is somehow put into my mouth. This is both patently wrong and makes me look foolish and ignorant. Anyone who has spent any meaningful length of time in the Tokyo music scene knows that there are numerous music scenes, all with their fans and cheerleaders here there and all over. Anyone who finds their way here as a result of out good friend Mr. Google (I note that the article links to both the term "Shibuya-kei" and the admittedly confusing to dolts term "Sisyphean", but not to any form of the actual C.A.R. web presence) may wish to see the actual questions I was asked and the actual answers I gave.

(Sorry this site doesn't allow comments; If anyone wants to agree/disagree/whatever with anything I've said, I've blogged this on the comments-enabled Call And Response page as well)

Update Oct 16th 00:08: Reading back over the above, I should add that despite the snarky tone, I'm very pleased that the article got published and I've had some great feedback from people today as a result of it. » Read More

Tokyo Boredom is an irregularly organised event bringing together a number of bands from the Tokyo's underground scene, particularly bands with a no wave or post-punk bent. In advance of the next event, a two day extravaganza held at Tokyo University on the 19th and 20th of September, I caught up with the organising committee to talk to them about the show and more generally about Japanese punk music. » Read More

An interview with musician and producer Nakata Yasutaka of the post-Shibuya-kei/electro group Capsule, not to mention production and songwriting credits as long as your arm (hello MEG, Perfume, Suzuki Ami and more) is online now (Japan Times as usual). Some of the quotes might be a little wonky because his somewhat elevated and arty Japanese is apparently notoriously difficult to translate and even the excellent professional interpreter I brought with me said it was a task and a half. Also, small regret that I didn't get time to ask him whether he was ever tempted to go all Serge Gainsbourg on groups like Perfume and slip in some saucy double entendres into their lyrics (I've always suspected Take Me Take Me off GAME was an example of this, but then his English is apparently more or less non-existent so perhaps it was just unintentionally naughty, a la Love Psychedelico).

Me I Sashimi ManMarco (CD/R 2009)

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Doctor Ray Velour Voice (2008)

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