Here at Shimo-Kitazawa Era to celebrate the release of Buddhiston's forthcoming split CD with Hong Kong's Whence He Came, some of Japan's finest emo minds are gathered. There's a buzz about the place as we buckle ourselves in for a rollercoaster of chequered shirts and downtuned minor chords, and only slightly worried that the bar staff are trusting this sold out crowd with REAL GLASS GLASSES!

We arrive just in time for to catch the angular delights of Bandwagon, probably the most famous band tonight. They twist and writhe their way through a thrilling guitar slalom, milking the audience response like the pros they undoubtedly are, and using the result as further fuel for their performance. The thrash, the energy and the dynamics are cranked up to maximum, perhaps at the expense of the songcraft - the most striking song in the set is their near-disco bounce through "Rock The Casbah" - but the pop sensibility that runs though their performance wins through against the drudgery and miserablism that can be the curse of much of their genre.

Oceanlane are next. Is that name a misheard reference to an old Echo And The Bunnymen album? I hope so. The results upon hearing them are inconclusive. Taking the opposite tack from Bandwagon, Oceanlane attempt to win the crowd over through sheer melodicism alone, with their multiple guitarists and jangly Teenage Fanclub fretwork leading the way. There's a definite hint of 80s British indie to them, but the emotional directness of the delivery is almost entirely bereft of Ian McCulloch's rock arsehole posturing, which is a shame, really.

Whence He Came drag us in another direction again. With music that doesn't really fit into any traditional Japanese rock pigeonholes, they could baffle just as easily as they could astound, but tonight they astound, through the sheer, blinding electricity of their performance. Everywhere your eyes turn and everywhere your ears bend there's something new going on. They toss out epic rock operettas without a hint of pretension, and bombard us with machine-gun rock and roll like they were born with guitars on their hips. They're one of those groups that you just watch with your jaw on the ground, and then crawl away from, determined to form a band of your own. They cap a great show by being the friendliest and funniest band of the evening inbetween songs. More complete a group you could not ask for.

Buddhiston, by contrast, are more content to let the music do the talking, so the women (and a lot of the men) in the audience have to amuse themselves between songs by asking "could Takuya Shima be any handsomer?" (the answer is no). Still, the songs talk very powerfully indeed, with their compelling brand of shoegazery Mew-ness sprinkled with Yumi's keyboard pop fairydust, putting a sweet, icy glaze over Whence He Came's international rock cake. World peace through emo? Just give it a chance. -Ian Martin, Jul.16.04