Spangle call Lilli line's Trace

Spangle call Lilli Line's new album, Trace.

It’s only April but I have little doubt that Spangle call Lilli line’s Trace will turn out to be, at the end of the year, one of the best Japanese albums of 2005. Trace is a blockbuster.

For long-time fans of this Japanese band, however, the album might take some getting used to. SCLL is clearly exploring new musical territory.

In their first three albums (the self-titled debut album, Nanae and Or), SCLL created music that might be described as avant-garde pop—perhaps a contradiction in terms, but one I think fairly reflects the band’s sound, which is innovative and unorthodox, but also melodious in a pop way. (The band is often characterized as post-rock too.)

In Trace, though, SCLL has added new musical colors to its palette of sound—listeners can hear echoes of popular musical styles such as R&B, soul, and dance music.

The individual songs in Trace are also shorter than the epic compositions in their earlier albums. In their previous albums, almost all songs were longer than five minutes, and some of their best tunes stretched even longer, with ‘Piano’ in their album Or lasting 7 minutes and 23 seconds, and ‘E’ in Nanae continuing for eight-and-a-half minutes.

But those older songs don’t feel long at all. On the contrary, it’s a joy to listen to the way SCLL slowly develops beautiful musical themes. It’s like watching a fast-forwarded video of a flower blooming or an insect emerging from its cocoon. (I’d heartily recommend a listen to their songs ‘E’ or ‘Nano” to get a feel for what I mean.)

In the latest album, however, only two songs are longer and most are about four.

Maybe the most striking example of this new SCLL sound--more pop and shorter in length-- is the third song on the album, “U-Lite”.

Opening with singer Kana Otsubo’s humming accompanied by an electric organ and an ordinary rock band arrangement, this tune, less than three minutes long, is a joyous pop gem. But it’s the sort of song that would have been hard to imagine SCLL doing, considering their previous works. The tune could almost pass for one in the Top 40 chart, though maybe a Top 40 in a parallel universe where pop songs are made with the goal of musical uniqueness and perfection rather than monetary gain…

One thing that hasn’t changed in SCLL’s sound is Otsubo’s instantly recognizable, slightly husky, light, dreamily enchanting singing voice. But her unchanged singing style serves to highlight how different the rest of the music has become. The effect is striking: it’s like a woman you are used to seeing in a kimono dressed up one day in an African dress.

For old fans the song that sounds most like the SCLL of past albums is the seventh track on the album, ‘stereo’. Trace is worth a listen for this song alone, to listen to the way SCLL weaves a gorgeous tapestry of sound in a way only they can.

Plectrum's Uchiage

One for the history books?

I took this photo above for the benefit of Rock Music History. Or so I thought Friday night with a few beers inside me. It was after Plectrum’s stunning solo show at the Que. About fifty of us were celebrating at the uchiage (pronounced something like 'ooh, chee, ah, gay'), an after-show party, at some random Japanese bistro. Everyone was excited.

From right, in the photo, is Osamu Shimada, guitarist for pop bands Swinging Popsicle and Caraway; Yoshiharu Ishizaka, guitarist for advantage Lucy and the creator of that band’s gorgeous music; Jun Inoue, singer for CleanDistortion; and on the left, smiling to someone outside of the picture, is Naoki Kishihara, bassist for Plectrum.

Each one of their bands is outstanding, and I try never to miss any of their shows. To see them all sitting in front of me, chatting about something, was the height of cool. In my musical worldview it was like seeing Nirvana hanging out with Sonic Youth, or witnessing the first meeting in England between the Ramones and the Clash. Sound overblown? Perhaps. But one of the things I’ve found out writing Japan Live is that there are many more fans than I thought, in Asia, Europe and the Americas, of these modest, friendly musicians.

The Plectrum show that preceded the party was mind-blowing. My friend Dr. I said he was on the verge of tears at the band’s rendition of its 1996 hit ‘Flow’, Plectrum’s first major label single. I was in the same state when they did “3 P.M. Lazy” from the album Sorry and “Book End” from Colombia, two of their best songs. The show lasted nearly three hours, but none of us was tired at the end—no, we were energized—and Taisuke Takata, Plectrum’s singer, hopped from one table to the next being a model party host.

Other musicians were at the party too, to revel after a great show. At one point I saw the bassist for the Waffles paying homage to Ishizaka of Lucy, about ten years his senior. During the evening, on top of beer, I downed two big glasses of awamori, the potent liquor of Okinawa, so by the time the group split into two and mine moved to some bar in Shimokitazawa, I was quite smashed. I ended the evening teaching one version of the Jive Handshake to Plectrum's drummer, Mikiya Tatsui. Next morning I suffered from a slight hangover, but I also brought back from the night the picture above to keep its memory fresh.

Hartfield Becomes A Duo

Tokyo rock band Hartfield says in its e-mail magazine that bassist Komine and drummer Tatsu are leaving the band, making it a duo rather than a quartet. I'll miss the two, but what can you do, nothing's permanent. The band says it will have guest musicians playing the rhythm parts at shows, and their April 25 gig at the Que (with Kaimy Plants, ZARIGANI 5 and Throw Curve)will be the last one in Japan for a while so make sure to attend it.

Meanwhile, in an interesting pairing, Hartfield says it will tour South Korea from April 29 with Swinging Popsicle. The two bands play quite difference types of music--Hartfield, melodic rock with lots of distortion, while Swinging Popsicle is soulful pop--but they are both outstanding bands and well worth going to see if you are in the area.

Round Table, Vasallo Crab 75, Swinging Popsicle

Vasallo Crab Kudo's Christmas-lit guitar.

Sunday was Major League Guitar Pop night at the Shimokitazawa Club Que. The three pop bands that played—Swinging Popsicle, Round Table and Vasallo Crab 75—were all outstanding, veteran groups, each with a big fan base of its own. Those three came together for the second installment of the Vasallo-hosted monthly Mirrorball Disco Night, at which the idea is to get down to cool Japanese pop music (though in reality most of the shy audience do no more than shake their heads a bit).


Swinging Popsicle's Fujishima with Vasallo Crab's Kudo.

It had been a while since I’d seen the first act, Swinging Popsicle, and I was happy to see them once again. Singer Mineko Fujishima was spectacular as always—she’s a Soul Woman wearing the body of a petite Japanese girl. Osamu Shimada, the guitarist, and Hironobu Hirata, the bassist, are both virtuosos and also play for a number of other good bands (Shimada is in Caraway, while Hirata is in Auroranote). When the three jam together, the playing is joyful but also professional—this isn’t a band that loses its cool, or gets mushy, but they put their hearts into doing the show.

The second band, Round Table, I’d seen once before. A smooth pop band that reminds me a little of Flippers’ Guitar, the trail-blazing 90's Japanese group, guitarist Katsutoshi Kitagawa sings while keyboardist Rieko Ito punches out explosive solos.


Swinging Popsicle's Hirata with Vasallo Crab's violinist, Yasuhito Kawabe.

Last was Vasallo Crab 75, who I’ve written about many times before. Any music fan in Tokyo who has a taste for funky pop music should check them out. Recently at their shows they’ve interspersed their pop songs with long funky jam sessions. A friend said he preferred the old Vasallo with its more ordinary pop sound, but I’m no pop purist and have to say Vasallo’s sound now gets me moving like an internal metronome.

Vasallo likes interesting stage visuals—for a period a few months back, they played in the pitch dark except for a lone, lit disco ball—but they are an indies band so there are no pyrotechnics or Stonehedge descending down to the stage or what have you. Instead, the band put up reflective sheets on the back wall that glittered in the colors of the stage lights. And at a key moment guitarist Daisuke Kudo said to the audience, ‘look at my guitar’, which then lit up like a little Christmas tree with green light bulbs.

Later Kudo said he bought the mini-lights, taped them onto his guitar, and had a switch on his side to turn it on at the right moment. What if it malfunctioned and the guitar didn’t light up? Yeah, I actually regretted bringing the guitar to the audience’s attention even as I was doing so, he said.

In front of the stage were a mother and her daughter, who looked about eight, with intricately braided hair. The girl had a look that alternated between bewilderment and boredom all through the show, and she glanced nervously once in a while at the dancing adults around her. She made me remember that rock ‘n’ roll made no sense to me either as a child until one pre-pubescent day, when I suddenly understood, and was hooked.

***

UPDATE: For people who will be in Tokyo in May and June, just to let you know that Vasallo Crab 75 will be doing a solo show on May 26, and a show with advantage Lucy and Condor 44 on June 22, both at the Que. Both are must-see shows!

DJ iPod

I don't think Apple is telling iPod customers everything they need to know. There's a lot of weirdness about the iPod. For example, most people believe that the iPod's shuffle function picks songs by random. That, I'm pretty sure, isn't the case.

Now, to back up a bit for people who don't use iPods, the iPod has a thing called 'shuffle' where you can listen to all your songs in 'random' order. It's fun at first, but after a while it gets a bit unsettling. The shuffle command, you see, chooses songs well. You almost never get, say, a hardcore punk song after, for instance, a church hymn. The iPod usually gradually eases you into different kinds of music, going little by little from soft to loud, mellow to intense, and so on. In other words, it can't be random.

So what's going on?

I'm no IT engineer -- I couldn't assemble a transistor radio -- so here I'm going to have to use metaphors to explain how I think the iPod works. The gadget is like a huge library of singles. On the library payroll are a bunch of tiny dwarves. Everytime you press 'play' on a song, one of the dwarves scurries to find the single you requested, and puts it on the record player. That's how you hear the songs.

But there's one dwarf in the staff who has a Gift: he has a genuine, uncanny ability to dee-jay records. When you put on the 'shuffle' function, you're actually telling this dwarf -- let's call him DJ iPod: do the rest. And he does. He's good. He knows how to spin those disks to make you not want to stop listening.

Anyway, to test my dwarf-DJ-in-iPod hypothesis, I decided to observe how the songs were chosen tonight when I turned on the shuffle function.

I started with the Germ's We Must Bleed, because you have to begin somewhere, and I thought it would be a good challenge for DJ iPod: what will he choose next in my mostly punk-free song library?

He picked: Syrup 16g's Roller Met. A good call. While Japan's Syrup 16g isn't punk, the band is certainly hard rock, and one could argue the two bands share a certain attitude of nihilism. Off to a good start. What next?

Next: Travis's Turn. Nice! This is in line with my hypothesis: DJ iPod went from punk to hard rock to the more mellow rock of Travis in a smooth progression. Plus I have a feeling the DJ knows I haven't listened to Travis as much as I've wanted to because I've been busy with Japanese music. I'm looking forward to the next song.

Which is: Japanese songstress Misako Odani's Boku no E ('My painting'). That has moved the mood completely to mellow and pop from the initial punk of the Germs. Impressive. And, again, this is an Odani song I haven't listened to that much.

With the next song, DJ iPod appears to want to make things more upbeat. But not so abruptly that the transition seems unnatural. He picks the Cymbals' Air Guitar. The carefree singing of the Cymbals' Asako Toki is a good follow-up to the intense, passionate voice of Odani, like fruit after prime ribs.

Next: Husking Bee's A Single Word. The change to rock seems a bit sudden, but it works. And I hadn't listened to the Japanese band's song in a while and had half-forgotten how good it is.

Next: Lucy van Pelt's change. Now things are starting to get a little strange. Lucy? The Japanese guitar pop band (now called advantage Lucy) doesn't share much with Husking except that both songs were recorded in the late-90's. Hmm. What's next?

BLACK SABBATH'S TOMORROW'S DREAM.

NO!!!

No! That's just perverse! Black Sabbath following Lucy?? That's just not right. I can't know, but I have a strong feeling that never before in history have these two songs been played one after the other in a music player anywhere...

Here I think DJ iPod was either asleep at the wheels, or some drug he took earlier had started to kick in. Or... my hypothesis is starting to look somewhat shaky. Worried, I wait for the next song.

Which is: Husking Bee's Day Break. Didn't we just listen to Husking? The transition is also a little rocky, though that may be inevitable after Black Sabbath.

Next: Art-School's Charlotte. Nice one. The DJ dwarf is getting back in shape -- Art-School is, like Husking, emotion-packed Japanese rock, and this DJ move makes sense.

Next: Misako Odani's I. I'd complain that we just listened to Odani a few songs back if it weren't for the fact that this transition is unexpected, and brilliant! One sort of passion melting into another. Good stuff, DJ!

Here the DJ decides to be adventurous, and puts on a song by a Korean band, Cocore, but it's in Hangul so I can't read it. But it works.

The DJ decides it's mellow-out time with the next song, and puts on Kuchu- Ko-dan's Kyu-jitsu ('Day Off'). It's as if he's reminding me that I really ought to listen to Kuchu- Ko-dan more. They are a great girl pop band, but I hardly ever listen to their stuff for some reason.

Next: Syrup 16g's Mouth to Mouse. OK, good transition, but Syrup 16g again?

Next: Unicorn's Elegy. This is one of those albums I have in my iPod that I've never listened to, but haven't cleaned it out due to laziness. The pop song by the old Japanese band is actually not bad. Maybe I should go back and listen to the full album.

Which is followed by: The Clash's Remote Control. And then: Husking Bee's Shinkyu- Dynamism. Husking Bee, again?? It's the third time Husking has come on in the space of about fifteen songs.

The next song has a gorgeous acoustic guitar start, and I wonder what is it, until I hear the deep, raspy voice of the male singer. Right away I know it's the U.S. band Tangerine's It's Focus, from a CD the guys sent to me.

Next is early Art-School, the song Negative, which has a garage band feel and works well after Tangerine.

At this point, DJ iPod decides to play a few Western pop songs in a row, starting with Happydeadmen's The Seas Are Sailed, followed by the Lucksmiths' What You'll Miss, and then, another Lucksmiths song (!), Stayaway Stars (I mean, if you think the shuffle function is truly random, think about what a small probability there is of two Lucksmiths songs randomly playing back to back, when I only have about 12 of their songs out of 3,000...).

The final song that comes on for this experiment is Luminous Orange's Fall Again, which matches the mood of the Lucksmiths song that came before it.

If you're still with me, I think I've made my point that a brain, and not randomness, is behind the iPod's shuffle function. What do you think?

Three Berry & Cherry Weekend

Prime Minister Koizumi's flower viewing party.

Three Berry Icecream, the musical unit of singer/accordionist/glockenspiel-player Mayumi Ikemizu, performed on Sunday afternoon at a tiny place called the Cafe See More Glass in Harajuku, Tokyo. If a gig at an arena with mammoth sound and light systems is one extreme of the rock concert spectrum, this show was probably near the other extreme. The cafe was in a non-descript basement floor next to a cheap-looking Chinese restaurant and across from a shop that sells ao-jiru, a bitter, green plankton-like drink that proponents claim is good for you. Inside See More Glass was room for about thirty seated people at most. Its owner must have been trying to bring to life a childhood dream of a warm, comfortable home by creating this cafe - bookshelves were stuffed with hundreds of picture books, and brightly-colored art was everywhere.



Three Berry Icecream live.

Ikemizu, the performer, is a veteran musician who once played in the 90's Japanese pop band Bridge (Hideki Kaji was the group's most famous member). She's now the mother of a cute and outgoing three-year-old daughter, Ruka, and despite the demands of parenthood has continued to record music, though slowly, and has been doing shows occasionally. Ikemizu is friends with members of guitar pop bands like advantage Lucy and Vasallo Crab 75, and indeed, at this show Lucy guitarist Yoshiharu Ishizaka played guitar, and Vasallo's violinist and bassist helped out too.

The sound system was as simple as could be, but that served to highlight what accomplished musicians these guys are. A pleasant surprise for me was to hear how good the accordion and violin sound together playing pop/bossa nova. Three Berry did two shows, each about an hour for a crowd of around 25 people , many of whom knew each other, like cafe regulars.


Prime Minister Koizumi (click to enlarge)

Saturday I was invited to, of all things, the flower-viewing party hosted by Prime Minister Koizumi. It was at the Shinjuku Gyoen, or Shinjuku Gardens, a big park in central Tokyo. The day was perfect for the party, sunny, with the cherry blossoms in full bloom. A pamphlet said the park contained about twenty varieties of cherry trees, including a rare type with green-colored cherry blossoms. And it was true, the park was colored that day in various shades of pink and white of cherry flowers. However, many of the 8,000 or so guests seemed more interested in taking photos of the celebrities that Koizumi had invited, than appreciating the cherry flowers' beauty.

Usually though, Japanese people make a big fuss about the cherry blossoms, partly out of habit, but also in part because the cherry's brief bloom I think confirms their view that youth is fleeting, and strikes a sentimental chord within them. Personally I prefer the plum blossom, which is pretty in its own way (either a dark pink or paler white than the cherry), stays in bloom longer than the cherry, but is largely ignored by people because it flowers ahead of the warmth of spring.

Tornado Tatsumaki, Travelling Panda, On Botton Down

Springtime in Tokyo.

Most of the rock shows I go to in Tokyo take place at the Club Que in Shimokitazawa, and there's a reason for that: its managers book some of the most interesting, innovative, highest quality Japanese bands. Tonight was another reminder why I love this dinky basement club. The three bands that played, Tornado Tatsumaki, Travelling Panda and On Botton Down, were all wonderful.

The three's style might be called progressive pop, as opposed to progressive rock. Their songs are approachable, gorgeous and swinging, but they always have a twist, such as unusual chords or eccentric rhythms. Theirs was pop that rocked and had brains, and I enjoyed it tremendously.

***

On Botton Down is a girl singer and guy guitar duo, and they played with supporting musicians. Maybe I use this word too often to describe Japanese bands, but they were a quirky bunch. At the start of the show, when the drummer took a while to appear on stage, the other members said he was just now in the midst of, er, the final act in the digestive process... The drummer wore about half a dozen T-shirts, and stripped off one T-shirt at the end of each song. Despite those and other eccentricities, on botton down's performance was a delight, melodious and adventurous.


On Botton Down at the Que.

Travelling Panda, not to be confused with Texas Panda, was a girl singer/girl keyboard/guy guitarist trio, also playing tonight with support musicians. They mixed pop, funk, hiphop and fusion jazz sounds in a cauldron of rocking noise. The guitarist looked like a tall Japanese Buddy Holly. The singer marched back and forth on stage in vaguely hiphop way, holding the mike parallel to the ground rapper-like, but in spite of that she sang in a pleasant, girlish voice.

***

I'd come to see the last band, Tornado Tatsumaki ('tatsumaki' means ... 'tornado'. So their name is 'tornado tornado', or, perhaps, 'tornado times two'?). They were the loudest of the three bands, and at times their music dissolved into Sonic Youth-like distorted chaos. The frizzy-haired singer (all three of the bands had female vocalists), wearing a strange white blouse and shorts outfit that puffed up in weird places and seemed on the verge of falling apart, danced in a puppet-like hard-jointed way, but she had a lot of stage presence and a strong voice.

MP3s & 3,000 Yen CDs

I'm not an MP3 file-sharing guy. Napster came and went, without my ever trying it out. I don't use the latest file-sharing services either. Partly I guess I'm old-fashioned -- I grew up on LPs, and it still doesn't feel right when music doesn't come packaged in a box with art and words. What a shock it was to read a few years about Napster-using kids who had never owned a single CD!

But I can understand people outside of Japan who get most, or maybe all, of their Japanese music online. Especially with independent Japanese labels it's hard to buy their CDs abroad, and often expensive. I think there's value in itself in indies bands being listened to by foreign fans, even for free. If you are one of those people though, I urge you, if you become crazy about one of those indies bands that you found on the web, to try to actually buy that group's CD if there is some way to. It would make a lot of difference for the musicians.

Major label artists are another matter. Unless I'm crazy about a band, I'm not ready to fork out the 3,000 yen (about U.S.$30) that big Japanese record labels charge for a full-length album these days. Partly, I'm a cheapskate. But there are also principles involved in this -- why should I pay double the price of equivalent CDs in the U.S.? With a shiny new 10,000 yen bill, I could buy four 2,500 yen indies CDs, or even five 2,000 yen ones, but only three 3,000 yen major label disks, plus maybe a cup of cofee. And even $15 for a CD in the U.S. isn't inexpensive: Fugazi used to charge only $8 for their albums (maybe still do?).

Where does the 3,000 yen go? I picked up a Japanese book called Ongaku Gyo-kai Urawaza ('Tricks of the Trade in the Music Industry'), which gave a hypothetical revenue breakdown for a 3,000 yen CD that sold 100,000 copies. It said the record label gets about 35% of the total. The vendors get 25% to 30%. Advertising accounts for 15% And so on, until the musicians, assuming they wrote the music themselves, only end up with less than one-twentieth of the money.

I'm no expert in the music business and maybe this sort of revenue division is ordinary in other countries too. But even if that were the case, it's clear that Japanese labels are being inefficient because the end result is that CD prices in Japan are double those in the U.S., and as far as I know more expensive than anywhere else.

I read an interview of rock band Art-School, which now records with Toshiba-EMI, in which singer Kinoshita was saying Art-School and Mo'some Tonebender were the only "alternative bands" in Japan. Though I like both groups, that remark disappointed me. So you're proud to be classifying yourself by that genre name, 'alternative', that corporate U.S. dreamed up to market indies music that isn't indies anymore? You, the sensitive poet guy? And meanwhile, you charge 3,000 yen for CDs?

I don't think it's the sole reason, but overpriced CDs must be one big explanation for falling CD sales industry-wide and rampant illegal file-sharing. I mean, I make a decent living but I hardly ever buy 3,000 yen CDs. (Just to add, I'm not unconditionally against major labels. I just want them to cut their prices.)

But maybe I'm just cheap.

***

So how do I spend my money? Tonight would have been a good example, if I had only succeeded.

Yahoo Japan's auction site for the past week has had someone selling as one package 16 late-90's Japanese guitar pop cassette tapes, including that highly-sought rarity, Lucy Van Pelt's Red Bicycle tape, as well as two early tapes of Teeny Frahoop. The auction was to end at 10:05 P.M. tonight. These were treasure the likes of which you don't see on sale often!

As expected, people waited until the last minutes to place their bids, so that by bidding too early they don't encourage some crazy rich guy to outbid them. Ten minutes before the auction finished, the bid price surged to 7,250 yen from the starting 1,000 yen.

I was ready to go as high as 15,000 yen (around $150), and to think really hard and fast on whether to bid higher if even my top bid is defeated. I waited until a minute and 45 seconds before the virtual gavel was to hit the virtual lectern. Then... when I finally inputted my bid, it was rejected because the seller had specified that bidders had to have won a Yahoo Japan auction at least once before, which I hadn't. The tapes slipped through my fingers...

Cool CDs From Japan, Korea, HK & U.S.

A few CDs I've liked a lot recently:


Cocore's Boyish


Peppertones' A Preview

These two are CDs of Korean bands that my friend Wonyul sent me from Seoul. He says one of the two groups, Cocore, is a representative band of Seoul's Hongde scene (Hongde, an abbreviation of Hongik University, has a lot of record shops and music clubs around it. It seems to be a hip Seoul equivalent of Tokyo's Shimokitazawa).

Cocore is Korean grunge. The first time I heard the album, I thought: "Nirvana, but in Korean!". I found I was on the right track when Wonyul confirmed that these guys are big Nirvana fans. Still, they aren't Kurt Cobain clones. Their music, which rocks, is more varied and not as heavy-sounding as the Seattle trio.

The other band, Peppertones, reminds me of the Cymbals of Japan, and, again, Wonyul said I wasn't off the mark - the band members are big Cymbals fans. To back up a bit, since they aren't nearly as well-known as Nirvana: the Cymbals are a defunct Japanese trio that created some of the catchiest pop songs in recent years. My favorite albums of theirs are their first two independent releases, Neat, or Cymbal! and Missiles & Chocolate. Their later major label albums are good too, but I think their first two works contain the essence of Cymbal goodness.

Anyway, the Peppertones play fast-tempoed, danceable pop. Some of the songs in this mini-disk sound like the sort of dance music that was popular in the early 90's, with synthesizer string parts, and rising flute glissandos (the thing where flutes play an ascending passage really fast). Another nice listen.

Wonyul says members of these two bands are soju drinking buddies. I'd like to hang out with them too and drink the potent liquor at one of those tiny Korean barbecue places in Hongde...


Mix Market's Chronicle


Crawl's Milkicking

These two albums are both of Japanese bands that recorded with the independent K.O.G.A. label, whose specialty is girl punk and rock groups. The K.O.G.A. girls typically sing with a high, almost child-like voice (usually higher than their normal speaking voice) over punk or hard rock musical compositions.

I've heard people ask, why don't these girls sing in a more natural voice? I think it's a stylistic issue. The mixing of the child-like voice and heavy rock music parts creates musical tension, and the final product is an interesting sound that is distinctly Japanese.

Mix Market, a quintet (all guys except for the female singer), and Crawl, a trio that has already split up, are two exemplars of this style.

Of the two, Mix Market has the heavier rock sound. Chronicle combines a few new songs with material from four of their singles.

Crawl's singer's voice is Lolita to the max. Their Milkicking, released in 1995, contains several pop gems like "High & Dry", which I heard originally in a compilation album and got me interested in the group. In a parallel universe where record sales accurately reflect quality, this pop song would have been in the Top 40.


My Little Airport's the ok thing to do on sunday afternoon is to toddle in the zoo

At Apple Crumble Record in Shibuya, I picked up this album by the Hong Kong duo My Little Airport, who I'd heard was one of the better Asia ex-Japan bands. And they were. This album, with its provocative cover (what are these two uniformed girls doing in a school hallway?!), includes songs in both English and Cantonese. Like the Pancakes, another Hong Kong unit, the singing is breezy and the compositions quiet and simple, constructed of Casio keyboard and programmed sounds for the most part, but they manage to make the tunes artsy and satisfying to listen to.


Primrose's Abyssal

I admire Tokyo rock band Primrose a lot, but I hadn't been listening to their albums that much recently, because you have to be in a certain state of mind to get into their slowly-developed, psychelic-sounding rock epics. A friend said they reminded him of Pink Floyd.

Then, recently, I was walking somewhere with my iPod on shuffle mode, and "Queer Place" from this album came on, and it KO-ed me on the spot. With trippy distorted guitar parts, a trance-inducing repeated bass line, a drum part that drives the emotion of the music forward, this song (if it can be described in such a traditional manner...) makes you forget it's twelve minutes long as it gradually but surely builds up to an explosive climax. The album is worth buying to listen to this song alone, though the rest is good too. (As an aside, isn't it amazing what a great DJ the iPod's random mode can be? One song melts into the next in the most imaginative ways.)


Ivy's In the Clear

Finally, have you listened yet to In the Clear, the latest album by New York trio Ivy?

I have no idea how popular Ivy is back home in the U.S., but they are huge among the Tokyo pop in-crowd. Their older albums are sold with a sticker quoting singer Chara saying Ivy is a band she's only want to tell her best friends about. That may be just a marketing thing, but I've also seen Winnie singer Iori list the band as one of her favorites, and singer Aiko of advantage Lucy says Ivy's French vocalist Dominique Durand is one of her most beloved singers and one whose style she wants to emulate.

Noodles, Zeppet Store, Auto Pilot

Auto Pilot at the Que.

The Noodles, the Japanese all-girl band that's now a trio after the recent departure of its lead guitarist, played tonight at the Que one day after their return from a U.S. tour. They said they were jet-lagged. Drummer Ayumi said she was almost left behind in Denver when her plane flying from New York made a stopover there on the way to Seattle. She thought Denver was Seattle.

"I didn't know if I would be able to come home," she told the audience. "If not, I would have had to find work there."

Anyone reading this see them in the U.S.?

It was my first time to see the Noodles as a trio, and I have to say, I miss Junko the lead guitarist. The Noodles said in their interview with keikaku.net that they aren't looking for a new lead guitar, but with only one guitarist the band's sound isn't as full as I remember it.

One observation: I noticed that singer Yoko's speaking voice is higher than her singing voice. Usually with Japanese female singers it's the other way around.


Zeppet Store at the Que, watched by bopping female fans.

A loud, straightforwardly rocking quartet, Zeppet Store, the second act of the night, reminded me a bit of proto-grunge bands like Soundgarden and Mudhoney. Maybe it was partly their late 80's hippie hair, though theirs was carefully sculpted with gel and hair dryers to look unwashed and unkempt, rather than actually being those things. They were popular with the girls, who bopped around next to the stage and pumped their arms in the air.

***

The third and final band of the night, Auto Pilot, I had confused with another band I saw once and I liked, Afterpilot. In fact when I entered Que and the ticket seller asked me which band I'd come to see (they ask that to divide up the ticket revenue between bands), I answered 'Afterpilot'. A confused look on the ticket seller's face for a second or two, then she asked, "Do you mean Auto Pilot? Are you sure this is the show that you want to see?" I said yes, yes, silly me, I meant Auto Pilot (though actually I thought I was going to see Afterpilot...).

But I'm glad I made that mistake and voted for Auto Pilot, because they were an excellent band, the best of the night. The quintet plays shoegazing type music (the singer's guitarist has a sticker of the band Ride on it) with bits of punk and trance influence mixed in, and lots of feedback and repeated driving bass lines. I have a major weakness for that sort of sound.

Though the band rocked, the audience seemed to consider them something of an intellectual band to be watched from a safe distance, and reverently left space open in the front of the stage so that the back half of the Que was packed but there were few people in the front. Auto Pilot was selling their CDs after the show, and I bought their album White Light Ride. It's discoveries like these that keep me addicted to Japanese music.

INTERVIEW: Orange Plankton

Orange Plankton: from the left, bassist Tsuji-, singer Yumi, drummer Tamarou, and pianist Yuki.

I interviewed members of Tokyo piano pop band Orange Plankton more than a year ago for a project, but so far the project hasn't seen the light of day. In the meantime I've decided to share some of what I talked about with the group in Japan Live. The interview took place right after their third album Fanciful Garden came out, but before the release of their latest album, Wakusei Note (which is my favorite album of 2004). It was a long conversation, so I've trimmed it down to just the parts talking about music-making and the origins of Orange Plankton.

***

JAPAN LIVE: I've heard that the 'orange' in Orange Plankton refers to the Japanese orange from Ehime prefecture [in western Japan, where Yumi is from]. Is that true?

YUMI: Yes. And also, it's the color of the sun. And with that sunlight, we make the plankton multiply. That's the image.

JAPAN LIVE: How was the band Orange Plankton formed?

TSUJI-: Originally when we were in Osaka we had one other member who played the guitar, and the guitarist and I were in a (rock music) club in college, and we decided to form a new band. So we put up flyers seeking other band members at various musical instrument stores and practice studios, and the people that responded to the flyer became the band.

JAPAN LIVE: What was your first impression of each other?

YUMI: It was my first time in a band, and I had this image of band people having bleached blond hair and wearing lots of pierced jewelry and I was expecting those sorts of people in the band, but then Tsuji- showed up, and I thought, 'How simple!'.

YUKI: I also thought (looking at the other band members), 'simple'. Yumi looked very child-like. But when I met the other four band members they subjected me to a barrage of questions, and I got the feeling that these are pure, serious people.

JAPAN LIVE: What made you decide to be in Orange Plankton?

YUKI: I quite simply wanted to play the piano in a band. [Yuki is a classically-trained pianist.] I had a strong desire to play in a band, but only recently I've started to realize what I really want to do. At first, I thought we might be doing more intense music. What we ended up doing isn't exactly quiet music, but it is a band centered on the piano as I wanted.

TSUJI-: When I decided around high school that I want to be in a band, I liked hard rock and would copy bands like Queen, but when we formed this band, I thought we should do music with originality, like Radiohead. Now we don't aim to be like any particular artist. We try to create our own sound.

TAMAROU: I started playing the drums when I was in college, and I was covering well-known songs in a college club, and I was also in another band before I joined Orange Plankton but they weren't that interesting. And then I met Orange Plankton and they had this atmosphere that I'd never seen anywhere else, and that came out in their music too, and I thought 'this is interesting' and I decided to join them.

***

JAPAN LIVE: What do you find is most difficult about being in a band?

YUMI: I sometimes feel that I want to sing a little more this way or that but I'm not able to, or I want to make the sound a little different but I'm not able to express that to the others. When it's like that, sometimes practice does the trick, but other times I need to try to figure out what exactly it is I want to do. That's a difficult thing.

JAPAN LIVE: How do you overcome the difficulties?

YUMI: First, so I know what I want to say, I try things like drawing a picture, and once I know what it is I'm looking for, I communicate that to the other members, again, doing various things such as writing it out or drawing pictures.

JAPAN LIVE: Do you understand what Yumi is trying to express with her pictures?

YUKI: Yes, gradually I've come to understand them. Though at first I didn't at all.

TSUJI-: One song we are working on now ['Iwa Kaesu Kaze No Oto' in their Wakusei Note album], Yumi's image of it was of the Mongolian steppe, but I didn't really understand what she was trying to express just looking at the lyrics alone, but then she drew a picture of her image and showed it to me. It was a picture of a girl standing alone in a great field, with a big tree next to her, and when I saw that drawing I was able to get a better sense of what sort of music to play.

***

JAPAN LIVE: How do you create your lyrics?

YUMI: When I write the music to songs myself, I come up with the lyrics at the same time that I create the music. Also, after I read a book or watch a movie or meet someone, I get an impression and I write lyrics to express that impression.

Besides me, Tsuji- and Yuki also write the music to songs, and when I do the lyrics for their songs I attach a lot of importance to the impression I got when I listened to the music for the first time. That lets me write words that aren't inside me.

JAPAN LIVE: When do you write lyrics?

YUMI: Mostly I write at night. I write when it's late at night and it's very quiet.

JAPAN LIVE: Many of your songs use colors as imagery, for example 'Akai Aka' ['A Crimson Red'] and 'Midori No Kotori' ['A Little Green Bird']. Do you consciously use colors as imagery in your songs?

YUMI: I've been told before that I use color a lot. It's not a conscious thing, but colors make it easier to create an image, and I end up using them a lot.

JAPAN LIVE: You also use 'garden' often, for example, in the title of your album [Mizu no Niwa literally means 'Garden of Water', though it's been translated into English by the band as 'Fanciful Garden'.]

YUMI: I try to use words that let people form different images. In the case of colors, people get different images from the color red, but they do get an image. A garden is the same sort of thing.

JAPAN LIVE: Does a garden have a special image for you?

YUMI: It has an image of a partitioned space where anything can be created. I always have an image of there being a garden in my mind.

JAPAN LIVE: What do you mean by 'Garden of Water' [the literal translation of Orange Plankton's third album]?

YUMI: 'Garden of Water' is, well, Orange Plankton's music is a partitioned thing, and when someone listens to Orange Plankton, it's like a garden that we want people to enter. Also, by naming it 'Garden of Water', it helps expand a person's image, though everyone will have a different image, with some maybe thinking of, say, an underwater metropolis.

Winnie, Spaghetti Vabune, $2000 Panda

The Aprils' panda.

Guitar pop was the theme tonight at the Shibuya O-Nest, where four good bands played: Lost in Found, winnie, Aprils and Spaghetti Vabune.

I was especially looking forward to seeing winnie, who only recently started perfoming live after a one-year hiatus. Their mini-album released 2003, first class speed of light, is one of my favorite recent Japanese pop-rock albums. I included it in my list of 5 Dreamy, Distortion-Heavy Japan Rock CDs, of Japanese groups that are musical descendants of My Bloody Valentine. Looking at winnie's website, it looks like the band members are more into pop and rock bands like Teenage Fanclub, Wannadies and Ivy than My Bloody Valentine, but I still do hear a little of MBV in winnie's music. Less sonic experimentation and heavy distortion, but the same focus on creating catchy melodies with overdriven guitars and girl-guy duo singing parts.

Tonight at the O-Nest they played some new songs in Japanese (all the songs in first class were in English), which were good. They are a nice looking band on stage -- the guy singer Okuji hunches forward toward the mike as he sings, as if about to leap into the audience, while Iori, the girl singer, stands straight, looking peacefully contented. Tall for a Japanese woman, with long henna-dyed hair, she wore jeans and high heels, and with those heels she stepped on her guitar effect pedals, which I thought was the coolest thing.


Winnie at the O-Nest.

I've been to Aprils and Lost in Found shows before, but this was my first time to see Spaghetti Vabune! , a guitar pop band from western Japan. The one song of theirs I knew and liked, 'Jetset star' in a compilation album by the Japanese guitar pop indie label bluebadge, they played as the final song of their set before the encore (they were the last band of the night). A group that plays bright and energetic pop, they were loved by the dozens of well-dressed guitar pop fans in the audience.

At one point between songs, the girl singer held up a hand puppet of a cow, which announced to the fans in a high-pitched bovine (?) voice that a new album was in the works. This impressive feat of ventriloquism was accomplished by having a drummer talk into the mike in a falsetto voice while the singer flapped the puppet cow's mouth. Cutely wacky, in a way that maybe shouldn't be surprising coming from a band that calls itself Spaghetti Vabune. ('Vabune' is like 'zoom' in English, the sound of a rocket flying in the air.)

***

The Aprils' future dance pop isn't quite my thing, but there's no doubt their shows are fun. In the middle of the set, an aqua and white stuffed panda hobbled onto stage and swung its arms around to the songs, as the guy singer Imai urged the crowd to look at him rather than the panda. The panda outfit is said to have cost around 200,000 yen (about $2,000), paid for by the band's record label.

Japan Live, Interviewed

I was interviewed by the cool folks over at Japan music website keikaku.net, and the article has just been published here. If you check it out, be sure to spend some time looking through the rest of their site too. It's a comprehensive, well-designed site with several people on the staff, and contains lots of great features and interviews, including a wonderfully minimalist interview of girl band Noodles (sample exchange: KEIKAKU.NET: Is being a noodle a full-time job, or do the band members have other occupations? NOODLES: No.).

Advantage Lucy; Nekobed

Nekobed at the Shibuya Cyclone.

It’s been getting clear recently that Tokyo rock band advantage Lucy’s very, very long-awaited new album is nearing completion and release .

You can tell by the way they’ve been scheduling their shows – rather than playing with other guitar pop bands of friends, as they usually do, they’ve jumped into events with unfamiliar groups in different genres, to make a wider audience of people that might buy their album interested in their music. Last Sunday it was the Que show with Kawakami Jiro and the Robots. Tonight they performed with a few rocking bands including Nekobed (literal translation: ‘cat bed’).

They also seem even more focused when playing live, to show their new audiences their best face.

Appearing tonight at a venue called Shibuya Cyclone, advantage Lucy were spectacular. No band is quite like Lucy at their best. They occupy a pleasant place in the middle of musical extremes: Lucy rocks harder than most pop bands, but they are classier than hard rock bands. They are like a rocking chamber orchestra, the sound of each instrument distinct (two guitars, a bass, drums, and recently, keyboard played by singer Aiko) but coming together to form a beautiful musical whole.

Aiko’s singing is superb. Shyly friendly in person, she seems to come fully to life only on stage, where, with her singing, she squeezes out all her emotions and intense love for her music.

The show – a feast. It was a six-course meal of their most well-crafted songs, including rousing renditions of ‘Citrus’, ‘Chikyu’, ‘Goodbye’ and a new, melancholic ballad called ‘To-Ii Hi (‘A Distant Day ‘, my translation)’. I still feel happily stuffed.

***

The last act of the night was Nekobed, a sextet that plays music that combines elements of 50's rock, rockabilly, ska, R&B, and Japanese popular music. It’s hard to dislike a band where the two sax players and singers are beauties and the three all stand at the front of the stage during the show, dancing and having fun.

***

UPDATE: I should have added that the members of advantage Lucy themselves said the new album is likely to come out in the summer.

Orange Plankton On Street; Robots

Orange Plankton in Shibuya, in front of NHK.

In front of the NHK television studio in Shibuya is a pathway where on weekends, garage rock groups, interpretative dancers, comedians and others come to perform for strollers, each group occupying a small patch of the sidewalk . It’s noisy and colorful, like an impromptu carnival. Tokyo pop band Orange Plankton has been playing here for free on recent Sunday afternoons, and I went to check them out.

The spontaneous weekend gathering of performers in Shibuya is a tradition going back at least two decades. When I first came to Japan I didn’t think much of these often exhibitionistic but incompetent performances, but then one night in the mid-90's I went to see Fugazi play at the Ebisu Guilty, and one of the members of Fugazi said something on stage that made me look at these street bands in a different light. At the time, authorities had prohibited the playing of amplified music in the area, and so the gatherings had disappeared. The Fugazi guy (memory fails on which one it was) asked on stage, what happened to all those bands that used to play on the street in Shibuya, it was so exhilarating to see so many bands playing in one place. That’s when I realized, yeah, many of these bands might be little more than noise pollution, but still it’s a great thing to form a band and create music, and try out your music with the public.


Another picture of Orange Plankton in Shibuya.

In the years since, the police have cracked down on the performances every once a while but recently have been turning a blind eye, or more accurately, a deaf ear to the street gigs as long as the amps aren’t turned up too loudly. So Orange Plankton along with other bands have been playing here.

Despite it being mid-March it was a cold Sunday afternoon and on the way to Shibuya, snow as big as ashes started to fall from the sky. Orange Plankton was there in front of NHK (they had done their first show of the day in the snow!), and soon began a set of about half an hour. The amps were turned down low to avoid getting in trouble with the cops. To one side of the band was a jazz group, and across from them was a wannabe girl-idol punk band, and because everyone was playing at once it was hard to hear the songs. But when I focused I could hear their familiar songs, like sifting for gold in a sandy river of noise.

I only listened to one set but they did several more later in the day, and I wished I could see those too. In Orange Plankton’s BBS, I read that one guy took the bullet train from Nagano prefecture just to see them play, then went to the airport to catch a flight to Fukuoka where he actually lives (!). If you are in Shibuya on a Sunday and see these musicians, stop and give them a listen. That will make their day.

***

AT NIGHT advantage Lucy played at the Que in Shimokitazawa at an event also featuring a solo artist named Kawakami Jiro (formerly of a band called Kusu Kusu) and a band called the Robots (led by the ex-guitarist of Judy & Mary, Takuya). Those are three popular musical units, and the Que was packed.

It was a strange night. Kawakami plays R&B-type songs, the Robots soft punk, advantage Lucy does guitar pop, and the fans of each artist didn’t mix at all with the other two’s fans. During the show of, say, Kawakami, the Robots and Lucy fans by and large seemed indifferent or bored.

Advantage Lucy did the show because they thought it would be a good chance to introduce themselves to music fans who aren’t familiar with their music, and they played a lot of their oldies like ‘Goodbye’, ‘Kaze ni Azukete’ and ‘Metro’. They played beautifully, though guitar pop just isn’t as flashy as R&B or hard rock, and I wondered whether they were able to convert many of the musically benighted to Lucy fandom. For my part I was knocked out by a new ballad of theirs called ‘Time After Time’, but being surrounded by weird Robots and Kawakami fans helped me keep my emotions in check.

***

The Robots played last, and I was much more excited about them and had much more fun than I thought it would. Part of it is that I used to be a huge Judy & Mary fan, buying all their CDs etc. (and I still like them), and here was Takuya the guitarist in a small club rather than the humongous halls he used to play in with JAM. Plus the Robots really rocked. Takuya performed with skill and total confidence in himself bordering on the cocky, like a rocking Che Guevara.

I’d heard that as a kid Takuya was a juvenile delinquent that was kicked out of the worst high school in town (don’t know this for a fact though), a true ‘yankee’, the bizarre term the Japanese give to bad kids (maybe because the kids often bleach their hair to make themselves blond?). And he had the attributes of a ‘yankee’: bleached blond hair; triangular eyes that stared with attitude; sunken cheeks; a Sid Vicious snarl. But he would also often flash a boyish smile, which along with his good looks and rough charm may have partly explained the large number of girl fans in the audience, despite his frequently saying very inappropriate things on stage (he was, for example, talking about the snow earlier in the day, and when some in the audience questioned whether it was true it snowed, he said yes it did in Tokyo, but maybe you wouldn’t know it if you trained in from the sticks to see the show. He also made a joke about, er, unwanted pregnancy...).

It was a raw, rocking show that reminded me that Judy & Mary, despite the cuteness of Yuki’s singing voice and the pop rock arrangement of many of their songs, was a band that had its roots in punk rock (though maybe a pop Japanese version of punk).


And another.