Soutaiseiriron, which means 'Theory of Relativity', is, in theory, a relatively promising band. But there's also something very weird about these guys.
They seem to be refusing to reveal anything at all about themselves. There are almost no pictures of this quartet anywhere (well... more on that in a second). In fact, they make it clear they want their image hidden—on every page of their website is a note saying that photographing at their concerts is prohibited. That's normal at major-label band gigs, but I've never seen a band being quite so adamant about it on a website. The bio on their site is sketchy, giving only a brief run-down of their 2 ½ year career. And the CD Hi-Fi Anatomia doesn't supply any more info either. Also, they don't do interviews.
In other words, you can't get any information about this band other than from their music. It's like they want to be the Thomas Pynchon or Salinger of J-pop. But is that even possible? Can a rock band succeed without publicizing their image or personalities at all?
I have no idea what's behind this secrecy. Do they just not like to be in the public gaze? Or are there personal reasons why they can't be seen? I hope it's not some sort of marketing gimmick worked out with their managers, because that would be eminently lame.
The thing is, they do perform live once in a while, so they aren't keeping themselves completely invisible. I read, though, that the female singer stands motionless on stage during the whole show, and only moves to bend down to get her bottle of water. Phew...glad I found that out in advance, otherwise I might've ended up suffering through a 'performance'...
All of this is strange because Soutaiseiriron's music IS good, a lot of people I know are getting into them, and being more forthcoming about their persona would seem to be a beneficial thing at this point in their career. Indeed, Hi-Fi Anatomia, their first album, is filled with catchy, if ordinary-sounding pop tunes, but two things help them stand out: the female singer's vocal style and their whacky lyrics.
A Japanese commentator I read put it well when he described the singing style as 'low blood pressure J-pop'—for the most part the vocalist sounds laid-back, like she's not trying too hard, but at the same time it's a strangely coquettish voice, quietly emotional and pleasantly musical.
And then there are the lyrics—it's like various types of otaku splashed their fantasies and daydreams against the music sheets. “Jigoku Sensei” is a Japanese schoolgirl (Nabokov's) Lolita story in pop song format; “Fushigi Descartes” has to do with supernatural phenomena, with the main line saying, “Even if you're a ghost that's OK with me/ If you're a ghost that would be even better/ If I were a ghost wouldn't that be OK with you?”; the song “Shikaku Kakumei (Square Revolution)” describes a guy from the 25th century running away from the Time-Space Police and meeting a girl from the 22nd century; “Renaissance” is about, um, mathematics.
It all makes me want to know more about these guys. Now, they're faceless.
What's strange is that the only one photo I found of this band is in the English part of the internet, and while a google image search does turn up links to a few Japanese sites, when you try to open those images they're all removed. Does that mean the web-masters were asked to take them down? I'm curious what will happen if I publish that one known picture of them on this site, and so I've borrowed that photo from another web page, and will let you know if there's any response...
I almost got lost for a second time in a row going to a cafe called Rain On The Roof in Sangenjyaya because, well, the place IS a challenge to find. It's in a narrow alley and there's a tiny sign in front of the entrance that you wouldn't see if you weren't looking for it. But this is at least an interesting neighborhood to get lost in. It's filled with little dining bars that have only a few seats each, places looking like time's stopped in the 1960's, where the 'mama' mixes scotch and water for long-time regulars and that you'd feel strange about dropping by unless you yourself are a regular or are introduced by someone who is. In a side-street off of Route 246 is an old movie theater, Sangenjyaya Central Theater, with big signs in Showa-era font and, its most distinctive feature, on the facade a kappa couple, the male kappa blue and the female kappa pink (kappa are human-like creatures that live in ponds, and drag children into the water and drown them. Watch out for them if traveling with little kids near ponds...).
Rain On The Roof, named after a Lovin' Spoonful song, is a cafe on the 2nd floor of an old building with great wooden ceiling with beams. It has comfy sofas and smells of curry rice, which is supposed to be good. The cafe appears to have been created by a company called Renovation Planning, which transforms old stores and homes into cafes. Here's an up-close picture of the ceiling:
I was there to see an event called 'Waikiki-philia and Cafe Rock', the fifth installment of an event organized every couple of months or by the band Elekibass. It ran from 2:30 in the afternoon to 8:40 in the evening, though I only stayed during the daytime part of the event. The standout act for me was Quinka, With a Yawn, the unit of the female vocalist/keyboardist Michiko Aoki and whoever else she invites to perform together. At this show her side-kick was guitarist Taisuke Takata of Plectrum. I'm a big fan of Quinka—the Quinka album Field Recordings was my favorite CD of 2008—but I'd forgotten until this Sangenjyaya show what a good performer Aoki is. Her singing is unhurried, natural, and she has a way of creating musical space by staying silent and then coming in with her voice, a quirky, normal-person voice that nevertheless has a lot of presence. Quinka played all covers: The Stone Roses' “Ten Storey Love Song”, Unicorn's “Jitensha Dorobou (Bicycle Thief)”, Spitz's “J'taime” and the La's “There She Goes” (a very popular tune in the Tokyo indie pop scene), as well as, a cover of sorts, a song called “Thank You” that she wrote together with her husband Harco for their two-person unit Harqua. Plectrum's Takata teased her, saying she's cheating on Harco by performing the song with him, and she replied that he's also being untrue to his just-married wife by doing this duet, but, joking aside, it was a truly beautiful tune performed by two talented musicians that made me a bit tearful. Harqua...I better check them out.
I hadn't realized this until last night, but the pop band Round Table is a somewhat different entity from the group known as Round Table Featuring Nino. The latter merely adds the female singer Nino to the former, but the two release albums on different labels (Featuring Nino is on Victor Entertainment, while indie Happiness Records is Round Table's label), and Featuring Nino is also a big producer of anime soundtrack songs, something that Round Table itself is, as far as I know, not that big on. In addition, whereas Round Table plays live fairly frequently, mostly in Shimokitazawa, Nino almost never does—in fact, I found out later that the Round Table Featuring Nino show last night was only the second gig ever since Nino joined the group in 2002 (Round Table proper has been around since 1997).
The show was at the Daikanyama Unit, and it was supposed to be a 'secret', free gig—it wasn't listed on the club's schedule or the band's website, and you got tickets by sending in an e-mail to the Round Table website or something. I'm not sure how the process worked exactly because, Japan Live being a Major Player in the Tokyo music scene these days, I was invited to the show...well, no, joking, I just knew someone who could get me into the gig as a guest. The guests had their own section on one side of the floor, divided by a fence, that you got into by flashing your guest pass at the staff and walking a narrow space between the main floor and PA booth.
It was a queer experience watching the show from the segregated 'guest' section. On the other side of the fence, the floor was jam-packed, mostly with people that appeared to be male anime fans; the guest section wasn't crowded, and was mostly musician friends of Round Table, both male and female. And we had a nice view of the stage, something that the main floor guys could only get if they lined up before the show to secure a good spot. But it was they that were really having a great time, despite being herded into a tight, hot, sweat-stinking space—many of them must have been Nino fans for years, seeing her live the first time, finally, so they were excited. I read later on 2 Channel that some of those fans came from places far from Tokyo, a major domestic trip just to see an hour-and-a-half gig, but it was probably worth it for them, because they characterized it with the otaku adjective kami—a 'divine' performance. And they were a super-enthusiastic crowd too, clapping en masse, singing along to the sweet pop ballads, and during the applause before the encore, one of the guys shouted 'so-----re [a call before starting something]', and then, spontaneously, everyone started shouting 'En-core! En-core! En-core!' together. It blew my mind.
For us in the guest section, on the other hand, this was just another free gig thrown by friends, and while the guests must have had fun and enjoyed the music, you felt this sort of social pressure to not go too crazy, to limit yourselves to polite applause, while being free to offer whispered commentary about the show from the point of view of a fellow musician insider.
Nino was good looking, with long, brown, 'shaggy' hair and angular facial features. She didn't exactly take full control of the stage—this was only her second gig, after all—but she did have presence, helped by the audience's overwhelming support and approval of everything she did. The voice was soft and high, and the performance solid, benefitting from the skilled musicians of Round Table. They played about a dozen songs, including for the encore Nino's first hit, “Let Me Be With You”. The gig didn't knock me out like previous Round Table shows, but it was a pleasant affair, especially viewed from the comfortable confines of the VIP section, where we could rattle our jewelry rather than clap along.
***
Bringing me rapidly down to earth after the gig was the Unit's authoritarian policy of not allowing audience members to stand outside of the club for even a single second to wait for friends to emerge. Supercilious staffers shouted at people to move along, like sheepdogs yapping at their herd. I know the Unit isn't alone in doing this, and I know there are reasons for it—they're afraid that if they let people loiter, they might make noise and annoy the neighbors—but while understanding that, couldn't they be, perhaps, nice about asking people to disperse, rather than acting dictatorially like they have some god-given right to chase people away from a public space? I mean, maybe it's just a job for them, but couldn't they handle things in a way that doesn't immediately dispel the magic of the show?
They dance. They're babes. Their act is like something out of TV re-runs of 60's and 70's spy shows, the jet-set female star laughing theatrically after she completes another impossible mission.
The music is mid-20th century retro—jazzy soundtracks, kayoukyoku, French pop. The big, long-haired, goatee-ed, sunglassed DJ, SLF, also plays the role of an old Japanese cabaret MC, with just the right tongue-in-cheek formal mannerism and winking deference to the performers. Ruby, the Lady Spade's singer, is scripted as the free-spirited prima donna, so never speaks formal Japanese—'arigato' after songs rather than the standard 'arigatogozaimashita'—and she has her four adoring dancers fetch her water when she's thirsty.
I didn't realize until I listened to their debut album, Dial “S” For The Lady Spade (whose release party they held at the Chelsea Hotel in Shibuya), that Ruby wasn't just a singer and dancer, but the super-heroine you call when the problem was serious—the last planetary force field breached, for example—and she would laugh and help out if the project sounded interesting, for a fee. She's a Winston Wolf for global crises. Ruby's also a great driver—she compliments a gaijin-accented guy as being the “world's second best driver”, but on her days off, like any normal girl, she likes to have her admirers buy her things in Ginza and take her out to dinner in Aoyama.
How could I resist any of this???
The Chelsea Hotel event was more like a revue than a regular live house gig, with day-glo-wigged girls in faux-school uniforms and burlesque dancers wandering the floors one second and then performing on stage the next moment. We came out of the two-hour party exhilarated, revived, with a fresh view of the possibilities of entertainment and how it brightens up a dinky basement bar.
***
Several piko piko pop guys, as well as Patrick of chipple.net, were in the audience.
***
The fliers they handed out at the show were great—colorful and well-designed, including several advertising burlesque dance lessons (!). Here are some of them.
Three members of the splendid Tokyo band Vasallo Crab 75 have gotten together for a side-project called Kanariya, and they did their first gig at the Red Cloth on Wednesday. They are one of those groups that successful musicians form when they want to try something different from the main act, experiment, go back to the roots, etc. In Kanariya's case, the new thing is old rock: they only did a few songs, but it was a varied set, one tune sounding like primordial 70's punk, another being jazz rock, the finale something that reminded me of Tommy-era Who. I can picture them digging through each others' record collections, jamming those LP-inspired tunes together, and then, deciding, one day—hey, why don't we just make this into a new band?
VC75 are great. Their shows are spectacles that are attracting devoted fans who dance, melodic explosions of funk, pop and occasional electric Bach violin solos. They're playing the O-Crest on March 27 with Pop Chocolat and Chub Du. But I can see how musically-hungry guys would want to try something like Kanariya, to go down a few strange alleys, and share what they've found with a new crowd. At the Red Cloth the audience was sparse. But maybe that's part of the bargain—they're really starting anew, debuting as nobodies, with a sound they hope people will like and find to be fresh. I did.
***
'Kanariya' sounds like the Japanese word for canary, but the spelling is slightly different from the standard word, which wouldn't have the Y in it. I didn't think to ask them what the name meant, but when I googled it the first entry I found what maybe pointed to an answer. It contained an old Japanese children's tune called 'Kanariya' (an archaic spelling?), and the lyrics sounded like something that could inspire a band name. It goes something like:
The canary that's forgotten its song Should we abandon it in the hills behind? No, no, that wouldn't do
The canary that's forgotten its song Should we bury it in the shrub in the back? No, no, that wouldn't do
The canary that's forgotten its song Should we hit it with a whip of willow? No, no, that would be cruel
The canary that's forgotten its song Put on an ivory boat, with a silver paddle And floated in a moonlit sea Will remember its song.
Nostalgia for school days, a quest for more musical performance space, novelty, and Japan's shrinking population seem to be behind an interesting upcoming music festival: Haikou Fes 2009, to be held in an abandoned elementary school in Shinjuku.
I read about it in Mixi's Neo-Underground community, whose members have been long searching for new places to organize rock shows, anywhere other than the tired 'live houses' where bands usually do gigs (and where most have to pay to play). The idea of using retired schoolhouses—called 'haikou' in Japanese—as music festival venues had come up during the initial, fevered discussions in the Mixi group. It looks like that idea at least came to fruition—a first Haikou festival was held last year, and a follow-up event is happening on May 6.
The venue is the former site of Shinjuku Ward Yodobashi #3 Elementary School, which has been converted into an entertainment facility by a performers' organization called Geidankyo. Scheduled to perform are notable musicians including Keiichi Sokabe, Kicell, Harco, and Nisennenmondai (as well as a group called Motallica).
The background to why this event is taking place is that there are lots of deserted, unused school buildings in Japan. As the population here gets older and shrinks in size, there aren't enough kids to fill all the schools. Why not use these haikous for some other purpose, rather than simply let them rot and crumble? That thought has led to events like Haikou Fes at ex-Yodobashi #3 School.
So, if you're into the idea of boogie-ing in the science lab, rocking out in the principal's office or making some noise on top of a teacher lectern, this may be your thing. Personally, I'm not too sure about it—for one thing, the tickets, at 3,200 yen advanced and 4,000 yen at the door, aren't cheap. That's more than for a usual live house gig. Does it cost that much money to rent the school and pay the bands? Also, I get this vague, uneasy feeling that though the festival will aim to project a free, anything-goes vibe, in reality it will be tightly controlled—but I don't have much basis for this speculation. In any case, it will probably be a good photo op.
UPDATE (Mar. 7): The organizer of this event sent me a nice note to say thanks for your interest in the event, that the ticket price is the lowest possible and not profitable, and that the atmosphere of the event will be yurui—loose, relaxed, fun.
I respect the fact that the person cares enough about the event to want to clarify those points.
Thank you. I'm going.
***
Meanwhile, speaking about festivals, there's a mini one at the Rain on the roof cafe in Sangenjyaya on March 22, featuring several bands including the Waffles, Elekibass and Quinka, with a Yawn, whose album Field Recordings was my favorite Japanese album of 2008. This looks worth going to, though considering that the Rain on the roof is a fairly small venue (I saw Frenesi there) and the bands are relatively popular, it could make for an event where lots of people are cramped into a 'comfortable' cafe space... The good thing is you can go in and out of the cafe if you want to get fresh air. The 'cafe festival' runs from 2 in the afternoon to 9 at night.
I'm wondering why I wasn't that impressed with Hoover's Ooover when I saw them live a few years ago. Writing about them in one of my early posts I said the band didn't connect well with the audience. Was that really the case? Or was there something in me that got in my way of enjoying them?
The reason I'm thinking about this is I saw the quartet on Sunday at the Basement Bar, and they were brilliant, a delight to watch, and they got the crowd going (well...relatively so. Except for a pogo-ing threesome in the center of the floor, the audience was a fairly subdued one. When one of the hoppers bumped into a guy next to him, the guy clearly looked annoyed).
They're one girl and three guys, the men in gangster black dress shirts and ties. The girl, vocalist Masami Iwasawa, was also in a black jacket but with a white blouse, and wore three red glass stones, one in a hairpin, another in her jacket pocket, and the last a ring. Her hair was medium-short and light brown, and I was surprised to see later several girls with the same look, it being unclear to me whether that was in homage to her or was the fashion of this scene.
Masami was a lefty who played a white left-handed guitar. Though the three guys were very skilled, she was obviously the center of the band, the one who writes all the songs. At the end of song phrases, she'd whip her neck and torso back to move away from the mike and swing with her guitar. She has a small face with little features, but her singing voice is a little deeper than you'd expect to come out of a face like that. It's a distinct voice that sounds earthy, maybe even muddy, if mud shined and could make you drunk. She can, at times, run through lyrics rapid fire, but it seems that that's just an extra vocal flourish that she does sometimes rather than the main attraction.
Between their hard-driving 50's-sounding rock and pop numbers, when the band talked they were almost incongruously laid-back and a bit silly. At one point, the bass Abe-san said how he bought a new digital TV because his old analog one broke down, but he didn't discover the malfunction until he saw a movie that was supposed to feature a yellow car, but the one on the screen was red. When he figured out his TV no longer displayed yellow, he says he went out to buy a sheet of yellow plastic to paste on to the screen. That didn't do the trick; it just made everything look dark yellow. So he bought the new TV. And so on.
Then, mellow talk done, they'd jump into their great songs, whose words sound like what a girl thinks, deep down, but rendered poetically. The only thing more I could have wished for was that they play one of my favorite songs of 2008, “An Overlap Between Literature and Real Life”, which I wrote about in a previous post.
This is a great band. Why didn't I think that back in 2004? One thing is that Hoover's Ooover was a different group back then—except for Masami, all the members have changed over the years. Maybe was that the way the band used to be? Maybe they became more confident? Maybe it was just a bad night for them? Or for me? Mysteries.
Lady Spade put on 'dramatic and cinematic entertainment shows'.
Lady Spade look like girls imitating 60's Japanese idols who were imitating Motown stars.
They go-go severely in see-through skirts.
They are serious, flirtatious, funny, retro, and out of this world.
They are jet-set superstars-in-the-making.
They stop mid-dance-pose to let worshipping fans photograph.
The Lady Spade are planning world conquest at their secret underwater HQ.
***
This was a dancing, outgoing crowd at the O-Nest. Twenty-something fans of techno and pico pico pop, they were a different breed from the usual introverted live house music nerds. Which is what I am, but it was still good to see young guys who are different, who don't see anything strange about expressing their excitement, and who smile at strangers, even foreigners.
DJ-ing between band sets was Yuppa of Hazel Nuts Chocolate. What a high it must be being Yuppa. An illustrator, who's also released two wonderful albums, Bewitched and Cute. A fashionable girl who, on the side, spins funky records as a DJ. Apparently living fully the life of the Tokyo young (though of course it must have its share of boredoms and burdens). Guys gathered around to dance and see her DJ selections. On the mike she asked everyone to buy the DJ drinks, and the guys brought her beer, cocktails on ice, tequila shots, lining them up in front of the turntables, and she went through them all.
One thing I like about this scene is the people seem into exploring older music. The Lady Spade and their old spy movie-sounding tunes and kayoukyoku. Also at the event was Motocompo, a duo in day-glo stripe fashion who play sing, guitar and keyboard 80's new wave-sounding tunes. And I found a flier of a unit called Salome Lips who describe themselves as a 'Heisei kayou band' influenced by 60's and 70's kayoukyoku, mood kayou and movie music (Heisei being the era of the current Emperor's reign, started 1989). Maybe from a somewhat different scene, but Asakusa Jinta also makes brilliant music that borrows from streetcorner brass bands and other 19th and early 20th century sounds. There's a wealth of beautiful, surprising music out there. Musicians and music fans ought to pay them a visit.
***
Salome Lips' flier, by the way, contained an interesting reference. It was an advertisement for a record of theirs to be released in March, called Theme of the Atami Hihoukan. The flier somewhat artlessly translates 'hihoukan' as 'sex museum', though it literally means 'museum of hidden treasures'. And what are these concealed precious things? The treasured parts of men's and women's anatomy that don't normally see the day of light. The flier says these 'treasure museums' were built in the late-70's and early-80's in various onsen spa towns. The Atami museum mentioned still exists, and this being 2009, has its own website, which contains a layout of the displays, including: whale reproductive organs, 'figures' showing the '48 positions', ukiyo-e prints, among other things. Piped in the background in the museum is mysterious mood music that the flier says is hard to get out of your head once you listen to it. Salome Lips, in their record, are doing an “unprecedented, shocking” cover of this music, according to the flier. OK, they've piqued my interest!
At the Que on Sunday night, after a show by a mellifluous male singer Takamori Yuuki and the joke-loving power pop quartet Stainless, advantage Lucy came on, the third and final act of the evening, and, at the risk of sounding a bit mad, I was totally swept into the performance from the first few acoustic guitar chords by Ishizaka-san. The song was 'Chikyu', earth, the first song I ever heard by this guitar pop group many years ago, in a compilation album called Killermont Street 2001. I remember being drawn into the song because of the bittersweet chords, played on an acoustic guitar with a sparkling sound, the interesting background noise of children at a playground, but mostly, the singing—a clear female voice, not that of an exceptionally skilled vocalist, but it had a free feel, seeming to be guided solely by the overflowing emotions of the singer, Aiko. A few more CD purchases, and I was smitten—the birth of a Lucy maniac. So, because it was my first, but also just because it's a classic, I've always gotten a thrill listening to 'Chikyu' played live.
Tonight's rendition, though, was something else. The five-person ensemble—vocalist Aiko, guitarist Ishizaka, plus another guitar, bass and drums—has seemed to have really come together after many months of making music together. Someone wrote on Mixi that when the musicians' eyes met while they played, causing them to smile, the person became tearful—I know how the guy feels. A band can be such a beautiful thing. A fog machine pumped throughout their show, and during 'Chikyu' the overhead lights turned dark blue while the spotlights faded, transforming them into what I imagined as dark sculptures in some marine kingdom.
The band are nice, charming, good-looking guys in person, but at times the stage beautifies them, so they are radiant. I think it reflects that they're living fully, ecstatically, for a short moment in that little space. After they played the rest of the evening's set—Hello Again, Weekend Wonder, Shiroi Asa, Memai, Shumatsu, and a new song written for that night, called February—I could've stopped by to chat, but this time I didn't, wanting to keep in my head for just a little while longer the image of them, a few yards away but in some different place, on the stage.
***
I didn't take any pictures, but here are good photos from another night.
***
*A Lucymin is a true advantage Lucy fan (it's a play on words—Lucy plus 'shimin', citizen). If you own all of their regularly available music, or have been to more of their shows than you can remember right away, or if you just really, really like their music, I think you can call yourself a Lucymin.
That's the conclusion I reach when listening to this lovely album by Murmur, the unit of a girl named Mai Tsuyutani. Mai grew up listening to bands like advantage Lucy, and her sound owes a lot to those great predecessors—the jangly, 60's influenced guitar sounds, the energetic rhythms—but she creates something different, helped by her feathery-light, spring-clear vocals.
Continuing to create rousing new music inspired by old, jazzy Japanese music is the awesome Asakusa Jinta. The sextet didn't release an album last year, but instead put together a series of limited release single CDs that highlighted their overflowing energy and restless variety. The best of the lot is the intense “Tokyo-Sabaku De Jidanda”, a four-and-a-half minute rock explosion of hyperactive drums, demon-possessed horns and guitars, and a heavy, martial bass line. This is one of Japan's best bands now.
I never really got Hoover's Ooover, until I listened to this mini-album, and even more specifically, the third track, “An Overlap Between Literature and Real Life” (as one might translate the Japanese title). I was converted. I proceeded to abuse my iPod listening to the quartet. It's a straightforward rockabilly tune with dexterous guitars and drums, but what really knocked me out were the words, sung lightly and conquettishly by vocalist Masami Iwasawa. It's about the escapades of a girl mixed up about love who wakes up “in a room like I've never seen before”, and feels she's degenerating, thinking of herself as useless like “stockings that don't match”. She's a flirt too: one part of the song goes, “Every year, the same lover—is it ok if it's not?/Loving only one person at a time—not necessarily so”—the qualifications purred. Forget all those boring songs about love and hope—this tune sounds much more real!
Who is this innovator, who writes beautiful tunes that sample existing genres but sound new? Lantern Parade's previous album, which was also released by Keiichi Sokabe's indie label Rose Records, was like hip hop with a Japanese art school flavor. In Togisumasou (which means 'sharpen your senses'), Tamihiro Shimizu, who is Lantern Parade, abandons rap for the most part, and instead chants repeated lines over samples of R&B and techno. That this sounds great reveals the peculiar talent of this unit.
This Hiroshima-dialect-speaking, lip-sync-dancing trio took over Japan last year, becoming a household name and filling up the airwaves. It wasn't all hype, as Game proves. Yasutaka Nakata of Capsule certainly helped them a lot, producing them and writing all their music and lyrics. But Perfume breathed life into Nakata's first-rate material. These three are talented, maybe not necessarily foremost as musicians, but certainly as performers, with skills, charm and magnetism.
Is it a coincidence the way that Capsule has been changing as Yasutaka Nakata spends ever more time working with Perfume, who become ever more popular? Capsule seems to have become the project where he makes the music he wants, without worrying (as much) about commercial success. And the music style of his choice is Daft Punk-like techno, so different from the Shibuya-kei pop the duo started out playing.
Capsule's previous album, Flash Back, was where the two first immersed themselves into techno, and I didn't get it—it seemed dry and artificial—but this follow-up works. Overall it's more melodic than Flash Back, and the luscious tune “Pleasure ground” compares with some of their best past material. (I think Nakata would make 99.9% of Capsule fans happier if he uses vocalist Toshiko Koshijima more in songs...) But maybe this just shows I'm finally getting accustomed to Capsule's techno transformation, and another stab at Flash Back would be rewarding.
Let me add that I always appreciate Capsule's high sense of style: this CD is beautifully designed, with bright, day-glow colors on black, and Nakata and Koshijima in their space alien sunglasses.
My neo-acoustic fan friends tell me that while this album is good, Risette's past works were even better. Maybe that is so, but I have little way to find out—their previous albums are out of print, and the used market prices are exorbitant: one of their CDs was on offer for $250!
In any case, I'm happy with this in-print, ordinarily-priced album, my first exposure to the Risette sound: over ringing double guitars, the female vocals of Yu Tokiwa, who has one of the most distinct high voices I've heard—she sings like she's reacting with pleasant surprise to the voice that just came out of her throat. It's an unusual, but effective combination of sounds.
To mark their tenth anniversary as a band, Spangle call Lilli line released not one, but two albums, and they're very different in character. The one I like more is the first, Isolation, which marks a departure from their former meandering post-rock: the sound now is almost classical, with a grand piano as a constant accompaniment to Kana Otsubo's soft vocals. The feeling of musical adventure is exhilarating.
I haven't listened as much to Purple, which sounded on the first few listens as more like old SCLL, though commenter Kozu said he likes this one better and that it ranks as one of their best. I ought to revisit it.
#2. advantage Lucy Shiroi Asa EP and Sept papillons ont pris leur envol (Japanese title: Tobitatta Nanatou no Choutachi English translation: Seven Butterflies Ascended)
Every time advantage Lucy releases something new, all my time gets spent listening to the duo, in a happy mania. In 2008 I had a couple of such opportunities—a three-song EP and a collection of rare tracks came out.
Sept papillons, the rarities album, gives a home to the guitar pop group's scattered gems—songs in compilations, TV commercials, and out-of-print singles, like “Winny Sunny Friday”, “Weekend Wonder” and “Photograph”. Some Lucy fanatics may quibble that they already own most of the songs, but as their peer I'd counter that it's a good thing to have all these songs together in one place, where new people may discover them, and besides some of the re-mixes are masterly, especially that for “Photograph”.
Shiroi Asa shows us that Lucy are still superior artisans of singles (and the disk has a great white lyrics sheet whose letters were punched out, so if you hold it up to a light the letters shine—unfortunately, it was a limited edition CD and is already sold out). The mellowly-sung but emotional title track, in particular has been growing on me—one of those sublime Lucy lyrics that talks about the future while looking back with feeling at the past.
I love the concept of Field Recordings: a group of friends go up to the hills in Nagano, to record an album in the great outdoors and create something different from a regular studio-crafted record. But lovely idea or not, this wouldn't be my favorite album of the year if it didn't work. It does.
Field Recordings is simple and spare, yet at the same time, so inventive—the way the group combines acoustic guitar, piano, electric organ, fiddle, banjo, a toy box full of little percussion pieces, and the sounds of nature, birds, insects, a flowing river. A pop album, the group also tries out styles like country and folk. The melodies are gorgeous, and sung in relaxed happiness by Michiko Aoki, who is Quinka. “Rosemary”, in which she sings accompanied by an organ and unplugged guitar is one of the prettiest songs I listened to last year.
At the start of 2008 when Field Recordings came out I was entranced, but then it slipped mostly out of my mind for months, until it became time to think about my favorites of the year, and then when I listened to it again, suddenly I was enamored.
For the past few years Japan has been going through a comedy boom that has given birth to a slew of comedians as TV personalities, some of them deservedly becoming famous, others not so much so. What the Japanese call 'owarai'—comic entertainment—is pretty different, though, from its Western counterpart. You don't see a lot of one-person standup comedy, and politics usually isn't a major theme. Instead, the dominant owarai style is two-person acts called manzai. These duos deal with myriad subjects in their acts, but the most common seems to be funny or twisted takes on everyday things. One guy acts as the fool, the boke, saying outrageous things, while the partner, the tsukkomi, tries to bring the discussion back down to earth, by correcting what the boke says, expressing disbelief, etc. (a lot of head-slapping is typically involved).
For example, in this video below, there's only one comedian—Jinnai Tomonori, whose biggest claim to fame is he married the ex-Miss Japan celebrity Fujiwara Norika—but it could be said that the zombies play the role of boke, while Jinnai is the tsukkomi:
Sometimes, Japanese comedy can be truly off the wall. Razzy Queen, would certainly be one example.
I saw the transvestite comic trio Razzy Queen, pictured at the top, at the Shinjuku Loft as part of an event called Hardcore Chocolate that mixed rock shows and comedy routines. It's not easy to describe Razzy Queen's act, but here's an attempt: the big, black-faced Razzy Queen, apparently called 'Cherry', takes the stage. Queen's 'Bohemian Rhapsody' comes on. At the moment that Freddie Mercury sings 'mama~', Cherry whips out a package of cheap Mama spaghetti. He takes out the dry noodles, and takes off his frilly green skirt. He sticks the spaghetti between his butt and bikini. Then, at key song moments, Cherry jumps up, and with the force of his butt muscles, breaks the bunch of noodles into two.
In another part of Razzy Queen's act, Cherry strings a long rubber band through his nose holes, and gets a volunteer in the audience to pull and then, after a dramatic count-down, release the cord.
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I was expecting Hardcore Chocolate to be a punk event, so was surprised to find that the audience was for the most part conservatively dressed, and there were lots of girls too. Owarai seems to be popular with Japanese women.
Probably the most 'normal' act of the night was a hard rock group amusingly named Who the Bitch, comprising two girls on guitar and bass, and a guy drummer. They were a fun, tight band.
The final act was my beloved Asakusa Jinta, whose retro Japanese/punk/horns&explosive ska bass performance was all-out as always. The crowd wasn't as big as usual, though, maybe because Shinjuku isn't their home turf, and the advanced tickets at Y3,000 was a little pricier than usual. (Vocalist/bassist Osho semi-joked that Asakusa, on the east end of Tokyo, is pretty different from Shinjuku, on the west side, that average incomes are lower in his part of town.) Although I don't dive into mosh pits much these days, I found myself missing all the action, like it wasn't a true Asakusa Jinta gig unless the youth all get overexcited at the end and hop and bump into each other. But then, lo and behold, during the final songs a few kids started slam-dancing, restoring normalcy. It's a strange thing that can be annoying when it happens, but you sorta miss it when it doesn't...
FYI, here's a nice, brief New York Times profile piece on the Koenji music scene. All those tiny yakitori joints and pubs do indeed look worth exploring...
Many years ago I considered living in Koenji but ended up in Sangenjyaya instead, and have stayed close to Shibuya ever since. I sometimes wonder how different my Tokyo experience would have been if I lived in Koenji or some different area. And would it have affected my musical tastes?
Koenji, for example, seems to be a good place for progressive, alternative and experimental music. Punk reigns supreme in Shinjuku. As the label 'Shibuya-kei' indicates, pop and electronica are the thing in Shibuya, as well as guitar pop and neo-acoustic. How much does your environment determine what sort of music you like? But I do think the sound of guitar pop bands like advantage Lucy and Swinging Popsicle would have been irresistible to me no matter where I lived in this city.
As I was pondering this I ran into a passage in the Natsume Soseki novel The Gate where the main character is thinking about the walks he takes in the city on his Sundays off, but he still never feels he's figured out Tokyo: “When he comes to the conclusion that, even though he lives in Tokyo, he's never really seen 'Tokyo', he always feels a strange sadness.” I know the feeling. I've made my way through many neighborhoods of this city (a lot of them as part of my gig-going trips...), but because Tokyo's so big, and ever-changing, it's hard to feel like you ever really know the place.
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Thanks for reading, and for your support in 2008. I hope you have a happy 2009.
Sometimes a song is so good you don't even need to know what the words mean. I love Elis Regina, though I only know a handful of Portugese words. And I'm a fan of Cantonese and Korean pop, with little clue what the tunes are about. But I still sometimes wonder whether others are as carefree about their lack of linguistic knowledge when it comes to Japanese songs—could a person who doesn't know Japanese enjoy J-pop? Happily, a recent comment someone left on Japan Live confirmed that, yes, a person indeed could.
Commenter rifat1984 wrote: "can you please translate [advantage Lucy's] song called SPLASH...i really love that song but i don`t know the meaning of it".
This also delighted me because I'd been thinking about writing about the song in question, advantage Lucy's "splash". The eighth song in Echo Park, the guitar pop duo's most recent album, 'splash' is a beautiful musical work. But what makes it one of my favorites are the words, and I've been wanting to let people know about them.
"Splash" takes place by an ocean, where the waves and the hot sand remind the singer of a lost friend. She wants to share with him a new song she just created ('I want to send to you a melody that was just born'), but he's 'so far'. It's a touching song in itself. But there's more to it. Like other songs in Echo Park, there's the spirit of a person hovering in the background, that infuses the music and lyrics with emotion.
That person is Takayuki Fukumura, the former advantage Lucy guitarist, who passed away while Echo Park was being made (and for whom musical friends each year throw a show that celebrates his life, as I wrote about recently). I've never directly asked them this, but I think that the person the singer looks for, somewhere in the waves, is Fukumura. The spareness of the repeated guitar passages helps highlight Aiko's soft but feeling-filled vocals.
At the same time I've shared the band's sadness about Fukumura, I've also been deeply moved by all the art that they created in memory of this friend of theirs. I feel lucky I was able to witness the band at work, in that emotional but fruitful year and a half between Fukumura's death and the release of Echo Park. "Splash" is one of their gems during the period.
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I can't find "splash" on the net, but here's a YouTube video of another classic from Echo Park, "To-i Hi (A Distant Day)":
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And here are the lyrics, with my approximate translation:
Kazashita te wo afurete, taiyou ga koboreochita (Overflowing from my hands, the sunlight spills)
splash! Kimi to kuchizusanda melody ga mimi wo kusugutta (splash, I hear a melody we used to sing together to ourselves)
Yosetewakaesu nami no dokokani, kimi no sugata wo sagashite, utau (I sing, looking for you somewhere in the waves that advance and retreat)
Oshiyoseru hibi, natsukashii iro ni, nagisa wa nijimuyo (The past comes back to me and colors the sea)
Hadashide yaketa suna wo kette hashiru dokomademo (I run on and on barefooted, over the burning sand)
splash! Kimi ni umaretateno melody wo todoketai, so far... (splash, I want to send you a melody that was just born, [but you're] so far..)
Yosetewakaesu nami no dokokani, kimi no sugata wo sagashite, utau (I sing, looking for you somewhere in the waves that advance and retreat)
Oshiyoseru hibi, natsukashii iro wa Kaze ni nami ni toke, subete wo tsutsumuyo (The past and its colors melt into the wind and waves, and envelop all)
Kazashita te wo afurete, taiyou ga koboreochita (Overflowing from my hands, the sunlight spills)
Hadashide yaketa suna wo kette hashiru dokomademo (I run on and on barefooted, over the burning sand)
splash! Todoke tooku toki wo koete nami no mukou e, sorano kanate e hikarini sakie, kimi no moto e to, so far... (splash, arrive, where you are, on the other side of the waves, at the end of the sky, where light heads, so far...)
Amagasaki isn't the first destination you'd think of when planning a trip to Japan. Right next to Osaka to the west, it's an industrial town lined with factories and not much else to see. But last weekend, I knew I had to be there. A legend was coming to Amagasaki.
The legend's name is Seijin Noborikawa. Widely regarded as one of the greatest living Okinawan musicians, he is a master of the three-stringed sanshin. On a whim, I bought one of his CDs, and was blown away by his sound: the exotic five-note scales, strummed with fiery precision by Noborikawa, gave me visions of a mystical island of Okinawa of ocean, jungle and dark nights.
But Noborikawa, for various reasons having to do with the history of Okinawa and Japan, doesn't like mainland Japan and so hardly ever comes over here to perform. He's 78-years old too—I wanted to witness his art while I still could. So I boarded the shinkansen to Osaka, got on another train that would take me to Amagasaki, and headed to the municipal culture center.
Outside of the 'Archaic Hall Oct', so named because it's octagonally shaped, a long line of people of all ages had formed, from babies to the elderly, and many had the shorter, wide physique of Okinawans. It was standing room-only by the time I entered the auditorium, but I didn't mind because I'm used to listening to music standing up. I was surprised, though, about how much interest there was in Okinawan music.
The four-hour event mainly featured performances by students of 'Noborikawa-style' sanshin playing. In the first set, for example, about fifty sitting sanshin players, with Noborikawa at the center, plucked Okinawan songs in unison.
Always pleasing the crowd were several tiny kids that played the sanshin, sang, and danced, including two brothers aged one and two who performed the eisaa drum dance.
Tetsu Irei, the Amagasaki-based organizer of the event, also did a sanshin duet with his little grandson, who was a prodigy on the three-stringed instrument. When the two dashed through a lightning-speed, electrifying passage, in any place but Japan the crowd would have been up on its feet in ovation, but here everyone waited politely until the end to applaud. The crowd also laughed when Irei scolded his grandchild for yawning on stage between parts.
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Noborikawa, the legend, was a tiny man, who cracked jokes (he explained he played sitting down because 'as you get older, little by little you get so you can't get it up') and talked at length in incomprehensible Okinawan dialect. But in spite of his small physical stature, he dominated the stage with the gravity of an old master. Watching Noborikawa play the sanshin without strain, as if it was a natural thing for his body to do, I felt the weight of a long life devoted to the instrument. At one point his disciple Irei said Noborikawa had stopped drinking because he got cancer (he'd been smoking and drinking since he was a little kid in Okinawa), and his doctor told him he'd die if he didn't quit. Hearing that made me glad once again I made it to Amagasaki.
At the end of the event Noborikawa presented awards to students, but warned that he might not be able to read all of the citations because he didn't go to school. And, indeed, he stumbled over some of the kanji. I went out and bought a biography of his, and found out that it's not that there was no school for him to attend, but that there was a school but he skipped classes most of the time so he could practice the sanshin to impress his older friends. Sometimes he went inside Okinawan tombs to practice without being bothered (and no doubt giving a fright to any passersby who heard the sanshin strains from inside the tomb...). He was still a kid during the Battle of Okinawa in WWII, and climbing on top of a tree he was impressed by the sight of the gleaming B-29 bombers flying in for their muderous missions.
When the war ended, the people of the devastated island tried to recreate older, better days, and also express their sorrow, by singing and playing the sanshin. They had to make the instruments themselves out of tin cans and sticks. Later, the islanders found out that cut-up parachutes stolen from the GI's made for sanshin coverings that were almost as good as the traditional snake skin. This is the world in which Noborikawa developed his art. It's like the blues of Okinawa.
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One final thing: at the event, some of the young performers did a skit recreating the mo-ashibi, the late-night youth get-togethers, up in the hills, that used to be a common thing on the island. They acted the parts of guys and girls sitting together, singing and strumming the sanshin over food and liquor.
The Noborikawa biography I read, however, suggested that these parties weren't quite as innocent as portrayed in this skit. One of the things about these gatherings was that when a guy and a girl took a liking to each other, the two would slip away from the party into the darkness, for a more intimate encounter. Marriages were arranged by parents in those days; at times, as a result of what happened at these parties, when the new wife met her husband she was already carrying a child. That sort of thing scandalized the upright islanders, and good kids weren't supposed to attend mo-ashibi. But Noborikawa couldn't resist the sound of laughter, youthful conversation, song and sanshin notes wafting down from the hills, and so he snuck out of his home to watch. And a sanshin player was born.
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Here's a YouTube clip of Noborikawa playing a six-stringed sanshin (rokushin?):
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I found this guy in front of a sushi restaurant in Amagasaki: a Hanshin Tigers-loving sushi chef!
Every year, on November 26, advantage Lucy, Vasallo Crab 75 and other bands gather together for a musical event called Munekyun Arpeggio, which celebrates the life of Takayuki Fukumura, guitarist and founding member of Lucy and VC75, who passed away on that date in 2003. 'Munekyun' was a favorite word of Fukumura's—it's that feeling you get when a cute or lovely thing bulls-eyes your heart. And the pop arpeggios that he wrote still make people feel munekyun. This year at the Que for the event were Karenin, Swinging Popsicle, and, of course, advantage Lucy and VC75.
All throughout the event there were subtle reminders of Fukumura's life. Advantage Lucy guitarist Yoshiharu Ishizaka played a cheap purple guitar and red amp that Fukumura once used. He played all of Fukumura's arpeggio parts. You could see vocalist Aiko become a little tearful while singing their newest song, “Shiroi Asa”, which she dedicated to him that night, and which contains the line: “Itsumo omotteta yorimo, kimi wa zutto soba ni itanda (much more than I always thought, you were always close by)”. Vasallo Crab 75 performed one of their best songs with a signature arpeggio part of his, “Vicious Circle”, from the album “Breathe”, the last VC75 album that Fukumura took part in. At the end of the show all the musicians got together to play a couple of his songs that they dug up as demo tapes left behind in his house. They joked that, by performing his unreleased songs like this they are making him into some sort of legendary figure, like John Lennon, even though he was a normal, funny guy, who, whenever he ordered ramen would transform the noodle soup into what looked like a failed chemistry experiment, dumping in vinegar, pepper, red ginger and so on until the soup's color was unrecognizable, and that's the way he liked it.
It was one of those rare, miraculous events where every act was excellent: the mellow pop/folk of Karenin (its singer Mike Matuszak also is a member of Tokyo indie pop group Lost in Found); the super-smooth R&B and rock of Swinging Popsicle; the sublime guitar pop of advantage Lucy; and the crowd-moving funk/pop of Vasallo Crab 75. A few times the musicians said they thought Fukumura was there listening to the performance, and I got the feeling that wasn't just a figure of speech but that they meant it.
After seeing Japanese-German indie pop band Miniskirt for the first time in years last night, I was exploring the Web and unearthed this brilliant video of theirs. I love the part from 0:29 to 0:34 where band leader Edgar is singing at a sloping street of old homes somewhere, and a considerate Japanese lady in the background, seeing that a foreigner is being filmed, immediately moves out of the way to give the camera an undisturbed view. The cut at 0:24 to a cheering audience following footage of one of their shows is also inspired.
Miniskirt's Edgar, universally and affectionately described as a henna gaijin—a weird foreigner—is a film buff. He bought a projector so he could watch his one-movie-a-night on a big screen at home. He also bought a $5,000 Sony video camera to help make videos like 'Read Each Other's Minds', above. When I saw him at the show in Ikebukuro, he was setting up that camera on a tripod to film his show. Seeing me, an old acquaintance, he assigned me to be his band's video cinematographer, a few minutes before the gig was to start. I hadn't touched a video camera for decades, but I think I did OK—the only problem being that I didn't know that you could move the camera up and down in addition to sideways on the tripod, severely curtailing my ability to zoom in on the performers, and also limiting the camera moves to a monotonous left-to-right, and then right-to-left again. The Last Waltz, it was not. But maybe it was fine as a minimalist, indie effort...?
The venue of the event was a new cafe called Ringoya in Ikebukuro, the name sounding like Japanese for 'apple house', but rendered in the kanji as 'the hut of bells'. It was a comfortable cafe, all the guests asked to take off their shoes at the entrance like at a regular Japanese home, and good curry was apparently served, though I didn't try it myself. Its only problem, which it shares with similar venues, is it becomes cramped right away when people start coming in because of all the tables and chairs, and it was packed last night.
Miniskirt's Edgar had come up from Kyoto, where he's now a serious member of the Japanese academia, the other part of his life when he's not busy composing great indie music. Also performing were the duo Loyal We, Lost In Found, 4 Bonjour's Parties, and, from Australia, the Motifs (the wind and vibraphone section of 4BJ pictured below).
I was supposed to see Mix Market and a promising young band from Aichi prefecture called SpecialThanks tonight in Yokohama, but I got completely lost on the way to the club near Chinatown and ended up missing it. My Tokyo live house knowledge doesn't extend to Yokohama, and I also have a pathetically underdeveloped sense of direction (for example, after having been there several times, I still managed to get lost on the way to the Basement Bar in Shimokitazawa, with a friend in tow...). The venue, F.A.D., I'd been to a few times before, but my mistake was to take the Tokyu line rather than the more familiar JR; I became disoriented emerging from a strange train station, and the vague, scribbled map I brought along didn't help matters. Soon, I was wandering deep in the belly of the Yokohama Chinatown, realizing for the first how big it was. Making things worse, on this first day of a three-day weekend, a significant chunk of eastern Japanese households appeared to have decided to get Chinese food in Yokohama, and the crowds slowed the search. After doing a few laps of the town and taking in the sights, I concluded that the live house probably won't be found anytime soon, and called it an evening.
It was sad because on the way over to Yokohama I listened to Mix Market's 'Shiawase No Elephant', was reminded what a great song that was, and was hoping it would be performed. SpecialThanks also seemed interesting and I didn't know how often they made it up to Tokyo.
Let this be a lesson for visitors planning to catch a gig in Tokyo (or Yokohama)...The clubs are often in obscure buildings in alleys in the middle of nowhere, and the city is laid out in a chaotic fashion as it is—apparently it was designed to get invading armies lost, something that I have no doubt is historically accurate. You need a good map for the smaller live houses. Study up on Tokyo Gig Guide.
Anyway, does anyone know how to get from the Motomachi/Chinatown station to F.A.D.? Should I have even been walking through Chinatown in the first place??
Very sadly, I missed advantage Lucy's 'one man' album-release show at the Que on the 24th, but the next night's gig at the O-Nest with the the BMX Bandits' Duglas Stewart, who was visiting from Glasgow, almost made up for it (though, if the world were perfect, I would have preferred to go to both...).
Great bands like advantage Lucy talk to you on stage, through their music. It's not all notes and beats. And we go to shows because we want to have a musical conversation.
In advantage Lucy's case the talk was a relaxed, quiet one, like you have after a big night. It was a short set starting with the somewhat sad song “Shumatsu (weekend)”, about spending weekdays alone and waiting for a weekend meeting (and now that Saturday had arrived, indeed, we got to meet advantage Lucy).
Apple-chomping, professorial-jacket-wearing Duglas' musical conversation might have been about making music into something to be shared rather than exclusive, with an international group of friends. So he brought with him from Seoul Yeongene, the singer and keyboardist of an indie band called Linus' Blanket, and joining him from Tokyo was Taisuke Takata, vocalist and guitarist of Plectrum, two long-distance friends and brilliant musicians.
I was touched by their rendition of 'Sing', the tune made famous by the Carpenters and written by Joe Raposo (who is no longer with us but whose music will live on for a long time, Duglas said), and which I believe I was forced to sing in a chorus in elementary school, but looking at the lyrics now I have to marvel at how simple and beautiful and inclusive the words are. Especially the line, “Don't worry that it's not good enough for anyone else to hear/ just sing, sing a song” should be a rallying call for independent bands everywhere. (Though, having said that, I do think that it usually takes lots of experience and dedication before a band becomes able to 'talk' to the audience, as discussed above.)
The O-Nest was packed and the crowd cheered when popular BMX Bandits were played, sung with plenty of gesticulation by Duglas. It made me giggle a bit, though, that one of the lines in a much-applauded song was something like,'I don't care about fashion, all I want is passion', sung of all places in Shibuya, the nerve center of the Shibuya-Harajuku-Daikanyama Intensive Youth Fashion Production Zone.
At least part of the crowd probably had come specifically to see Yeongene, who's become an even more charming stage performer since I first met her in 2004 in Seoul, this musical prodigy who apparently can play back songs on her piano after just one listen. Duglas obviously adores her—he said he and his bandmate both wanted to write a song for her to sing, after she visited them in Scotland, and so they ended up writing a song together, which Yeongene sang at the O-Nest, a lovely tune. Tall, nonstop-gesturing Duglas and petite, shyly stage acting Yeongene made a fun-to-watch duo.
Soutaiseiriron, which means 'Theory of Relativity', is, in theory, a relatively promising band. But there's also something very weird about these guys.
Three members of the splendid Tokyo band 
I'm wondering why I wasn't that impressed with 
For the past few years Japan has been going through a comedy boom that has given birth to a slew of comedians as TV personalities, some of them deservedly becoming famous, others not so much so. What the Japanese call '
Very sadly, I missed 