The beat goes on...

Adam Hussain's Truth and Slander - Goldie Lookin Chain
Adore - Smashing Pumpkins
After All (CDS) - The Frank and Walters
After The Goldrush - Neil Young
Afterglow - Dot Allison

Suitable Friday listening? You tell me. Adore is far too long though, I know that much. It followed me around for most of the morning until Billy Corgan's whine started to feel like tinnitus. It's surely no coincidence that a large number of the albums that are consistently considered to be 'classics' are relatively short - Revolver, Rubber Soul, Pet Sounds, Definitely Maybe, Dark Side of the Moon - then again, given that classic status is often conferred by middle-aged white men who think that Cream were a good idea, perhaps I shouldn't pay too much attention to that. Anyway, the point is that when bands were restricted by the forty-odd minutes that two sides of vinyl offered them they got up, made their point, and buggered off. Only when they felt they really had something to say that just couldn't be done in that short space of time did they stray into the territory of the double album.

CDs offer space for 80 minutes of music and too many bands labour under the grossly mistaken idea that they have something so profound, so earth-shattering to communicate to their fellow humans, that they need to utilise every available second to do this. Adore is simply one of many albums that overstays its welcome like a depressed drunk at the end of a party - add to that list Mother Love Bone's eponymous 'opus' (death does wonderful things for a band's reputation), R.E.M's recent releases (especially when compared with the nun's chuff tightness of the albums they put out in their early days), and pretty much most of Pink Floyd's post-Syd output, among many others. The Smashing Pumpkins are a one-band example of diminishing returns through increasing length - Gish was shortish and full of great tunes; admittedly, Siamese Dream is far from being a twenty minute hardcore punk thrash, but at that point they had enough to say and more than enough talent to justify the length of the album - unfortunately the albums got longer and the songs got shiter, reaching the nadir with the sprawling mess of punnery and ego that is Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. So, simple advice - unless you've got fourteen or fifteen songs that you really have to get out your system in one go (and have got enough to keep you going through subsequent albums), keep it short unless you want to be one of those bores that keeps droning on when people clearly aren't listening anymore... Oh.

For the umpteenth post people are probably wondering what any of this has to do with 'Tokyo Music'. That's the name of the blog, isn't it? Why aren't you writing about Japanese bands? Why aren't you telling me about the group of four cross-dressing salarymen from Hokkaido called Fish Paste Monkey Stew is Coming Over the Mountain (Soon), who sound like a cross between Tom Waits and Westlife? Firstly, as far as I know, FPMSICOTM(S) haven't been invented yet; and secondly, this is Tokyo Music - this is the music I listen to in Tokyo. Hah. Got you there, haven't I?

The iPod Challenge

Here's the story so far:

• Standing in the shower thinking - wouldn't it be a great idea if I tried to listen to all the songs on my iPod?
• Hang on, wouldn't it be an even better idea if I write about it on the blog? Voice in the back of my mind - but what the fuck has that got to do with Japanese indie music? Bitchslap voice and ignore the feeling that maybe I'm just doing this to fill space on the blog and that I'll probably give up as soon as I get to some of the stuff that I downloaded when drunk - the entire Bob Dylan discography, including the period where his talent upped and left - what was I thinking.
• Bitchslap voice some more until my head hurts. Voice has gone though.
• Try and work out what the best way to do this is. If I do by artist I'm going to have to listen to nothing but Belle and Sebastian for three days straight. Don't get me wrong, I love them, but that's not going to work. It also means that I'll have to huge chunks of certain artists that my other half put on there, but I want us to stay together so that isn't going to work either.
• Go to work and forget about this for a while.
• Have a few beers and suddenly this brainwave comes back to me. Ponder just setting iPod to randomly play all songs but, given some of the stuff that's on there, decide that this might be too much like listening to a radio station where the playlists are made up by a deaf octopus.
• Write the above comment and realise people will probably think that I'm a complete wanker (if they don't already) who is trying to show off just how catholic and cool his music taste is - indie-boys-with-guitars-obsessive? Me? Look, Astrud Gilberto and Throbbing Gristle - I'm eclectic.
• Decide that since only a couple of lonely crofters and other assorted friends and family read this that it really doesn't make that much difference.
• Realise best way to do it is probably by album.
• Press play and promptly bugger off to another room.
• Not true, I'm still here. Honest.
• Realise that this isn't in real time so my half arsed attempt at humour above is as pointless as this whole post.

So there you have it. The above isn't exactly chronologically correct - my thought processes are rarely that logical and coherent - but it's not far from the truth. I've been on the go off and on for a few days and I've got through all the number titles, so I'm now on 'A'. It's all been good stuff so far - I've listened to albums that I put on ages ago and forgot about, I've listened to some stuff that I thought would be shite but has actually turned out to be good, and there's been nothing utterly torturous that has had me trying to rip the headphones off. The only problem has been the slight inappropriateness of certain artists at certain times - Astrud Gilberto's summertime lounge pop on a freezing cold and wet November day; Mark Eitzel's gloomily beautiful acoustic songs on Saturday night after work, when I was on my way out to a party - I'm sure there'll be more incongruities, but that's part of the attraction.

No doubt this has all been done before but that never stopped Oasis becoming the world's biggest band, did it?

Japanese mp3s

For anyone who reads the reviews here, Keikaku, or anywhere else on tinternet, but has problems finding the records written about have a look at the JapanFiles website. They've got a fair pile of mp3s available for you to get your grubby little hands on meaning you get some quality Japanese music without even shifting your carcass out of the seat you probably spend too much time sitting in already (you know it's true). This is what's going to happen to us all:















Then this:

Another devastatingly addictive website

Look at the time of this post and you'll see what I mean. Some of the interpretations are obviously written by people who have an unfortunately (and unjustifiably) high opinion of themselves and their intellect, but there's a fair amount of interesting stuff. I haven't dared look at the Dylan section though.

October Top 10

New record - it's less than a week since the end of October and I'm doing this. Must be something to do with the weather today - I really shocked my boss by getting my monthly report in on time too. So, here it is. The buying binge helped and although I was tempted to just put in ten tracks by Nisennenmondai I resisted and have tried to put in a wider selection.

1) GET ON THE BUS!! - pygmy with bitter ends
2) ALOHA! - Limited Express (has gone?)
3) 黒く塗れ - nhhmbase
4) 不明のトラック 4 - にせんねんもんだい (Nisenenmondai)
5) She Is Nervous - BUGY CRAXONE
6) Dark Star Blues (live) - Acid Mothers Temple
7) I was robot - SHIFT
8) 不明のトラック 1 - にせんねんもんだい (Nisenenmondai)
9) Sweet music on the Beach - Limited Express (has gone?)
10) ニートソース - pygmy with bitter ends

Disclaimer: I don't like using the same bands more than once but those songs by those three groups really stood out above most of the other stuff I heard this month. And anyway, it's my blog, I'll decide.

Info about Japanese bands on MySpace

The blog's mix of stuff about life in Tokyo/Japan and the bands that make it more bearable for all of us. Check it out.

Bitter acoustic &Small songs vol.1, pygmy with bitter ends, ototoi records

One of the best things about shopping for records in Japan is browsing through the bands' names. Go over to the imported section in a Japanese record shop and you'll find a plethora of bands called The ____s – The Strokes, The Datsuns, The Libertines, The Sex Pistols, The White Stripes, The Ugly Talentless Cunts (OK, I made that last one up but surely that's the name Razorlight should be going under). Back in the Japanese indie section you're blessed with Limited Express (has gone?), nhhmbase, Thee Michelle Gun Elephant and the chef cooks me to name just a few. Not only are the names fantastic, but you can spend ages wondering what kind of music the band play and what the hell they were trying to say when they named themselves. pygmy with bitter ends. What does it mean and where did it come from? Are they a group of midgets with bad hair? What kind of music do they make? You can pretty much bet your life savings that any band called The _____s will be a group of four pasty white boys with guitars and skinny ties playing shabby New Wave-lite. pygmy with bitter ends isn't such a give away. Perhaps they take free-jazz and gabba techno, mash them up together and front the ensuing discord with a loungey singer who models himself on Leonard Cohen but ends up sounding like a drunken salaryman karaoke-ing Sinatra to death.

Fortunately (unfortunately? you decide) pygmy with bitter ends are nothing so extreme. Bitter acoustic & Small songs vol.1 is the band's second full album and although it takes in a variety of styles and genres it's basically a collection of shiny pop songs. Cartoon-theme-in-waiting GET ON THE BUS!! throws us straight into the band's technicolour pop world and manages to sound like all the following artists at at least one point; early James, The Chemical Brothers, Isaac Hayes (Shaft soundtrack), Pizzicato Five, Talking Heads, and Cornelius. It's quite an accomplishment for a song that's barely three and a half minutes long. 窓際ススクールガール (Modogiwa Sukuurugaaru) is a slice of indie guitar pop that wouldn't seem out of place on a Wannadies album. This feeling of being back in the mid-90s continues on the next track ニートソース (Niitosousu), which sounds a little like an Oasis B-side back when they were good. The comparison ends there though as the lyrics tackle the social problem of the increasing number of NEETs (people not in employment, education or training) rather than the joys of the white line. マザー (Mazaa) takes us even further back in time, its simple acoustic guitar melody and “na-na-na-na” coda a throwback to The Beatles.

After a strong start things start to go awry in the middle of the album. モモンガのバラード (Momonga no Baraado) is as twee as the title suggests and is the kind of syrupy ballad you'd expect from a bunch of J-Poppers like Chemistry. デンデン ドンドン (Denden Dondon) opens with strident guitars that promise to get things back on track and ends with a great chorus where vocalist Noribooooone pleads for “Just one cup of life”. No, I haven't got the faintest idea what he's banging on about either but it sounds great. Unfortunately this return to form is brief as the minute long ママのギター (Mama no Gitaa) is little more than filler, and the next song 縁側の父 (Engawa no Chichi) drifts back into the schmalz of モモンガのバラード.

The inclusion of a ten-year-old demo track, 冬の落し物 (Fuyu no Otoshimono) seems to be a pointless endeavour. Perhaps the band thought it would demonstrate how far they've come in that time, but it doesn't and it brings very little to the record. Album closer 私は街灯 (Watashi wa Gaitou) restores some of the earlier lustre as the band finally pull out a slow song that doesn't sound like by-the-numbers J-Pop. It's a slow-burner that starts out with just lead vocals and a quietly strummed guitar before blooming into a lush, orchestral ballad that occasionally sounds reminiscent of Automatic For The People-era R.E.M.

Bitter acoustic & Small songs vol.1 starts well but there's too much filler - something you shouldn't be able to say about an album that's only thirty five minutes long. When they do click, pygmy with bitter ends make some fantastic pop songs and I'm sure they've got a truly great album in them. Perhaps vol.1 was just a warm-up. Either way, I'll be keeping an eye out for the next volume and listening to the good half of this album.

Cornelius at Shibuya Apple Store

I'm not a fan myself but if you are, Cornelius will be at the Apple Store in Shibuya (map) on November 13th from 8-9pm. Entrance is free and he may play some tracks from his new album. Here are some nice apples that you won't be able to buy there:

Call Mulder and Scully

When I mentioned in the last post that Caucus sounded a little like St. Johnny it was the first time I'd thought about that band in a long time. I have one of their albums back in the UK but I haven't heard it in years and I suddenly wanted to. Yesterday I was out browsing through the huge Book Off (used book, CD and DVD store) in Kichijoji and guess what I found?

The album (Speed is Dreaming) is hardly groundbreaking but it's as good as I remember it being and it only cost 250 yen (just over a quid) so I'm not complaining. Now it's time to start thinking of obscure prog-rock albums that people like Steve Davis will buy for two grand, and hope the same thing happens all over again.

Amakudari (look it up)

Sometimes it's hard trying to find decent new music. You stand at countless listening posts, attracted to the albums by a half-remembered article you think you read in a magazine a few months ago, or you're dragged in, magpie-like by the nice shiny covers. These days we have tinternet, iTunes, radio, live 365, last.fm, etc etc, and they are supposed to make our lives easier but the honest truth is that you still end up panning through the darkest rivers, occassionally glimpsing tiny slivers of gold that grab your eye but offer only the same sustenance as the skinniest MacDonalds hamburger.

MySpace can be particularly heinous in this respect. Sure, The Arctic Monkeys might have made it big there through nothing more than word of mouth and good songs, but there's a ton of shite out there. One of the most dreaded emails in my inbox is the MySpace Friend Request. Nine times out of ten it's some pouting blonde bint allegedly called Nadine who wants to be my friend. Nadine and her friends say that they will happily gyrate in front of a video camera for me for free, but to guarantee that I'm old enough they need my credit card number. Sometimes though, the planets fall into alignment, Japanese restaurants actually take my credit card, and music from a stunning new source falls into my lap easier than a hostess who's just spied a platinum Amex card. Take Caucus. They wanted to be my friend. I thought, "Shit, it's some freaky politician who is desperately trying to cling to his seat and has decided that the way to garner votes is by snazzy web-based advertising" (rather than by trying not to be a venal, self-aggrandising, power-hungry cunt). Thankfully my cynicism was misplaced and this was no Nadine or Blair. Instead I was transported back to the time when I first started gettting seriously into music and I realised that guitars could be used in ways that Brian May had never even considered (my parents were big Queen fans). Caucus themselves admit that their influences are "80s~ indie guitar pop/rock scene (especially the early creation records... FELT, Weather Propets, and Pastels are the ones to name a few) + Johnathan Richman, Millenium, Judee Sill, The Byrds, Nagisa Ni Te, Flippers Guitar, and so on.." but the verve they bring to their music makes them more than mere copyists. Bits of early Teenage Fanclub, St. Johnny, poppy Sonic Youth, Fluf and lots more fly about in there and it sounds fucking fantastic. Hell, I'm giving this lot my credit card number.

The Best is Coming, Limited Express (has gone?), Memory Lab

Formed in 1998 and imbued with the genes of the Kansai scene that produced Japanese indie luminaries such as The Boredoms and Shonen Knife, The Best is Coming! is a perfect example of the utter weirdness and fondness for noise that is such a large part of Japanese underground music. It's all here, present and correct: the screechy girl vocals, some in English, some in Japanese, all largely incomprehensible; the day-glo cover adorned with a naïve cartoon; the cacophonous three minute blasts of sound that start, stop, and skitter about like a drunk octopus on ice skates. But the question is, is it any good, or is it just another novelty that seemed like a good idea in the record shop but once home is akin to waking up next to someone who was the living definition of 'sex on legs' last night but in the harsh light of morning is as attractive as a Republican? Luckily this album stays true to the promise it showed on the listening post.

The band set out their stall right from the album opener Sacrificial Jesus Child and don't veer far from it over the next forty minutes. Given that they manage to cram at least three or four separate songs and styles into each track this doesn't mean that The Best is Coming! is boring. False starts and stops, and major changes in time signatures abound here, keeping the listener on their toes and at times driving a reviewer to drink – I lost count of the number of times I had to score out something I'd written about a certain song because said song would suddenly morph into something completely different making whatever I'd written redundant, before changing back into the song it had been before just as I'd finished writing something else. Bastards.

ALOHA! and Sweet music on the Beach are probably the most straightforward songs on the album (in the sense that there are maybe only two separate songs duking it out in the mash up). ALOHA! takes the intro from The Clash's version of I Fought The Law and welds it to a swirling guitar part, while vocalist YUKARI yelps the title over and over. Of course, after a minute or so the scenery changes and we're plunged into a good old-fashioned hardcore thrash where guitarist Jinichiro Iida takes over hollering duties. Sweet music on the Beach is a dramatic change of pace, everything slows down and the spirit of Yo La Tengo seems to possess the band. The lyrics (shared by Iida and YUKARI) are spoken rather than yelled and sound like a stream of consciousness. The feeling of Yo La Tengo-ness is confirmed when the amps are turned up and the previously sedate guitars become a wall of distortion, before dying down and retreating once more into the background.

The stand out tracks on the album though are both towards the end. Stop → Go starts off sounding like the intro to a James Brown song, visits dEUS territory, and has a brief flirtation with Black Rebel Motorcycle Club's Spread Your Love (with a raver's whistle over the top for good measure) before going back to where it started. The military march and the phrasing of the vocals of album closer 2x5=10 make it a distant cousin to PiL's Rise, at least to begin with. As the song goes on YUKARI's vocals become increasingly unhinged and the instruments soon follow suit. It's as if the exertions of the preceding 11 songs have been too much and the band is making one final, demented lunge for the finishing line. It's draining but it's the only way an album like this could end.

The album also comes with a DVD containing promotional videos for Sacrificial Jesus Child and SPY, as well as live footage from both Australia and Japan. The SPY video is much better than the song – its swirling Warholian footage of the band playing looks like a projection from the loft part section of Midnight Cowboy. The live performances are the real gems here though as they make you realise just how adept and tight this band is. They may sound like three people who haven't been introduced playing completely different songs, but watching them live reveals this to be a fine piece of legerdemain on the band's part. Nothing in this apparently lunatic music is left to chance.

The Best is Coming! is not perfect: there are times (on SPY for example) where the 'throw it all in the mixer and see what happens' approach doesn't work and it starts to grate a little, but that's to be expected. Most of the time this album and band are fascinating, and each song reveals something different of itself every time you listen to it. A review of the most recent Mars Volta album said something along the lines that a band who use so many disparate ideas and styles in the space of each song may soon find their creative well has run dry. This is perhaps a problem that Limited Express (has gone?) could face in the future given that they often sound like a condensed Mars Volta, but one whose idea of an epic song is one that clocks in at six minutes rather than sixteen. The similarities are there – the prog rock passages, the changes in time signature, the jazz tinges (especially the drumming), and most importantly, the complete lack of fear and the willingness to try and shoe-horn 101 ideas into one song. This is what makes Limited Express (has gone?) so interesting and it may ultimately turn out to be their undoing, but at least they've got the balls to try. Surely that should be applauded in a world that is becoming ever more homogeneous and averse to risk?

A sudden increase in posting?

I actually got off my arse today and went and bought some CDs, so expect some posts that actually adhere to the original reasoning behind this blog.

Some Jokes

Some good, some bad, some ugly. It's a bit like having lots of emails from friends who have too much free time on their hands all collected in one place.

Live Music Archive

Read about this in Mojo and had a look at it last night - it's a remarkable archive of live music, all free, and all available to download legally. There's a huge range of stuff here, everything I've downloaded so far has been of good to high quality sound-wise, and there's bound to be something you like. Click on the link.

James Blunt Must Die

This is a blog that I started last month but haven't really done much with yet. I want this blog to be a place where people can rant and rave about all the books, bands etc that they detest. Hopefully people will read these rants and be a) entertained, and b) able to avoid whatever has been written about. I've opened the blog up to contributions from anyone, so if you want to join in, please email me and I'll add you. Cheers.

Keiko's Homepage (click here and read it first)

This is a recommendation from Hurley who mentioned the website in a comment he posted. To expand slightly on what I said in my response I think there are a number of possibilities here:

1) She's for real.
2) The page is run by a pervert who wants pics of young white men under 35. Maybe he has a fetish for English teachers who will fuck anything, or maybe he read Charisma Man and wanted to see if these kinds of people actually exist (and we all know they do).
3) It's run by a fundamental God-botherer (doesn't matter what variety, they're all as bad as each other anyway) who believes he/she is on a divine mission to rid the world of sinners, fornicators, harlots, and lead us away from this modern day Sodom and back into the bosom of God. Of course, he (because it's most likely to be a man) has some serious sexual issues and probably partakes of the flesh of the sinners before he smites them, but this is just a further indication that the planet needs cleansing because even an upright, Godly man like himself can be tempted by these beasts.
4) It's being run as a joke to see just how many dumb men send their pictures in.
5) It's being run by the Yakuza as a way to get the personal information of people who would be very easy to shake down.

What do you think? Any of the above or something I haven't even thought of? Let me know. By the way, I realise this post has absolutely nothing to do with music but after looking at the website I felt it was something that had to be mentioned.

Any Recommendations For The Weekend?

Here we again, free from work for another two days and I'm not sure what to do with myself. I haven't looked at TokyoGigGuide.com yet but has anyone got any recommendations for shows this weekend? (Disclaimer: I am aware that the point of this blog is to for me to try and find bands and report their existence to the wider world, hopefully bringing them fame, fortune, and all the Class A's they can handle. However, this hasn't been a great week and I'm not feeling so intrepid. Any help will be gratefully received and duly noted. Thank you.)

An emotional rollercoaster

(Or how to go from hating Japan, to loving it, to loving it even more, all in the space of twenty minutes). Is this why I'm still here years after I said I would leave, because Japan keeps teasing me and playing strange games with my mind? I went to a fairly big chain izakaya for dinner and made the foolish mistake of trying to use my credit card to pay for it - flexible friend my arse. In certain places in Japan a credit card is about as welcome as a priest in a playground, and the local branch of this place is one of those places. After a good fifteen minutes of phonecalls, bowing, more phonecalls, more bowing, and numerous offers of a glass of water, it was decided that my credit card wouldn't work on their system (they're obviously using Spectrum 48k computers). Needless to say, I was not a happy bunny, and as sometimes happens at moments like that I was on the verge of an internal rant about why I hate Japan and why the sooner I get out of here the better, etc etc. I was forgetting one important fact here though - in Japan they trust people. They took a photocopy of my ID card and I went back and paid the bill tonight. No queries, no questions, no being made to feel like some kind of criminal. When we finally got out of the izakaya I remembered that I wanted to buy tickets for Mogwai's show in November. But it's 11pm. On a Tuesday night. In the 'burbs. Surely you have to wait? No, Japanese convenience stores actually live up to their name, and they must have upgraded to the Spectrum 128k, because a few minutes later I had to Mogwai tickets clasped in my sweaty paws, paid for using the very same credit card that flummoxed the other lot. Happy days.

Top 10 - September

Better late than never (as if anyone actually cares that much), here is the non-singing, non-dancing, completely feature-free Top 10 for September. It's in no particular order and it's basically the ten songs I've probably listened to the most in September (and not according to Last.Fm or they'd all be Tenacious D songs). Anyway, here you are:

1) Rod - Group_Inou
2) Like - Mosquito
3) Shoot Speed Kill Light - Primal Scream
4) Ping Pong Pang - Shift
5) Private Lesson 2 (Mix CD) - Various, mixed by ECD
6) Tributaries - Proud Simon (MySpace)
7) Sign - Keishiro Iwatani
8) It's Jesus On The Phone - The Future King of Scotland (MySpace)
9) H.I.L.L.T.O.P - Akai Giwacku
10) Half Past France - John Cale

Slacker

Not the film, but me. No posts for a few days, unable to make it to the Aloha show last night, and haven't done a Top 10 for September yet. Pretty fucking shoddy work - I could get a job at the new Wembley. Went to Taiwan at the weekend so that's my main excuse for the lack of posting over the last few days. Something unexpected came up at work yesterday, so no Aloha show - if anyone went, please tell us how it was. No Top 10 for September because... I just didn't get my arse in gear. I will do my best to rectify all this in the next couple of days (except the Aloha show, haven't got very far with the time machine yet).