Hangry & Angry Digital Only Single

International stars Hangry&Angry release their new digital-only single today on JapanFiles.com, titled "SadisticDance."

The single is available at the same time as Hangry&Angry's appearance at Sakura-Con in Seattle, WA. The artists make their North American performance debut this weekend at the yearly Japanese cultural event, held April 10-12, 2009, at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center in downtown Seattle.

LINKS!
Hangry&Angry on JapanFiles.com - http://www.japanfiles.com/hangryangry
Hangry&Angry official MySpace page - http://www.myspace.com/hangryandangry
Hangry&Angry official USA MySpace page - http://www.myspace.com/hangryandangryusa
Sakura-Con official website - http://www.sakuracon.org/

detroit7 USA Tour

detroit7's USA tour is happening right now!

http://www.myspace.com/detroit7

Check their MySpace for tour dates THIS WEEK in:
Chicago
Denver
Seattle
San Francisco
Los Angeles

+ more dates in Europe!

MORE NEWS!!!

detroit7's debut USA CD release is avalable right now-- check their MySpace for more details!

http://www.myspace.com/detroit7

girugamesh in-store appearance - next weekend

March 28, 2009 - Following their Friday night concert on April 10 at Sakura-Con in Seattle, Japanese rock band girugamesh will make a special in-store appearance at the Hot Topic store in Southcenter Mall on Saturday, April 11.

Hot Topic has been a major supporter of girugamesh's USA CD releases, with over 3000 girugamesh CDs sold by the nationwide chain since October 2008. The albums "Girugamesh" and "MUSIC" are available at Hot Topic stores and at Hot Topic's website, with the same artwork and booklet as the Japanese releases.

girugamesh's appearance at Hot Topic is sponsored by JapanFiles.com and Sakura-Con.


From HOT TOPIC's MySpace page:

girugamesh will be signing autographs at the Southcenter Mall Hot Topic located at 2676 Southcenter Mall, Tukwila, WA 98188 on Saturday, April 11th at 6:30 PM.

Beginning Friday, March 27th, purchase any girugamesh CD or T-shirt from the Southcenter Mall Hot Topic location ONLY and receive a wristband that guarantees the opportunity to meet the band on April 11th!* Need more info? Call the Southcenter Mall Hot Topic at 206.244.5021. We'll see you there!

*Available while supplies last. Space is limited. Offer not valid online. Limit one wristband and one autograph per person. See associate for further details.



Links!
girugamesh on JapanFiles.com - http://www.japanfiles.com/girugamesh
Hot Topic MySpace page - http://myspace.com/ht
Sakura-Con website - http://www.sakuracon.org/

"Three posts in a day...

... I bet you think that's pretty clever, don't you boy?" Name that tune in one. Anyway, enough of my pish. Three posts, one day, what is this madness? Well, even though I'm not in Tokyo at the moment there are still things I can be doing on this blog. Tinterweb is a wonderful thing and I still have access to the recorded music even if I don't have access to the gigs themselves. Fooel is out there reporting from the frontline so I should probably be doing more from the comfort of my front room. No big promises because work is mad and laziness is always there in the background, but I'll see what I can do.

MUCC on Tour

MUCC HEADLINES U.S. DATES

12/7 (Sun) Irving Plaza/ NY
12/10 (Wed) House of Blues/ LA

Ticket information: www.ticketmaster.com

New album SHION in stores and itunes on 11/25.

More info: www.myspace.com/muccofficial
From JapanFiles:

Hailing from Ibaraki, Japan, world renowned JROCK band, MUCC announces the release of their latest album "Shion" in November and their first headlining U.S. shows for NY and LA this December.

In 1997, Miya (Guitar) formed MUCC with Satochi and Tatsuro (Vocal), while they were high school students. YUKKE (Bass) joined the band in 1999 and at that moment MUCC formed the perfect lineup.

MUCC debuted in Europe back in 2006, and the following year performed at Otakon anime convention in Baltimore. They continued to tour Europe and performed at the JROCK Revolution festival in Los Angeles in 2007.
ROCK/PUNK guru Kevin Lyman brought them into the Rockstar Taste of Chaos tour in 2008, sharing the same stage as Bullet for my Valentine and Avenged Sevenfold.
In October 2008, MUCC was once again invited back to the Rockstar Taste of Chaos International and toured overseas in Europe and Asia, with friends, Atreyu, As I Lay Dying and Story of the Year.

L-Mo in Tokyo

No, it's not a gangsta style Sesame Street character. Rather, it's "upbeat adrenaline fueled anti-folk music" and it kicks arse.

The man's on tour in a global Megalopolis near you in the coming months (see sneakily grabbed screenshot below). There's no excuse, get thy arses out and support.


Message ends.

Streaming Radio on JapanFiles.com

JAPANFILES. COM - Streaming Radio Update! Thee Out Mods!

24 hours a day, 7 days a week -- you can tune in to JapanFiles Radio!
Check out our weekly programming blocks!
OK, apologies again. Work is mad, and if it wasn't for Fooel this blog would've died. Latest info from JapanFiles below.

This week's Album Spotlight is:
THEE OUT MODS - Rock'n'Roll Pirates

Tune in on Wednesday, November 26 at 7 PM Pacific / 10 PM Eastern to hear the whole album in its entirety! Every song in order from beginning to end -- FREE!

For more on Thee Out Mods, check out their page on JapanFiles.com, where you can see their new PV!

click here for THEE OUT MODS page on JapanFiles.com!
Don't forget to tune in this Wednesday!





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Silver Elephant 30th Anniversary Festival

After Saturday's exertions at Summersonic, I was shattered as I hauled myself out of bed and shuffled toward Kichijouji early on Sunday afternoon. The Sex Pistols were still ringing in my ears, and my feet and legs ached from all the drunken jumping about. Quite good exercise in retrospect. Stepping Stone was brilliant.

Anyway, Sunday was about heading down to Kichijouji, ostensibly to see Eddy who Graeme and I had seen before. This time I ate a hearty Milano sandwich in the smoking area of a local Doutours coffee shop, and then wandered about lost for a while. I discovered a large and inviting Book Off here, but didn't go in (too dangerous for the wallet).

The event was starting rather early at about 4 pm, and it transpired that the venue, Silver Elephant, was holding a party to celebrate 30 years of existence. And that we would be watching no less than 8 bands. And most importantly, 2,000 yen entrance came with not one but 3 marvelous drinks tickets meaning 3 beers set me back merely an extra 300 yen. Wonderful stuff.

And so I set up camp on the stairs, which is pretty much the darkest corner as you will know if you have ever been there. In fact, the place is pretty small and much of it could be claimed as corner, but still. I shuffled the usual pile of fliers and smoked some of the free cigarettes handed out the previous day by some bastards.

Soon enough Amazon kicked us off in straight-down-the-middle Indie territory. Shades of England's North West abounded and it was all very nice. Amazon, in short, were quite good, and seemed to have a couple of tunes. Actually the song "Thailand" is really nice - you can hear on the MySpace and download from the band's website.

http://www.myspace.com/amaz0ne

http://sound.jp/amazon/x/menu.html

And watch Amazon perform "Thailand" here, in one of my customarily poor-quality videos of the event.

AMAZON:



Next we were treated to andymori who are very much a Japanese Arctic Monkeys. Now I'm a little circumspect with all this direct comparison stuff, but trust me on this - andymori are a Japanese Arctic Monkeys. Take a listen to "everything is my guitar" here and then tell me it ain't so: http://www.myspace.com/andymori

But they were good alright. It was a very energetic performance from the guys, as you can vaguely make out in the video below (I move the camera after about 30 seconds so you can actually see the singer). Also pretty loud so you can't hear it very well! Ha. Serves you right for going to see Coldplay instead ;)

Clearly they have something of an asset in the singer, who gave a cracking effort in the Alex Turner role and was declared kakkoii by the announcer woman afterwards. So I would say this is a band with some kind of chance to become quite big.

andymori:



The video of Eddy is much better, as I had moved higher up on the stairs for this gig. And happily, Eddy appeared to be much better too compared to last time we saw them. On that occasion, Graeme noted that the three-piece were proficient enough but not necessarily possessing of anything special.

Now converted to a two-piece a la the White Stripes, and with some of the previous widdling cut away, Eddy passed a pretty decent melodic pop-rock act and seem to have crafted a few more memorable tunes. I am slightly biased because I have been listening to some Eddy CDs since the gig and the tunes are really quite nice - that's for the forthcoming CD round-up though (I swear!).

So it was all good stuff by Eddy and I was quite pleased about that, and fantastic folks too for the record.

http://eddy2.web.fc2.com/main.html

Eddy:



Now the 706X were a different proposition and they just indie-rocked and shouted. They seemed to me fairly similar to Asian Kung-Fu Generation which is no bad thing as I have a lot of that time for that band.

http://www.myspace.com/the706x

http://www.the706x.com/pc/top.html

The 706X:



At which point we had watched 4 bands and generally that is your lot most of the time. But today there were 4 more to go.

Harvey wall banger were the most un-indie band I have been subjected to over the last few weeks. One wouldn't be surprised to see them entertaining the crowd in, say, a large shopping mall or... a wedding party, or something. Power ballads were the object of the exercise and the singer certainly possesses a fine pair of lungs as you will hear on the video clip.

http://www.myspace.com/harveywallbangerprogre

harvey wall banger:



Barubora / ばるぼら looked like they were going to be a reggae or ska band, but they weren't. They just did kind of quirky stuff.

Barubora:



As you can probably tell, by this point I was almost losing the will to live and it is taking so long to write this blog that I am suffering similar effects. I wonder if I might have enjoyed Cutting Orchestra more had they been on first or second, but as it was I think I had stopped paying attention a little, this being the tenth live performance for me in 24 hours. They were the type of indie band who sound like The Fall on a rabbit-hurting mission.

[aside: I've just noticed a guy on the Bulgarian volleyball team called Gaydarski - brilliant]

Cutting Orchestra:



And finally we had Chabo Choppu / チャボ　チョップ who were a lot more lively and woke me up a bit. Not that I can be bothered writing too much about them at this time of night, but they were a 4 piece all girl band with big personality singer and tasty guitarist. You'll let me get away with that, won't you readers? Readers? oh...

http://www.d4.dion.ne.jp/~hayabusa/chabo/index.htm

Chabo Choppu:

Euphoria @ Zher the Zoo, Yoyogi

My Bloody Valentine brought out only two albums.

Two records whose aural impact lies somewhere just past the point of defenestration, in the infinite moment spent assessing the drop onto concrete far below.

In 1988, Isn't Anything came out. I have only just downloaded this album today, curiously inversely-inspired by yesterday's bands. It is, clearly, quite brilliant.

In 1991 came the album Loveless with which I am more familiar. This record is a pure case of cover matches the sound - it's red and blurry and tastes of cherries. And it only sounds like My Bloody Valentine.


Yesterday evening at Zher the Zoo in Yoyogi, I avoided being thrown out of any windows, although my efforts at buying cigarettes from the machine surely annoyed the staff. However the shadow, or perhaps the cherry ghost, of MBV hung large in the air amongst the dry ice and the red strobe lights.

Zher the Zoo

First up Kamiyui came at us with the velvet sledgehammer approach - a wall of noise, conflicting, twisting and burning, vocals drowning an inch under the surface of the murk.



There is something here with this band although I sense a bit of subtlety still needs to be found, a little more melody perhaps needs to be coaxed out of proceedings.

Kamiyui website

Texas Pandaa took a different approach, being the slow-burn build-up and ghostly-voice method of shoegazing rock. This band were singing in English, with two female vocalists invoking a Sundays vibe whilst flanking a shoeless and animated lead guitarist. And they were rather good indeed - I would say there is more than a deal of potential in this band as they have written some nice songs and are clearly a marketable proposition.

The devil will be there at night, suggesting they toss "Loveless" to one side and become pop-rock superstars. The bank manager might also think it a good idea. But for now, Texas Pandaa are crafting a beautiful noise and that is the way we like it.

You will note that I chose to video the one where they had the lights turned off for the first half of the song but happily they come on half-way through!



Texas Pandaa website

I stood behind the big pillar that graces one corner of this (very nice) venue for a beer and cigarette and returned to my position at the bar as Silent Three Trees came on. All were wearing hats, and then they proceeded to be absolutely brilliant. And then, having been absolutely brilliant for two songs, the singer says "This is our first gig." Well, my jaw damn near hit the ground. It's not particularly easy to compare them to anyone (and they were the least shoe-gazy of the four), so maybe it's best to let the music do the talking:



Now Euphoria are a band I have been acquainted with through MySpace for a few years, and I keep going back to listen to the majestic "Silent Roar" which you can hear here:

Euphoria MySpace

It has just as visceral effect I think as say, oohhhh, "Feed Me With Your Kiss". Or "Like a Daydream" by Ride who must also be mentioned.

The vocals are kept to a minimum with Euphoria and the focus is on musicianship. In many ways they remind me of the mighty Longview less the vocal melodies. Euphoria do soundscapes, you know? Pictures in sound. I thought they were brilliant.

There is a bit of singing on this one:



A new album "Silence in Everywhere" is out now and the band will tour as follows:

5/9 Rock 'n' Roll Nagoya; 6/9 Club Jungle Osaka; 7/9 Urbanguild Kyoto; 18/9 O-Nest Tokyo; 20/9 Hook Sendai; 21/9 Sandanista Yamagata; 27/9 Colony Sapporo

Euphoria website

I picked up a couple of Cds, the double EP release by Kamiyui and one of Texas Pandaa's albums. I'm panning to review all these CDs at some point soon. But for now, just take a look and tell me if you notice anything:



kawaii desu ne ;)

Will Pieschel

We're lucky enough to have a talented colleague in my new office by the name of Will Pieschel. Will played a 3 hour set at the Dubliner's pub in Shibuya last Wednesday evening, and had a few folks dancing about the terrace in the process.

Quite a feat of performance to keep going for all that time. Highlights for me were Should I Stay or Should I Go, Wonderwall and a storming effort on With or Without You.

So if anyone is looking to book a more than capable performer for the evening, Will's your man. I'm not sure whether he does weddings and bah mitzvas, but we can always ask him eh?

Here's a couple of clips, with Will ably assisted by Clayton and another friend on the horns.





I went to see Euphoria tonight in Yoyogi and saw another clutch of top-notch bands, but the write-up will have to wait until tomorrow as it is getting a bit late.

Until then...

Ok City Ok at Turning, Nishi-Ogikubo

It was bloody hot on Sunday afternoon, very humid, and I was shuffling around like a sloth trying to stop myself from breaking into a sweat as I headed for Nishi-Ogikubo and its fabled branch of Mos Burger. Suffice to say it was so hot that I was forced to stop at the end of my street, where there is a McDonalds, in order to cool down and enjoy a lovely quarter-pounder with cheese setto. I never did make it into Mos Burger. Maybe next time.

At Turning, (nice wee place, quite small inside - 4 tables in the middle of the floor and a little bar in the corner), we were treated to five pretty damn good bands. Well, those few of us who stayed to see all five did anyway.

Things kicked off very nicely with a band called "Place In The Sun", an indie-pop act with behatted female singer of passionate voice and Snoopy-shirted guitarist of jangly guitar. I was suitably impressed, and they reminded me of The Brilliant Green in a slightly-more-indie kind of way. I'm not sure the catchy tunes are quite in place yet but the band was solid and it was a decent performance.

Find the band here: http://ww2.ttcn.ne.jp/~G-place/PlaceInTheSun.html

And watch them here:



Now during PITS's performance, lots of people turned up. There were parents all over the place and quite a crowd had gathered by the time the next band stepped up to the plate. This lot were H3F and they have fans. Or at least a lot of friends. And they have a rather charismatic portly frontman with a strong singing voice and apparently, a neat line in banter. The singer seemed to be struggling slightly with a sore throat but he managed to keep going, as his band played a few good old fashioned rock 'n' roll numbers. I thought the band were quite similar to Sambomaster in style.

See what you think:



I can't find a website unfortunately so if anyone knows what it is please leave a comment.

Ok City Ok were next up, and facing something of a crisis as the bass player was off sick. On the other hand, there was a new band member in place variously on fiddle, guitar and bass at the end, and some rather energetic drumming went on to make up for the missing bass sounds. I think the guys did a good job despite the circumstances not being ideal, and they kept the attention of the crowd.

We were treated to a few old favourites from the "Made By Elaborate Process" album. The fourth song was a new one, "I'm Not Ashamed" or something like that (sorry I was drunk again), and it sounded not unlike one of U2's rockier numbers to me which is no bad thing.

Here's a clip of Ok City Ok -1 +1 in action, in which you can actually hear the fiddle:



Ok City Ok website: http://www.okcityok.com/

Then almost everyone went home, leaving about 10 people watching the last two bands. Most odd really but that's the way it seems to work. And they had their moments too.

Nude Caputeano, or ヌードカプティーノ for those of you who prefer your Japanese band names in katakana, were another indie pop-rock act with a female singer. This bunch were more reminiscent of say, Echobelly, or someone. They were a bit more mod with the guys kitted out in white shirts and black ties. They were fairly ordinary. Apart from the ballad they did, which was absolutely astonishingly brilliant. Unfortunately I didn't record that one, but this song was okay:



Nude Caputeano website: http://caputeano.hp.infoseek.co.jp/top.html

And last up, in front of only a couple of faithful fans, were a 3-piece named "Weaks". A slightly punkier, new-wavish stance from this mob who came on like Wire/Elastica :0) in the early stages and ended up sounding almost a good bit like The Clash. I will give them the benefit of the doubt for that, and the CD I picked up shows evidence of something of a flair for composition.



Weaks website: http://weaks.sytes.net/

Thus ended the music and it was time to get drunk - big thanks to the Ok City Ok camp for hospitality above and beyond the call of duty.

After which it was home on a train to stumble around Kanda eki lost for about half an hour before finding my way home, betwixt a madman swinging wildly his kendo stick and a bicycle policeman in hot pursuit.

And another quarter-pounder with cheese, for good measure ;)