Japanoise J-Punk The Experimental

[Iraira]

This is a long shot, but I gotta ask. Several years ago, I was in some punk rock music shop in Shinjuku or Koenji. I found a song on a CD, by a band whose name I cannot remember. The song title was, "Don't worry Keiko, mommy's just looking for her hand in the sand" Broke me up, and I was a knucklehead not to buy it, just for that song title. It was some Japanese band, as I recall. Memory is that hazy about everything except for that song.
I Googled, Yahooed, and yelled out the window, but nothing. To this day, I avoid knowing any girl named "Keiko" for fear of dismembering her.

[Mulboyne]

Pitchfork Review: "Have You Seen the Other Side of the Sky?" by Acid Mothers Temple and the Melting Paraiso U.F.O.

It feels like mere months-- if not weeks-- since we've last heard from Makoto Kawabata and his psych-rock juggernaut Acid Mothers Temple, and yet Have You Ever Seen the Other Side of the Sky? also qualifies as something of a comeback. The album marks the return of the Melting Paraiso U.F.O. ensemble from a yearlong hiatus, an interval that probably seems more like a decade on Kawabata's busy calendar. During that time Kawabata kept himself occupied by touring and recording with his newly launched heavy-rock combo the Cosmic Inferno and collaborating with the kindred spirits of Afrirampo, while also providing himself steady work as a solo artist and who-knows-what-other communal activities...more...

See also: Acid Mothers Temple & Ruins US Tour

[Mulboyne]

[Captain Japan]

There's nothing very new in this short piece but it's the first time I've encountered the label "Math Rock"

The term "math rock" has always been pretty dubious to me. The Wikipedia entery here includes Drive Like Jehu and Rocket from the Crypt. I would have never come up with them. But then it goes on to put Heavy Vegetable and Antioch Arrow in there. Hmm...I would have figured an Emo tag for them. But I think the the Math Rock tag is just tag and offers very little grouping together the sounds of various bands.

For Japan, it has the Ruins. I can sort of see that, given the high precision that they shoot for.

[maraboutslim]

The term "math rock" always makes me thing of bands like Polvo. Many of these bands probably consider themselves to be born more out of punk or new wave or obscure euro whatnot, but I always figured "The Ocean" by Led Zepplin is the earliest popular math rock song. It has totally stupid riffs that defy the standard 4/4 time signature for no reason other than to be "different" and difficult. I guess the main riff could be written out in either 15/8 or as a measure of 4/4 followed by one of 7/8. The missing beat adds nothing to the song. That's math rock.

[AssKissinger]

I like Polvo, Drive Like Jehu and Rocket from the Crypt. Slim, The Ocean has one of the coolest riffs in the history of heavy metal. If bands didn't mix up the time signatures rock'n'roll would have died in the early 60's.

[maraboutslim]

The riff is basically just as cool if you put an extra "da da" on the end of it to make it square. In fact, I bet if you took 100 people and played the song for them and then had them sing back that riff to you, 98 of their brains would add two extra 1/16 notes at the end to make the thing make sense. That's what I think about math rock - it is just music that sounds awkward for the sake of being awkward. Now, in Jazz, Brubeck mixed it up a lot with different time signatures but they all worked out - they never needed to truncate melodies or riffs. The end of "the ocean", where it goes all bluesy is good though. (well, good for Zepplin anyway) and is kind of my point - keeping it simple is nearly always a good idea.

[AssKissinger]

I dare say you could never improve on that Ocean riff!

Simple is good. The Ramones are my favorite band but that doesn't mean I want every band to sound like them.

[Buraku]

You're rather a latecomer to consider yourself into j punk from "the beginning some 15 years ago," considering it started with The Plastics about 25 years ago. Punk died in the early 80s, before you ever heard it existed.

I was in a record store in Hakodate in '96, I was trying to order an Iggy Pop CD for a friend who had never heard of him, I was fishing through my bag and the clerk saw I had a CD by The Plastics. The clerk said he couldn't believe that a gaijin ever heard of The Plastics, let alone owned their record and carried it around. I said they were one of my favorite punk groups. He said he saw their 10 year reunion gig in 1989 (note: 15 years ago). The clerk chatted a while with me about the old punk days, then pressed a gift into my hands, and insisted I take it: a CD, Pop Tatari by The Boredoms.

Worst CD I ever heard. Absolute unlistenable crap. The high point of the CD is a song "Noise Ramones," which is about 3 minutes of silence.

it ain't that bad

[AssKissinger]

Charles is a fucking cunt and the only member of FG I'd like to beat the shit out of in real life.

[Captain Japan]

Anyway, I often wonder what happened to a lot of the bands we used to play gigs with and that I used to see regularly (with Captain Japan a lot in the later years). One of my favorites was a band called Biscuit Fan - if anyone knows anything about them, let me know. I was also seeing Sugar Plant a lot in those days and hope Chinatsu and Shinichi are still making music. Anyone know?

Slim, check here.

[Taro Toporific]

Boris

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siwV1pFgIKs&search=Boris%20live

[floatr][/floatr]
Interview: Boris
Interview by Vicente Gutierrez and Mizuho Ota
Pitchfork: Mon: 04-28-08

....Pitchfork: With all that touring you've spent plenty of time abroad, is Tokyo still important for the band?

AM: It's really important, yeah, definitely, Tokyo is one of the craziest cities in the world, I mean, there are some neighborhoods where crazy, fucked-up things happen, stuff you wouldn't normally think about.

Pitchfork: Like what?

AM: It's not necessarily dangerous stuff like in other cities, but more deranged stuff here like fujoshi, you know that?

Pitchfork: No, what's that?

AM: [laughs] I think it translates as, "rotten girls." Let me see if I can explain...these girls take a regular comic book and subvert the storyline or plot into something homosexual. They pick out two male characters and rewrite their lines and even change their order of appearance in the story to make the male characters in the story fall in love with each other.

Pitchfork: And this is a hobby of some Japanese youth?

AM: Yeah, girls. They trade books with their friends or actually publish them DIY or via some indie press. It's kind of big, I'll go so far to say it's influential on the Japanese economy.

Pitchfork: [laughs] What?

AM: Yeah, like you know Masked Rider? It's like Power Rangers out here. The new version has all the male characters positioned in such a way just so it would appeal to these kinds of girls so they could subvert and, well, buy it, and further get it out there.
It's like all these Visual Kei bands are a branch off of that. The band members dress themselves up to the extreme so [these] girls will like them, so they wear lots of make up or go for an allusive feminine image. It's so twisted, you have to see it for yourself. Because in Japan, compared to foreign countries [where] gays and lesbians can exist openly and freely, here it's so suppressed and so taboo that it comes out in the most twisted ways, and that's part of why it's so crazy living here. Now, it's like all these people are wasting their time day dreaming about twisted subversive things and it's really changing modern Japanese society. I'm telling you, man [laughs].

Pitchfork: I had no idea...

AM: Well, there is a lot of weird reverse phenomena like that in Japan. Like, these comics had a storyline to which the characters obviously adhered, but now that they have been rewritten, it's like the characters are their own individuals and the original storyline doesn't even matter anymore. Even their order of appearance is mixed. And as for as those Visual Kei bands go, the image of the band members comes first and the music is second, so everything is kind of reversed, and that actually affects us as a band, we're surrounded by that kind of shit. Of course, you choose what you want to see, but I wonder where Boris fits into that.

Pitchfork: Well in terms of the band, how does Boris fit in with Tokyo?

AM: I don't think anyone even knows us out here, it's weird. Sometimes we get interviews from magazines but it comes and goes and we never even see the interviews printed, it's like a coming and going and we never see any of it.

Pitchfork: I often hear people refer to you guys as heavy metal...

AM: [laughs] Yeah, sometimes people think we're this heavy metal band. And, it makes us sound tough and all but at the same time in Japan, if anyone says you are heavy metal, it means you are an 80s hair band, and well...we're not. Our manager thinks we're an outcast in the Japanese music scene because the way we approach making music is so different, and so here we are outcasts but abroad, I guess it sounds more natural to listeners so.

Pitchfork: Considering how much more you tour abroad, I can see that.

AM: Yeah, it's also a bit tougher to find supporters like media and venues even though we're an established band so in that sense, it's easier to play abroad. But, if I talk that way, it sounds like Tokyo isn't that great or important to us, but it totally is [laughs]. I think the stress I get from all these problems and bizarre things I come across feed into the motivation to create new music. It's really good for us but then again sometimes I want to flip out and I want to destroy Japan, but...it's home [laughs].

[Catoneinutica]

Catoneinutica: Hey, you three trendy young Japanese people, I can tell by your elaborately-styled hair, your cool fashion sense, and the sullen poses you strike for the camera that you must rock. So...what do you think of Tokyo's neo-fascist governor? Do you guys support him?

[Captain Japan]

AM: I don't think anyone even knows us out here, it's weird. Sometimes we get interviews from magazines but it comes and goes and we never even see the interviews printed, it's like a coming and going and we never see any of it.

The final issue of Player had an article about them. I should send it off.

[Torimaro]

getting a little off topic, some of the noise bands that are more hardcore that I like are Confuse (broke up) and Nightmare (not the one on the magazine covers, these guys are from Osaka and are fucking insane, Check out their stuff released by Hardcore Kitchen from Kobe http://hardcore.exblog.jp/).

[Mulboyne]

Drowned in Sound is a British version of Pitchfork. There's a short discussion on the site which is relevant to this thread:

Does anyone actually like Merzbow or is this just an indie thing again?

I just find it hard to believe that people actually like listening to noise...I don't don't find it hard to believe that anyone likes any particular genre of MUSIC, what I find hard to believe is people liking NOISE.

Yeah, that was my reaction initially. "How can anybody tolerate, let alone listen to this." But i was massively intrigued by the guy and his output. Intrigued enough that i stuck with it. Over time i came to really appreciate what he's doing. Initial listens give you mindless white noise. Further listens give you not much more, but you start to pick up on little changes in the layers/textures/dynamic between albums.

Eventually you'll come to pick up on the differences between and during individual tracks on each album, and that is where it gets really interesting and mega rewarding. There are some mindblowing moments on Pulse Demon, where a song seems to shift ever so slightly away from the usual all out total abrasion into something softer and smoother, but the change in dynamic feels as though you've been launched into the air...Bear in mind that it took me a fooking age to get into, requiring a lot of concentration and effort, but i reckon the rewards are well worth it.

who says you have to have verse, chorus, verse, chorus etc all the time? for me, noise, avant-garde and experimental stuff in general does something that music simply does not. i genuinely find it so interesting.

Don't think of it as "noise". it's a really clumsy label, that makes it hard to appreciate. Most of what gets lumped into noise is about textures of sound, and subverting the norms of "songs". It's a bit like abstract painting, like a Rothko or a Kandinsky. or Pollock. Some of it like Merzbow is really really abrasive and harsh, but that can be exciting like listening to good metal. but better. and less repetitive and silly. Or it can be really ethereal and transcendental, like all the drone bands and the likes of tsurubami or whatever. that's the kind of territory that's easier to get into, and can become fairly mainstream - like loveless or isn't anything, which aren't noise albums, but kind of head that way.