Despite having had its musical reputation sullied by Yasushi Akimoto’s decision to make it the home of SKE48, the first offshoot of pop-idol army AKB48, Nagoya is home to one of Japan’s most vibrant independent music scenes. Going back into its history, the capital ...

One of the first stumbling blocks you’ll probably come across starting up a band in Japan is trying to book gigs. You’ll explain to the booking manager about your music, give them a demo CD or a link to a place they can hear ...

Emerging out of the late-1970s new-wave scene in the English industrial town of Sheffield alongside fellow electronic and synthpop luminaries such as ABC, Cabaret Voltaire and Heaven 17, The Human League was one of the bands that defined the sound of the ’80s, with ...

A recurring theme in the Strange Boutique column has been the question of what has gone wrong with pop music in Japan. Amid discussions of the pernicious influence of advertising agencies, record industry conservatism in the face of declining sales, and the faceless, self-replicating ...

Shuffling onto the stage in a flurry of robotic jerks come three men wearing glazed expressions and identical striped tops. In time with the retro-futurist synthesizer chirps and bleeps, they then lurch into a kind of clockwork dance routine, while a fourth man, wearing ...

When a band kicks off an interview with a statement like “We don’t do gigs, we do performances,” you could be forgiven for thinking you’re in the presence of a group of uncompromising, postindustrial noise punks. However, for indie-pop group She Talks Silence, this ...

Beneath the media frenzy over the “election” of this year’s front line members, behind the coy faced but otherwise absurdly blatant evocation of teen sex imagery, and far from the bizarre stories of the otaku (obsessive) fan who bought thousands of copies of the ...

“I see capsule as a J-pop group, but then again, I don’t think J-pop should be made into a particular genre with its own rules,” says Yasutaka Nakata of electro unit capsule and producer of idol sensations Perfume. “There are professional producers who try ...

Tokyo instrumental trio Nisennenmondai (which translates to “year 2000 problem”) have always seemed to struggle between an unwillingness — or fear of — compromising their scratchy, lo-fi sound and the problem of transferring the immediacy and sometimes breathtaking energy of their live performances onto ...