"Those voices makes me vomit! Too many people in one band is no good. It's kind of scary. I feel like I'm suffering from car sickness all the time."
Sachiko Fukuda from noise-pop duo Umez is not a fan of AKB48. That didn't stop her band from covering its iconic single "Aitakatta," though, stripping it down and turning it into a lo-fi garage-scuzz that keeps threatening to tilt over into pure shoegaze or dreampop.
"I can't stand the typical style of J-pop — it's pretty boring and we thought we could do it better," she says. "With the AKB48 song, I hated it before doing the cover, but actually it's a really great song. I love it now."