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April 17, 2024
 

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HIGH NOTES

Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Jan 16, 2009
Deerhoof
Occasionally, you'll run across a review that says San Francisco's Deerhoof are the greatest band in the world. They're not, but you can understand why some people think so. There's something perfect and unique about their angular, chaotic guitar songs, and how many bands can claim perfect and unique anything?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Sep 10, 2003
Cursive
In the summer of 2002, Eastern Youth, the most conscientious punk band in Japan, released "Eight Teeth to Eat You," a split CD with the Omaha emo-core band Cursive. Then they announced they would bring the group to Japan for a short joint tour. Unfortunately, Cursive frontman Tim Kasher suffered a collapsed lung just before the tour was to start.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Sep 10, 2003
Scout Niblett
Scout Niblett deserves to be a star just on the strength of her name. Born Emma Niblett, she adopted "Scout" as a performing moniker because of an obsession with the leading character in the Southern saga "To Kill a Mockingbird."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Sep 10, 2003
Roscoe Holcomb: "An Untamed Sense of Control"
Among instruments, the banjo is one of the few considered truly an American original. Roscoe Holcomb's voice could be considered another. A just-released collection, "An Untamed Sense of Control," shows just how original he was.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Sep 10, 2003
Asagiri Jam
I'm gonna tell you a secret. It involves time travel. It's like this: There's a portal. Like a wormhole. And it opens up in the foothills of Mount Fuji in September. You just got to know the right place and the right time. This year the portal opens at 10 a.m. on Sept. 27 at a place called Asagiri. You may pass through dense mountain fog, but keep going to be rewarded. Remember you're in a movie penned by someone like Charlie Kaufman.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Sep 3, 2003
David Byrne: "Young Adam"; The Zephyrs: "A Year to the Day"
As a multimedia artist who mainly works in music, David Byrne is peculiarly suited to the job of movie-score composer, but for some reason he hasn't done that many. The producers of the Scottish film "Young Adam" asked him to write the movie's music and had an advantage since they were also involved with "The Last Emperor," which Byrne coscored with Ryuichi Sakamoto and for which he won an Oscar. But the Scotland angle was also a factor in taking the commission, since Byrne was born there.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Sep 3, 2003
Roy Hargrove
What's a nice, clean-cut hard-bopping trumpeter, one of the best to hit the jazz scene in the '90s, doing growing dreadlocks, wearing baggy pants and making a funk-soul CD?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Sep 3, 2003
Abdul Tee-Jay and Palm Wine A-Go-Go
Sierra Leone might be most closely associated with blood diamonds and gruesome images of civil war, but it is also the home of palm wine music, a happy, bubbling style of guitar picking. Palm wine music, or maringa, as it's known inside the country, combines calypso with local melodies and rhythms and is in part a result of roaming Portuguese sailors landing on African shores bearing guitars. The uplifting feel of this music has been extremely influential in West Africa, particularly on the better-known styles, highlife and soukous. The music gets its earthy name from the fact that musicians and listeners slugged cups of fermented sap from the oil palm at performances, but if maringa was once the life of the party it is nowadays something of a dying art.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Aug 27, 2003
Joao Gilberto
Experts agree that two pop music genres were invented by individuals: bluegrass by the American mandolinist Bill Monroe in 1938, and bossa nova by Brazilian Antonio Carlos Jobim in the mid-'50s. Jobim wrote "Desafinado," and while, in 1957, this was bossa nova's first big hit, the single itself was sung and played by Joao Gilberto. Consequently, there are those who believe Gilberto should share co-inventor credit.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Aug 27, 2003
Richard Bona: "Munia (The Tale)"
One of the encouragements jazz players often shout to each other during intense solos is "Tell the story!" On Cameroonian Richard Bona's third release, "Munia (The Tale)," he does just that by weaving lovely epic tales in melody and rhythm that combine West African music with New York jazz.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Aug 27, 2003
Broadcast: "Ha Ha Sound"
Rarely does a gem shine out from the dull ground of contemporary electronica, but when one does it should be treasured. Such is "Ha Ha Sound," Broadcast's second album.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Aug 27, 2003
The Dismemberment Plan: "The People's History of the Dismemberment Plan"
For frenetic indie foursome The Dismemberment Plan, breaking up has certainly been hard to do. Despite announcing their own dismemberment in January, the farewell tour has stretched into September, with their final show in Japan set for Saturday at Shibuya Nest before a farewell gig in Washington, D.C. For those who will miss this sold-out show, the double CD "The People's History of the Dismemberment Plan" may provide some consolation.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Aug 20, 2003
Joe Lovano Notet: "On This Day"
As leader, improviser and arranger, Joe Lovano brings together bop, post-bop and free jazz into a three-dimensional form that swings hard. Whether his tenor sax sandpapers a hard bop line or squeals like a bird on speed, he leans on the past while looking to the future. After hearing his most recent release, "On This Day . . at the Vanguard," one is tempted to conclude that they don't make records like this anymore, but they will.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Aug 20, 2003
Fat Cat Records Compilation: "Branches and Routes"
The high profile of Sigur Ros and Mum (playing in Tokyo next month) make the Fat Cat label look like a haven for atmospheric Icelandic bands. But the label has made its name not so much for a sound, but for intriguing sounds. That, more than anything, is why its new compilation, "Branches and Routes," is so difficult to pin down.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Aug 20, 2003
Pretty Girls Make Graves: "The New Romance,"
'I heard a record and it opened my eyes," goes the pivotal line in "Speakers Push the Air," the opening song on "Good Health," last year's debut album by the Seattle quintet Pretty Girls Make Graves. The record's passionate immediacy opened a lot of people's eyes to the possibility that punk still had potential, but the group was talking about something beyond its own ability to grab your attention. "Nothing else matters when you turn it up loud," shouted vocalist Andrea Zollo, letting it be known that she listens to music for the same reasons you do.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Aug 20, 2003
Joe Gibbs Production
Soul Jazz Records has issued a couple dozen outstanding compilations of unusual music ranging from New York punk-funk and Philadelphia soul-jazz to Yoruba music and Haitian voodoo drumming. Particularly great are their releases of both vintage and modern Jamaican music, of which "Joe Gibbs Productions" is the latest.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Aug 13, 2003
Gonna Vamp
A "vamp" is a woman who seduces or beguiles by using feminine charms, according to my dictionary. It's also the name of a new magazine that promotes underground Japanese bands, preferably if the band members are equipped with guitars, boobs and cute pouts rather than guitars, biceps and bad chat-up lines.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Aug 13, 2003
Manolito y Su Trabuco
The Japanese government can be thanked for one thing: open treaties with the Cuban government that allow the most scorching salsa players in the world to perform here on a regular basis. Perhaps the government doesn't have a choice since Japan has an unusually high percentage of Latin music aficionados. The latest listings for Latin clubs, dance teachers, live shows and concerts fills the pages of the magazine Salsa 120% and its Web site (www.salsa120.com). To please these endless fans, a steady stream of salseros and Latin jazz maestros have played to packed clubs and crowded dance floors over the past few years. At the end of this month, one of the most popular bands in Cuba, Manolito y su Trabuco, will bring its sizzling hot brand of Cuban music for a summer tour of Japan.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Aug 13, 2003
Reverend Charlie Jackson: "God's Got It"
When the Rev. Charlie Jackson was a boy, he played sacred music on Sundays and blues the rest of the week. While Jackson himself saw no irony in this, his mother had little appreciation for her son playing electric guitar on both sides of the Lord's fence and quickly steered him toward the church. Little matter, that, for Jackson's odes to Jesus and his exhortations for others to follow his path have every bit as much grit, growl and bite as the most low-down tunes played on a Saturday night.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Aug 13, 2003
Natacha Atlas: "Something Dangerous"
Beyonce Knowles is not a singer I would have pegged as a model for Natacha Atlas, but the coincidental similarities between Atlas' new album, "Something Dangerous," and the Destiny Child leader's chart-topping debut solo joint, "Dangerously in Love," go beyond their titles. Atlas dives headfirst into R&B and hip-hop -- styles she's only flirted with on past records and in her work with world-beat exploiters Jah Wobble and Transglobal Underground.
Akebono's human side eclipsed his incredible sumo achievements
The heights Akebono reached in sumo helped pave the way for future foreign-born yokozuna Asashoryu and Hakuho.
Death-row inmates' lawsuit targeting same-day notifications of executions dismissed
Two plaintiffs filed a lawsuit with Osaka District Court in hopes of sparking a wider discussion on the rights of death row prisoners.
Japan’s young workers head abroad as huge wage gap persists
The departure hall at Haneda Airport in Tokyo. Now with inflation at its strongest in decades, Japanese are starting to realize that years of static wages leave many of them budgeting each month before their next pay check.
By-elections to determine Kishida’s fate within LDP
LDP Secretary-General Toshimitsu Motegi and election strategy committee chair Yuko Obuchi speak to reporters in Tokyo on April 2.
For Modi, the Indian election is less about winning and more about by how much
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi addresses supporters during an election campaign rally in Pushkar, India, on April 6, ahead of the country's upcoming general election starting Friday.
For Modi, the Indian election is less about winning and more about by how much
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi addresses supporters during an election campaign rally in Pushkar, India, on April 6, ahead of the country's upcoming general election starting Friday.
Akebono's human side eclipsed his incredible sumo achievements
The heights Akebono reached in sumo helped pave the way for future foreign-born yokozuna Asashoryu and Hakuho.
Ohtani’s dizzying three weeks end in exoneration by authorities
Los Angeles Dodgers designated hitter Shohei Ohtani during a spring training game on March 12.
How ‘winged’ gyōza took flight from a Tokyo suburb
The creator of "hanetsuki gyōza" is Isao Yagi, and his restaurant, Nihao, can be found right on the border of Tokyo and Kawasaki in Ota Ward.
How Ippei Mizuhara allegedly wired millions from Shohei Ohtani’s account
Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani and his interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara, in December at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California

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