Simon Bartz - The Japan Times

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

May 15, 2002

I can feel the beast closing in, feel it out there making its moves. I'm standing in the center of this dingy apartment listening to the intense howl of the pre-attack silence, too scared to turn on the lights. I bolt the door. I screw shut the windows. I nail down the toilet seat. You never know from where this Black Dog is gonna emerge. Yes, I can feel the beats closing in.

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

May 8, 2002

The Hives: 'Your New Favourite Band'

Reviews don't get much simpler than this. Get in front of your computer, type in The Hives and download their single "Hate to Say I Told You So." Listen to it once and The Hives will be "your new favorite band." That's 40 words. 'Nuff said. . . . Oh, so you want a proper review?

CULTURE / Music / FUZZY LOGIC

May 5, 2002

Wire's London Nite: Let it be a lesson to you

Tokyo has one of the best underground rock 'n' roll live scenes in the world, with dozens of superb bands, but the club scene -- if you like dancing to loud guitar music until dawn -- has been in a coma for the past five years.

CULTURE / Music

May 5, 2002

Girl, you'll be Madonna soon

It's no surprise that the mums have turned out in force to chaperone their kids at Britney Spears' show at Tokyo Dome: They've seen her recent, more raunchy videos, witnessed her fondling a huge snake during her performance at the MTV video awards and noticed that on her third and latest album, "Britney," she's cut down on the "oops" and "babys" and introduced words such as "hell" and "damn." Something's up, surely, and they want to be on hand to find out exactly what.

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

May 1, 2002

Golden Syrup Lovers: 'Hue'

Remember what British guitar-pop was like in the '80s. No? Exactly. Because it was all totally forgettable apart from The Smiths (who were gods and thus an exception).

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

May 1, 2002

Antipop Consortium: 'Arrhythmia'

'Disturb the equilibrium" has been Antipop Consortium's credo since they formed five years back, and their second album, "Arrhythmia," is another welcome one-finger salute to hip-hop's pop mainstream.

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Apr 10, 2002

Helicoid 0222MB

Helicoid 0222MB is a robot created and operated by three chicks from Osaka. Their ultimate goal is not to make this fantasy robot rid Japan of evil bands like Snail Ramp and Bump of Chicken, but simply to make it dance. Ho-hum.

CULTURE / Music / FUZZY LOGIC

Apr 7, 2002

Straight Kabukicho, on the rocks, please

Kabukicho: the land of quick fixes, whether they be edible, audible, watchable . . . Just about any -able is doable in this hallowed den of iniquity.

CULTURE / Music

Apr 3, 2002

Slipknot unmasked!

For a big guy, the evil-looking Clown from the band Slipknot can move pretty fast. In a flash he leaps out of his seat, lunges at me with a stiletto blade and plunges it into my chest. "Nothing else means anything to me," he snarls, his face inches away from mine, his eyes burrowing to the back of my skull, his knife slowly being withdrawn from my flesh.

CULTURE / Music

Apr 3, 2002

Mommy, can we go out and play dying tonight?

Tomoko, 18, from Yokohama, and Yui, 18, from Osaka

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Mar 27, 2002

O-Ne: '2624'

I ask Tokyo duo O-Ne why their long-awaited debut album is called "2624." Is that a combination of the ages of the two chicks in the band? Is that when the world's gonna finally end? Or is that the black-market price in pounds sterling for a ticket to see England whip the ass of Argentina in the upcoming World Cup?

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Mar 20, 2002

Lee 'Scratch' Perry: 'Jamaican e.t.'

Lee "Scratch" Perry has been stumbling along the very fine line between eccentricity and insanity for more than 30 years, and his latest album, "Jamaican e.t.," is one of his most mind-scrambling yet.

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Mar 13, 2002

Trail of Dead: 'Source Tags & Codes'

At last year's Summersonic festival, Texas four-piece . . . And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead gave us the best, and most incendiary, live performance Japan saw all year. They ended a phenomenal show by trashing every piece of equipment on stage -- even the drum kit was hurled into the mosh pit as panicked Japanese security guards cowered in the wings of the stage, too petrified to intervene. It was worth the admission price alone.

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Mar 6, 2002

The Cooper Temple Clause: 'See This Through and Leave'

Every year at the Fuji Rock Festival there comes a time when you've reached the point of sonic overload. You're searching for a place for a quiet lie-down when you stumble into a field and are aurally ambushed by a band you've never heard of that blows your head off. Last year, the psychedelic punk-rock soundscapes of The Cooper Temple Clause were the biggest and best surprise of all. From "Cooper Temple who?" it was suddenly "Have they got an album out? I want it. Now!"

CULTURE / Music / FUZZY LOGIC

Mar 3, 2002

Wolves in wolves' clothing

How Guitar Wolf is still going after 15 years of unadulterated sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll madness is a miracle. It's not like they're cashed-up like Keith Richards and can hit an exclusive Swiss clinic to have their blood replaced with that of fresh virgins every other week.

CULTURE / Music

Feb 24, 2002

The Strokes: Was that it?

The Strokes, ever heard of them? They're a bunch of rich kids from New York who like the street. Too drunk to skateboard, they stride round in their vintage clothes, take loads of drugs, chase chicks and make music. Last year, they released "Is This It," the greatest debut album since Oasis' "Definitely Maybe." They were instantly massive rock stars, with guest lists chockablock with supermodels, Hollywood actors and masturbating journalists.

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Feb 20, 2002

Supersnazz

Supersnazz's 1998 album, "Diode City," must feel like a bit of an albatross for the band. The 19-song punk-pop classic is so awesome that if you locked Supersnazz in a studio for 10 years and held a gun to their heads, they'd be unlikely to better it. On their latest album, "Rock-O-Matic," they don't even try. And it's a wise move. Weighing in at a mere eight tracks -- and Supersnazz songs are usually over in 150 seconds -- its main purpose is to serve as a reminder that the band is still out there and as relevant as ever.

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Feb 20, 2002

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

Last year, The Strokes and White Stripes were placed in a rocket of hype and blasted into superstardom. The media -- me included -- bludgeoned you into thinking they were the hippest bands in the universe and should be name-dropped at every opportunity if you wanted to be cool. Thankfully, they made brilliant records, so you didn't mind being told you just had to like them. This year, the thinking seems to be, if the hype worked once, or twice, then it's going to work again and again. So, enter the latest hippest band in the universe -- Black Rebel Motorcycle Club.

CULTURE / Music / FUZZY LOGIC

Feb 3, 2002

Makes perfect pop sense to me . . .

Beat Crusaders must have overheard one of those critics a couple of years back saying "comedy is the new rock 'n' roll" and taken it literally, for what you get at their gigs is tons of cheap stand-up comic banter sandwiched between immensely hummable pop hymns. Remember the speedy guitar pop of The Wannadies? It's like that, but with keyboardist Thai slipping in dead cute 'n' corny '80s synth hooks, which, more than anything else, define the band's sound.

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Jan 30, 2002

Electric Soft Parade: 'Holes in the Wall'

Electric Soft Parade have been heralded by much of the British music press as the best of a bunch of bands that currently make up what some call the nu-acoustic movement, which includes the whining of bands like Elbow, Starsailor and Coldplay.

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