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May 02, 2024
 

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Suzannah Tartan
For Suzannah Tartan's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
CULTURE / Music / PLAY BUTTON
Mar 2, 2001
Dub Squad takes a journey into time
Dub is easily identified but difficult to define. Is it a style, a genre, or an approach to sound?
CULTURE / Music / PLAY BUTTON
Feb 16, 2001
Keeping it pure and personal
There are people who have character and there are people who are characters. Coppe, the coolest musician you've never heard of, is both.
CULTURE / Music / PLAY BUTTON
Feb 2, 2001
Tokyo's Milk gets in touch with rock's feminine side
Remodeled, remixed and rereleased, this week's Play Button checks back to see what some previously covered subjects are up to.
CULTURE / Music / PLAY BUTTON
Jan 19, 2001
An 'islander' finds poetry in the soundtrack of life
Mention the word "art" to the average Japanese pop musician and the response is likely to be a roll of the eyes, a sharp intake of breath and a lot of mumbling.
CULTURE / Music / PLAY BUTTON
Dec 22, 2000
The Captain reaches down deep into his inner funk
Funk usually brings to mind a heaving beat, thick, slapping bass lines and fashions straight out of "Shaft."
CULTURE / Music / PLAY BUTTON
Dec 8, 2000
Hanayo's gift wrapped in seductive complexity
With her mix of artifice, artistic discipline and sexual promise, no traditional figure is more ambiguous than the geisha.
CULTURE / Music / PLAY BUTTON
Nov 24, 2000
From the underground up
Ryoji, the charismatic frontman and mastermind behind skacore group Potshot, has the impossibly skinny, graceful physique of a true rock star. Think Mick Jagger in 1969 or Kurt Cobain 20 years later: the ugly duckling reborn through the grace of a power chord.
CULTURE / Music / PLAY BUTTON
Nov 10, 2000
Kobe's FBI investigates improvisation
Improvisation is a tricky business. In mediocre hands, it is interminable at best, masturbatory at worst. But with skilled practitioners, improvisation becomes the haute couture of the music world, each piece tailored on the spot to a particular confluence of musicians, audience, time and place.
CULTURE / Music / PLAY BUTTON
Oct 27, 2000
'Soul music' comes naturally to OOIOO
Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth once described her position as a woman between two boys with guitars as like being in the center of a circle jerk. Yoshimi P-We, the Boredoms' minxy drummer, could probably relate. As the rhythm section for the Boredoms' musical onslaught, she is at ground zero between both Eye Yamataka's vocal hysteria and Seiichi Yamamoto's guitar histrionics.
CULTURE / Music / PLAY BUTTON
Oct 13, 2000
Wire's sonic zeitgeist knows no boundaries
Certain music magazines do more than just chronicle the ins and outs of bands and fans. In their pages they capture the mood of a particular era. Thus Rolling Stone was more than just a San Francisco rock magazine, and so London's The Wire is more than just a magazine about modern music.
CULTURE / Music / PLAY BUTTON
Sep 29, 2000
'Those Parisian guys' way out west
Japanese music aficionados have a knack of tuning into the musical zeitgeist. Post-rock, Brit-pop and grunge all had substantial audiences in Japan before the rest of the world caught up.
CULTURE / Music / PLAY BUTTON
Sep 15, 2000
Pixies' legacy a mixed influence in Japan
If commercial success were a measure of a band's future influence than Rush and Peaches & Herb would be the prevailing inspirations for pop music today.
CULTURE / Music / PLAY BUTTON
Sep 1, 2000
Play that funky Okinawan music
Asian folk music has become a rich source for progressive club music. Hang out in one of Tokyo's happening nightspots and one is apt to hear break beats ping-ponging past Indian sitars or fluttering around Balinese gamelan. But when it comes to Okinawan min'yo or traditional music, there hasn't been much room on the dance floor.
CULTURE / Music / PLAY BUTTON
Aug 18, 2000
Incubators nurture the American dream
Since the Beatles crossed the Atlantic in 1964, success in the United States has been the Holy Grail of foreign artists, no matter how popular they are in their home countries.
CULTURE / Music / PLAY BUTTON
Aug 4, 2000
Reggae's past and future heard on the Tokyo scene
Although talking about influences is a staple of the music press, copying (a charge leveled at so much Japanese music), even respectfully, is often the subject of scorn in serious rock journalism. Novelty, no matter how abstract or silly, generally trumps the enjoyment of the familiar, no matter how lovingly reconstructed.
CULTURE / Music / PLAY BUTTON
Jul 21, 2000
Just say yes! yes! yes! to Seagulls' 'No! No! No!'
Negative charisma has been a staple of rock from Jerry Lee Lewis to Courtney Love. With its latest album "No! No! No!" (Trattoria), Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her takes it to a whole new level.
CULTURE / Music / PLAY BUTTON
Jul 7, 2000
Save the last dance for Yokota
Susumu Yokota's career has been mercurial enough to warrant the many pseudonyms under which he has released his work. Flitting from house to techno and back again, Yokota has brought his musical curiosity and energy to every genre he's chosen to embrace.
CULTURE / Music / PLAY BUTTON
Jun 23, 2000
Bad boys of summer and good vibes of fests
The influx of hip-hop style and substance into white America's musical consciousness has given pop music a series of bad boys who, in another era, would be hanging out at the nearest fraternity keg party.
CULTURE / Music / PLAY BUTTON
Jun 9, 2000
Twang with a twist strolls into Tokyo
The early days of country music are a catalog of demon yodelers, drunken banjo pickers and dreamy cowboy poets. It is difficult to find any hint of this raw beginning in country's current offerings. Nashville tends to look toward the Top 40 rather than its own twisted past for inspiration; the Dixie Chicks and their ilk are essentially Britney Spears with more hair spray and a twang.
CULTURE / Music / PLAY BUTTON
May 26, 2000
Indie supergroup likes it fun, dumb -- and loud
Walk into any "live house" in Tokyo, and unless you are still hitting your college textbooks or just exiting puberty, you are apt to be the oldest person there.
'So hot you can't breathe': Extreme heat hits the Philippines
A pedestrian cools himself with a folding hand fan as he waits for a ride along a road in Manila on Wednesday, as extreme heat hit the Philippines.
Did Japan intervene to prop up the yen? Analysts think it did.
A man walks past an electronic board displaying the exchange rate for the yen against the U.S. dollar (right) in Tokyo on Tuesday.
Town to block view of Mount Fuji in response to overtourism
The town government of Fujikawaguchiko, Yamanashi Prefecture, decided to set up a 2.5-meter-high screen to prevent tourists from taking pictures of Mount Fuji looming behind a convenience store.
Number of vacant homes in Japan hits record high of 9 million
A vacant house in Tokyo is seen demolished in January 2020.
Weak yen fattens tourist wallets in Japan
People visit the Ameya Yokocho market in Tokyo's Ueno district during the Golden Week holiday on Tuesday.
Kishida sets sights on energy and climate in South America trip
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will use a policy speech in Sao Paulo to set out his vision for ties between Japan and South America, almost 10 years after former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe advocated for stronger ties between the two in the same city.
Yellow sand allergy: A health issue made worse by climate change
A screenshot of the Meteorological Agency's satellite image of clouds and yellow sand (in pink) on Sunday.
Climate change, chalky grains and the risks for Japan’s rice farmers
A farmer plants seedlings in Satsumasendai, Kagoshima Prefecture. Japan’s self sufficiency rate for rice is nearly 100%, compared with 38% for food overall, on a calorie basis.
Japan wants you to spend more with ‘luxury tourism’
Performers play a traditional drum unique to Wajima, Ishikawa Prefecture, in the prefectural capital of Kanazawa on March 16 to mark the extension of the Hokuriku Shinkansen line to Tsuruga Station in Fukui Prefecture.
Theaster Gates’ ambitious ‘Afro-Mingei’ brings Black Chicago to Tokyo
Theaster Gates' “A Heavenly Chord” lines up church pews before seven speakers and a Hammond B3 organ, a type of electric organ prevalent in Black American churches.

Podcast

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[Rebroadcast] Japan is doing better on accessibility than you may think

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Climbing the branches of a Japanese family tree
By Alex K.T. Martin

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