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James Hadfield
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jan 29, 2010
Tomori "Utagoe no Minato"
Would it be premature to hail this as the best early-Showa period album of 2010? Osaka duo Tomari's debut album pays little heed to the stylistic advances of the past half-century, turning instead to the music of prewar Japan for inspiration. It's a sound that the band describes as kakuu no kayou (literally,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Nov 13, 2009
Warp Records hits the big 2-0
Sheffield has come on a long way over the past 20 years. England's one-time "City of Steel" was, in the dying days of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's era, a pretty grim place to be, its factories shuttered and its high streets desolate. Today, it presents a cleaner, more affluent — and, some might...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jul 31, 2009
Running around the many stages
If you want to get a sense of the sprawling possibilities at Fuji Rock, just look at Rafven's schedule. The former street band from Gothenburg, Sweden, managed to play no less than nine times during the festival, bringing their exuberant brand of gypsy-style revelry to a string of different stages both...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jul 17, 2009
Dick El Demasiado
Dick El Demasiado is, by his own admission, an impostor. Born Dick Verdult in the Netherlands in 1954, the musician and media artist has become a pivotal figure on Argentina's experimental music scene thanks to an elaborate hoax.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jul 10, 2009
Amami Total Solar Eclipse Festival
It's a promoter's nightmare: an event which must be held in one of the most remote parts of the country, where the centerpiece occurs on a weekday morning, with no chance of rescheduling. Then again, when you're talking about the longest total solar eclipse of the century, certain concessions must be...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jul 3, 2009
Sheena Ringo
Following Sheena Ringo can be a frustrating business. Her third album, 2003's "Karuki Zamen Kuri no Hana" ("Lime, Semen, Chestnut Blossoms"), ranks as one of the most wildly ambitious pop records of the past decade, which made it all the more confounding when she ditched her solo career the following...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jun 26, 2009
TsuShiMaMiRe "A, Umi da"
"You're pretty stinky, aren't you? Well, I'm gonna love you anyway," sings TsuShiMaMiRe's guitarist/vocalist Mari on "Mike Smell Kunkun." It takes a brief moment to realize that she's talking to her microphone, not some hygienically challenged boyfriend.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
May 29, 2009
Brahman
You might expect a band named after the Sanskrit term for "absolute reality" to be a bit, well, pretentious. But if their moniker is evocative of patchouli, long beards and even longer guitar solos, Brahman's music remains firmly grounded.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Feb 20, 2009
Ego-Wrappin' and The Gossip of Jaxx "Ego-Wrappin' and The Gossip of Jaxx"
When Ego-Wrappin' performed on Asahi TV's "Music Station" show in July last year, singer Yoshie Nakano started their set by planting a kiss right on the camera lens, leaving a smudge of lipstick behind. It was the kind of insouciant gesture that the band do well: While their fusion of jazz, rock and...
CULTURE / Music
Feb 20, 2009
Ego-Wrappin' and The Gossip of Jaxx "Ego-Wrappin' and The Gossip of Jaxx"
When Ego-Wrappin' performed on Asahi TV's "Music Station" show in July last year, singer Yoshie Nakano started their set by planting a kiss right on the camera lens, leaving a smudge of lipstick behind. It was the kind of insouciant gesture that the band do well: While their fusion of jazz, rock and...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jan 30, 2009
Talking Teriyaki with J-hop's biggest export
While attending boarding school in Boston in the mid 1990s, Seiji Kameyama used to play hip-hop CDs that he'd brought back from Japan to his friends.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jan 30, 2009
Mass of the Fermenting Dregs "World is Yours"
The release of Mass of the Fermenting Dregs' self-titled debut this time last year marked them out as a band to watch. The Kobe-based three-piece (known to fans as Masudore) betrayed a rare knack for melding pop sensibilities with the aural assault of the best postrock. The fact they are all girls didn't...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Dec 12, 2008
The Fireman "Electric Arguments"
Nearly four decades after ending his songwriting partnership with John Lennon, Paul McCartney still hasn't tired of insisting that he was the more experimental of the two. Just last month, he announced that he was hoping to finally release "Carnival of Light," the "lost" avant-garde piece that The Beatles...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Nov 14, 2008
Zazen Boys
At 35, Shutoku Mukai is practically the elder statesman of Japanese indie rock. The guitarist and singer, whose nerdy demeanor suggests an off-duty salaryman rather than a rock star, has been behind some of the most abrasive and inventive music to make a dent in Japan's pop charts during the past 10...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Oct 31, 2008
Club tricks and treats for Halloween
With Halloween falling on a Friday this year, there's a countrywide wealth of ghoulish fun on offer over the weekend — and even less excuse not to indulge in some serious sartorial inelegance and hit the town.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Sep 26, 2008
Flying Lotus brings a deeper hip-hop beat
Even when he's speaking from the other end of a crackly long-distance phone line, Steve Ellison sounds a lot like he does on record. As Flying Lotus, the Californian producer makes records of woozy, largely instrumental hip-hop whose beguiling surfaces conceal a restless, fidgety energy. Nothing stays...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Sep 19, 2008
Tokyo Conflux
Like natto (foul-smelling fermented soybeans), men's handbags and John McCain, free jazz — and its European corollary, free improvisation — doesn't inspire moderate reactions. But love it or loathe it, there's no denying that this noxious subgenre is still in a rude state of health more than four...
CULTURE / Art
Sep 18, 2008
Top performances at the triennale
Ventriloquism, giant rabbits, dancing on broken glass and a whole lot of kissing — and that was just the opening weekend of the Yokohama Triennale.
CULTURE / Music
Sep 12, 2008
Various "Fresh Cuts from Japan — Hardcore — Volume 1" (JapanFiles.com)
American online MP3 store JapanFiles.com has done a commendable job of bringing lesser-known Japanese musicians to the attention of listeners around the world. After two well-received forays into indie, punk and hip-hop, its latest "Fresh Cuts" compilation turns its attention to heavier concerns.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Sep 5, 2008
Killing Joke
Most bands grow softer with age, but Killing Joke clearly aren't one of them. "We must be the only group in the world who has done 12 to 13 recordings or more and there is not even one f*cking love song anywhere," declared frontman Jaz Coleman in a 2006 interview, with more than a little hint of pride....

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People in cities across Japan will pop into their local convenience store for any number of products they believe will help them with a night of drinking.
Hangover cures are everywhere in Japan — but do they work?