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For James Hadfield's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:

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 in a holding pattern for long: The rhythms are forever shifting, the melodies morphing into different shapes.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Music

Sep 19, 2008

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 decades after it first emerged.

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

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.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Music

Aug 29, 2008

Bands gather under Hokkaido's rising sun

"Go for it, guys!" the staff on the wristband checkpoint shout as people file past. "Have a good time!" As the day wears on, they grow more enthusiastic. High-fives are exchanged, with the more ebullient customers even getting a hug.

CULTURE / Music

Jul 25, 2008

Various "Post Flag"

It's a shame that the era of homemade mixtapes is already behind us. "Post Flag" would have gone down well with the budding compilers of this world, sweating over their cassette decks as they searched for a choice oddity to slot between The Beatles and Lee "Scratch" Perry. They'd find plenty on this, a track-by-track cover album of Wire's 1977 punk classic "Pink Flag," delivered by a selection of Japanese indie acts of varying degrees of obscurity.

CULTURE / Music

Jul 4, 2008

Flying Lotus "Los Angeles"

There's been a good buzz around producer Flying Lotus recently — which makes it all the more unfortunate that his second album comes tagged as "wonky," a genre descriptor so ridiculous it makes the likes of "trip-hop," "nu folk" and "broken beat" sound positively inspired in comparison.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Music

May 30, 2008

Whether it's Bjork honing her vocal chops on the cliffs of Iceland or the Belleville Three birthing techno in the mean streets of 1980s Detroit, there's a certain romance to seeing music in terms of the environment in which it was created. So when Nathan Fake released his debut album "Drowning in a Sea of Love" in 2006, many linked its blissed-out brand of electronica to the young producer's origins in the rural depths of Norfolk, England.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Music

May 16, 2008

Jackie-O Motherfu**er

With a name like that, Jackie-O Motherf**ker is never going to be the kind of band you could take home to meet your parents.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Music

May 9, 2008

Doudou N'Diaye Rose Percussion Orchestra

To look at him, you wouldn't guess that Doudou N'Diaye Rose is pushing 80. The Senegalese master percussionist stomps and dances around the stage with an energy befitting someone a quarter his age as he conducts drum ensembles of up to 100 members.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Music

May 2, 2008

When AOR supergroup Asia came to Japan in March last year, all seven dates of their tour sold out. The excitement was, perhaps, forgivable: It had taken the band's original lineup more than 25 years to get here.

CULTURE / Music

Apr 25, 2008

Portishead "Third"

Portishead's "Dummy" was one of the defining albums of the 1990s — and one of its most ubiquitous. The band's producer, Geoff Barrow, made little attempt to conceal his disgust when the record was reduced to providing a soundtrack to fashionable dinner parties and coffee shops throughout the Western hemisphere.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Music

Apr 18, 2008

Asian Dub Foundation's cracked reflection shifts the agenda

"Most world leaders have been on drugs," says Steve Chandra Savale, aka Chandrasonic, guitarist for ragga-breakbeat-punk collective Asian Dub Foundation.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Music

Apr 4, 2008

Shake Forward! 2008

Hip-hop may have lost its way in the United States, stuck in a cul-de-sac of bling and booty cliches, but in other parts of the world it's grown legs and started popping. No more so than among minority communities, who've seized the music and used it to give themselves the voice they never previously had. From Maori MCs to Arab-Israeli rappers, the global scene is ripe with examples of freshly emancipated hip-hoppers whose conviction and desire to make themselves heard presents a stark contrast with the lazy, tossed-off rubbish of, say, the last 50 Cent album.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Music

Mar 7, 2008

Forget the iffy politics: Syria has got some great music. It is the country of legendary oud (lute) maestro Farid Al-Atrash as well as Sabah Fakhri, an iron-larynxed singer who for many years held the world record for the longest uninterrupted vocal performance (10 hours). More recently, the likes of Kulna Sawa and qanun (zither) virtuoso Abdullah Chhadeh have attracted widespread acclaim with their fusions of traditional folk forms and contemporary Western music.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Music

Feb 29, 2008

Shomyo got off to a good start in Japan. The first documented performance of this form of Buddhist sutra chanting, originally from India, was before an audience of 10,000 monks and priests at Nara's Todaiji Temple in 752.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Music

Feb 15, 2008

Yasunao Tone, Sachiko M and Yoshihide Otomo

Yasunao Tone makes the kind of music that hi-fi buffs have nightmares about. The septuagenarian composer and sound artist has spent the past two decades pushing digital audio equipment to its limit and reveling in the wonky results.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Music

Feb 1, 2008

Arcade Fire: 'a goofy bunch of people'

They're a funny bunch, Arcade Fire. Last year saw the Montreal-based band graduate from indie darlings to arena stars touring North America and sharing a stage with Bruce Springsteen and U2. Their second album, "Neon Bible," entered the Billboard chart at No. 2 last March and has since sold upward of a million copies worldwide.

From easily navigable train stations to the helpfulness of its municipal staff, Tokyo has earned high praise for its commitment to accessibility for disabled travelers.

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

Rows of irises resemble a rice field at the Peter Walker-designed Toyota Municipal Museum of Art.

The 'outsiders' creating some of Japan's greenest spaces

By Stephen Mansfield

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Vol. 35: Travel in time — and stay there

Vol. 35: Travel in time — and stay there

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