Shonen Knife's 18th studio album was released just a few days before the birth of my first child. Good timing, too, because its 10 tracks contain plenty of life lessons I intend to pass on to my beautiful baby girl. The title track is a ...
Where the hell did this band even come from? Rocking the so-uncool-they're-cool image that has served sonic soulmates Polysics so well, 0.8 Byo to Shogeki's music piles up a violent barrage of cheap drum machines, minimalist guitar lines and batty boy-girl vocal interplay that ...
Some musicians simply ooze self-confidence. They walk into the room like they own it, flashing a smile that instantly melts a thousand hearts. But Tomoyuki Nagasawa is not one of those musicians. "I don't think my voice is all that special," says the 28-year-old Fukuoka ...
Talk all you like about Cool Japan — the Nordic countries have been exporting their sound for years, and it's positively freezing. From the sweetly kitsch pop sound of The Cardigans to the otherworldly soundscapes of Sigur Ros to the black metal of Bathory, ...
When the Nippon Budokan was built in 1964, its architects probably never envisaged it one day resembling a massive nightclub filled with hundreds of laser beams in every shade of neon as three women in lightup minidresses danced like finely tuned robots to the ...
Say goodbye to your waistline: Ben & Jerry's is back in Japan — and this time the world-famous ice-cream brand means business. On April 14, Ben & Jerry's will open its very first Scoop Shop in Japan, housed in the Omotesando Hills complex at the ...
A showcase at South by Southwest or a slot on the Japan Nite tour can be a great way to launch a band Stateside — or a great waste of time and money. Getting it right Puffy: J-pop duo Puffy's 2000 SXSW showcase was followed by ...
The pop music industry — it's enough to turn anyone into a schizophrenic. And Tomoko Kawase is perhaps J-pop's most fragmented personality of all. Rising to fame in the late-1990s as the singer in top-selling Kyoto guitar-pop band The Brilliant Green, she went solo in ...
There's no doubt that the best way for an independent band to tour in another country is by opening for one that people have actually heard of. So when spunky all-girl Tokyo four-piece Toquiwa befriended 1990s indie-rock heroes The Wedding Present, its members jumped ...
Director: Bill Condon Language: English Running time: 117 minutes Opens: Now showing It would be easy to dismiss the "Twilight" saga as "The Lost Boys" via "Dawson's Creek." But damn, things get dark in the penultimate chapter of this vampire love story. Bella (Kristen Stewart) finally marries supernatural ...
