Tokyo postpunk quartet Otori is an archetypal product of the city's underground live-music scene. The band's sets feature a machine-gun rattle of drums, slashes of guitar that explode in fierce climaxes, and bursts of scattershot vocals that teeter on the brink of hysteria — the kind of music that gouges tortured metaphors out of music writers like jagged shrapnel as they struggle to describe it. In the end, though ... you just had to be there.
By forging an identity there in sweat-drenched weekend parties and amid the cold indifference of half-empty Tuesday-evening bookings, the live-music circuit has traditionally been where a group can build up a fan base. Taking cues from the electronic-music scene, however, bands have started to bypass this route with the help of websites such as SoundCloud and Bandcamp. Now it's increasingly possible (and even more attractive) to reach out to an audience with whom "just having to be there" is geographically impossible.
A big advantage of this digital route is that it's a far more efficient way of reaching listeners. While independent bands in Japan measure their audiences in the dozens, online they can see such numbers climb into the hundreds or thousands. The traditional live-music slog also carries with it huge costs both in time and money.