Music

Hiroki Morimoto will be celebrating a musical milestone when he hits the stage at Fuji Rock Festival this year: 20 years with his instrument of choice, the didgeridoo. A serious car accident nine years ago, however, nearly brought his musical career to an end. "I ...

A crack of thunder. Pulsing polyrhythmic percussion. The roar of a passing motorcycle. A haunting symphonic chorus. Once you've heard the soundtrack to "Akira," the anime classic that turns 30 years old this month, it's almost impossible to forget it. Like every other aspect of the ...

If you were watching anime in English in the 1990s and 2000s, chances are you've heard a dub recorded by Les Claypool III. Some of the films and series that passed through Claypool's studio, Magnitude 8 Post, include "Macross Plus," "Ghost in the Shell" ...

It's the title that grabs you first. Hikaru Utada's seventh album makes a conspicuous nod to her 1999 debut, but the preternaturally mature teen of "First Love" is now a twice-divorced mother with ample life experience to draw on. However, on the title track of ...

It's a sure bet that when Wednesday Campanella plays a festival lineup, frontwoman Kom_I will steal the show. She's brave, never hesitant to jump into a crowd and rap face-to-face with her fans. That allows the trio's other members, trackmaker Kenmochi Hidefumi and the media-shy ...

The most successful moments in Gorillaz' enviable five-studio-album career have always come as eclectic pairings with the greats of the music world. Such collaborations have included Bobby Womack's back-from-the-R&B-graveyard performance on "Stylo," Ibrahim Ferrer's Cuban-crooning on "Latin Simone," the juxtaposition of Roots Manuva and Martina ...

The Japanese media love a scandal and so far 2018 hasn't disappointed in that regard. Two recent stories centered around J-pop idols have been mostly ignored by mainstream outlets, but both have taken off online thanks to web publications, hinting at a shift unfolding ...

Gorillaz, the self-proclaimed "world's most successful virtual act," will grace Tokyo with a pair of concerts next week that will include the world premiere of new album "The Now Now," which comes out June 29. The brainchild of Blur frontman Damon Albarn and artist Jamie ...

In the dimly lit Under Deer Lounge in Shibuya, jazz trumpeter Takuya Kuroda conducts an impromptu ensemble with raucous enthusiasm. Preceded by his Afro, he bounces around stage, announcing soloists and welcoming new musicians to the front. The music is undoubtedly Kuroda's, but the rotating ...

Koharu Matsunaga used to be a fixture on Tokyo's busking circuit, belting out tunes on her button accordion with her gypsy brass band at popular tourist stops like Ueno Park. The main songwriter and the older half of the sister duo Charan-Po-Rantan rarely performs on ...

It's rare that a concert has so much impact that people still talk about it 100 years later. However, that's certainly the case for a performance a century ago by some German prisoners of Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 in Tokushima Prefecture. It ...

English singer-songwriter Nick Heyward, probably best known as the frontman of early 1980s pop band Haircut 100, has for two decades resisted the urge to milk the nostalgia circuit, in Japan at least. The affable 56-year-old from Beckenham, southeast London, who has also penned and ...