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April 30, 2024
 

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HIGH NOTES

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Jun 13, 2001
Lois Maffeo
Lois Maffeo is the grande dame of the next-wave feminist riot girl movement, icon to countless sensitive American girls (and boys, too).
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Jun 13, 2001
'Poses': Rufus Wainwright
'Everything I like is a little bit stronger, a little bit thicker, a little bit harmful for me." So croons Rufus Wainwright on "Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk," the opening cut from his new album, "Poses."
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Jun 13, 2001
O-ne
Devastating rhythm and irresistible groove are what O-ne is all about. You'd expect a band comprising of just a drummer, Akemi, and a bassist, Neita, to get back to tribal basics, but where so many have buried themselves in such raw experimentation, O-ne are shooting skyward.
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
May 30, 2001
'Lovers Leap': Dan Bryk
In art, confession treads a fine line between catharsis and showing off. A subset of current punk bands like Wheatus and Blink 182 utilizes the geek mode to comment on classic macho-rock poses, but since they have nothing original to say (girls ignore you at school? figure it out), geekiness turns out to be just as much of a pose.
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
May 30, 2001
'Exciter': Depeche Mode
With a name like a dubious aphrodisiac jelly, "Exciter," the latest effort by the ever-boyish Depeche Mode, promises more of the "pervy" lyrics and electronic pop/rock that has seen it sell 50 million albums since the early '80s.
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
May 30, 2001
'Come Dream With Me': Diana Krall
Female jazz vocalists have typically fallen into one of two categories: fresh-faced innocence or worldly wise sophistication. The most popular recent example of the latter is Diana Krall, who has had a stunning series of releases in the past few years. In contrast, the most recent newcomer, Jane Monheit, has a youthful, crystalline purity of expression. Her second CD, "Come Dream With Me," has just been released on the N-Coded Music label.
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
May 30, 2001
Ex-Girl
Concert Preview by SIMON BARTZ Back in 1997, voices from outer space told three girls to start a band. Though they had never before picked up instruments in their lives, in true rock 'n' roll fashion, they snorted up the spirit of this unseen force, strapped on some guitars and became a gang of intergalactic uberbabes called Ex-Girl. Well, that's how they'll tell it anyhow.
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
May 23, 2001
'Naturalizms': Sukpatch
The Beastie Boys are one busy crew. If fighting for a free Tibet, periodically reinvigorating hip-hop and dressing a good percentage of the B-boy hipsters wandering around Harajuku weren't enough, they continue to deliver the goods on their Grand Royal label. Luscious Jackson, Buffalo Daughter and Money Mark might not rack up the sales, but their coolness quotient is undeniable. Sukpatch, the latest addition to the Grand Royal stable, scores just as high.
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
May 23, 2001
'If You Happy With You Need Do Nothing': Alfie
In Britain, "slow-fi" (that's one of the terms being bandied about) is the new rock 'n' roll. It's a genre of music that is, yawn, perfect for dropping off to sleep to. That doesn't mean it's boring, it means it's slow acoustic guitar music made by people glued to stools who are probably majorly into Prozac.
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
May 23, 2001
'Cassidy': Luke Sutherland
The fringes of hip-hop that line the frayed fabric of British club music have lately become tangled up in the nascent European postrock scene, a development that has resulted in an expanded instrumental pallette taking over where machines previously ruled. Luke Sutherland, the restless, thoughtful multi-instrumentalist and novelist who led Glasgow's premiere psychedelic band Long Fin Killie, doesn't claim hip-hop as his metier and master, but the music he produces under the banner of Bows moves back from trip-hop and drum 'n' bass toward the more primitive, patchwork style of early U.K. house musicians.
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
May 23, 2001
Mark Murphy
Common enough are jazz vocalists with a sense of the flexibility and evocative power of the human voice. But when that conception combines with a hip, humorous sense of verbal play, an astute awareness of lyrical phrasing, an inclusive, genre-spanning attitude and over 40 years' experience, you get, well, you get Mark Murphy.
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
May 16, 2001
'Gainsbourg Forever': Serge Gainsbourg
Serge Gainsbourg died on March 2, 1991, a month shy of his 63rd birthday. Though characterized as a womanizing alcoholic, the iconoclastic Frenchman always thought of himself as a homely little Jewish piano player who never asked to be a star, but as long as he was one then you had to accept him for what he was.
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
May 16, 2001
Belly up to the dance floor
While many hip urban types still seem to view belly-dancing as kitsch, they've probably never been lucky enough to experience the real thing. At its best, Oriental dance is a sublime fusion of body and rhythm, where the dancers allow the sound to ripple through their limbs with mesmerizing grace.
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
May 16, 2001
The lumberjack blues: Bob Log III
Third in a long and respectable line of lumberjacks with names a bit too apt for the job, Bob Log III hails from Tucson, Ariz., where the total lack of trees has forced him to abandon the family trade and take off into the stratosphere in search of new ecosystems to obliterate.
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
May 16, 2001
'Look Into the Eyeball': David Byrne
David Byrne once told the New York Times that he hated world music, surprising for someone whose own music incorporates elements of samba, African pop and a plethora of other influences. But what he was criticizing is the way the term is used to relegate the vast majority of the music produced in the world "into the realm of something exotic and therefore cute, weird but safe."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
May 9, 2001
Aiha Higurashi
Aiha Higurashi makes both girls and boys swoon. Boys because they want her. Girls because they want to be her. The tight dresses and frankly erotic gaze have inspired a million wet dreams, but the strutting guitar and in-your-face f**k-you attitude are provocative, too. Higurashi's group, Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her, has undoubtedly prompted countless girls to pick up a guitar or leave their boyfriends.
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
May 9, 2001
'Free All Angels': Ash
Rock music right now seems to be concentrated into two factions. On one side, you have the shouty angry Limp Bizkit, Slipknot, At The Drive In types and on the other there's Mogwai, Radiohead and a million other slow-fi bands drooling onto their fretboards. What's common to both camps is that neither are happy. Or at least pretend not to be in the name of cool. It seems a crime these days for rock bands to make music that makes you smile. Unless your name is Ash, that is.
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
May 9, 2001
'Movimento': Madredeus
The musical form fado takes off from the Portuguese concept of saudade, or "yearning," which dwells on things that are lost: a mother, a sweetheart, home. However, the music of Madredeus, Portugal's most popular group, has always contained an element of hopefulness, a yearning for things still possible.
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
May 9, 2001
New venue: Someday
Someday, one of the best jazz clubs in Tokyo, has moved from its longtime digs in Shin-Okubo to Kagurazaka. With the club specializing in big band, large Latin and midsize straight-ahead groups, the old place was always packed shoulder to shoulder -- on stage and off. The new location is spacious enough for one of the, say, 16, players in a band to take a solo without knocking over the music stands.
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
May 2, 2001
Arrested Development
The name of Arrested Development could have become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Bringing intelligent life to the hip-hop scene in 1992 with its debut, "Three Years, 5 Months and 2 Days in the Life of . . . ," this Atlanta-based unit deftly detoured around gangsta rap's dead end while keeping the messages relevant. Four years, two Grammys and two albums later, the life of Arrested Development came to an abrupt halt. Some said it had fallen victim to record-label mergers; others placed the blame on the controlling tendencies of AD's outspoken leader, Speech. Most agreed, though, this was a sad development.
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'So hot you can't breathe': Extreme heat hits the Philippines
A pedestrian cools himself with a folding hand fan as he waits for a ride along a road in Manila on Wednesday, as extreme heat hit the Philippines.
Raising kids in Japan as a single parent? It takes a village.
Making things work as a foreign, single mother in Japan isn't easy, but these tips and tricks can help you through the hardest parts.
Yen rebounds strongly after first slide past ¥160 since 1990
The yen dropped to ¥160.245 per dollar on Monday before heading into the other direction to ¥155.01 amid speculation of an intervention by Japanese currency authorities.
JAL cancels international flight after captain gets drunk at Dallas hotel
A Japan Airlines' flight from Dallas to Tokyo was canceled last week after its captain got drunk at a local hotel.
Climate change, chalky grains and the risks for Japan’s rice farmers
A farmer plants seedlings in Satsumasendai, Kagoshima Prefecture. Japan’s self sufficiency rate for rice is nearly 100%, compared with 38% for food overall, on a calorie basis.
Japan wants you to spend more with ‘luxury tourism’
Performers play a traditional drum unique to Wajima, Ishikawa Prefecture, in the prefectural capital of Kanazawa on March 16 to mark the extension of the Hokuriku Shinkansen line to Tsuruga Station in Fukui Prefecture.
Theaster Gates’ ambitious ‘Afro-Mingei’ brings Black Chicago to Tokyo
Theaster Gates' “A Heavenly Chord” lines up church pews before seven speakers and a Hammond B3 organ, a type of electric organ prevalent in Black American churches.
Casa del Cibo: A thriving jewel born from Tohoku’s harsh past
When chef Ryohei Ikemi moved to Hachinohe, Aomori Prefecture, and opened Casa del Cibo in 2011, it was the first proper Italian restaurant in the city.
Town to block view of Mount Fuji in response to overtourism
The town government of Fujikawaguchiko, Yamanashi Prefecture, decided to set up a 2.5-meter-high screen to prevent tourists from taking pictures of Mount Fuji looming behind a convenience store.

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