"I don't want people to treat me like a god," says Keiji Haino, chuckling. "I want to be a bad boy, right until the end." An audience with the 65-year-old iconoclast, a towering figure on Japan's underground music scene, is always memorable. When I meet ...
Few figures have played as pivotal a role in the recent history of Japanese avant-garde music as Hideo Ikeezumi, founder of P.S.F. Records, who passed away on Feb. 27 at the age of 67. For more than three decades, Ikeezumi ran the label from the ...
While the J-pop mainstream seemed in 2016 to have finally and irreversibly consummated the awkward courtship of streaming technology, the year was business as usual for the basement-dwellers of the indie and underground scenes. And as usual, the result was a raft of terrific ...
A big part of Japanese music's wild overseas image is defined by groundbreaking artists from the Kansai area. Encompassing Osaka, Kyoto and Kobe, as well as nearby Nara and Wakayama, Kansai's scene has exerted a powerful influence over international perceptions of Japanese music, particularly ...
Kyoto four-piece Homecomings excel at capturing the small, sad details of life. "I write down the melancholic moments in my daily life, like sudden depression or the mood on a cloudy day," says guitarist Yuki Fukutomi via email from their hometown. "Then I put those ...
I have been traveling around the country since September meeting people involved in different independent music scenes in such places as Hokkaido, and Iwate and Saitama prefectures. After taking a break over winter, I resumed my travels this month and headed to the contrasting ...
While talking to the members of indie rock band Cairo, I can't help but feel their sense of excitement. After all, this is their first interview ever. Explaining the ideas behind their debut album, "Same as Before," the four guys, who are all in their ...
Around 50 people are watching Kaznary Mutow of the band Boys Age thrash his guitar on a Friday night at Shimokitazawa club Three. He's in the middle of a 10-minute-plus psychedelic freakout, locked into an intense slow-burning session with drummer Takamasa Kobayashi. It's a bit ...
Here's a joke: When is a bag not a bag? Give up? When it's a symbol for the shifting place of music in the pop cultural landscape. . . . I'm here all week, folks. Try the veal. Music occupies a strange position in our ...
Since 2001, Fuji Rock's Rookie a Go-Go stage has spotlighted indie talents not quite ready for the festival's larger areas. Acts apply to play — this year 1,300 bands vied for 15 slots — and with the exception of Taiwan's Go Chic in 2010, ...
"Instrumental post-rock" is probably the worst way to introduce a band, and by this point 90 percent of this article's readers will have probably fled to the sports section. Many of the most celebrated Japanese instrumental post-rock bands have carved a niche for themselves as ...
"There's this idea (among Japanese bands) that you have to make something different from the Western music you listen to," says Yuto Uchino, singer for indie rock band The fin. "I was really trying hard to write in Japanese, but it was awkward. The ...
