Hununhum

Another band for whom information is hard to come by, the mysterious Hununhum are a marginal collective made up of ex-members of various post-hardcore and screamo concerns, most notably Kulara. Recent live shows in the Tokyo area have acquired legendary status and inevitable comparisons to early Boredoms with their punishing tribal workouts and freeform structures leading to ecstatic payoffs.

In lieu of anything as conventional as a band description on their MySpace, this promotional video for interested AOR makes it clear what Hununhum will do to get a record deal:

We can only guess at the significance of the name. Because they’re un-hummable? Because they’re symmetry freaks? Because they wanted a near-palindrome that would look great on psychedelic posters of the late ’60s? Oh wait, another Hununhum site has surfaced. This one has a nice photo diary from last June’s Geshi Festival in Yoyogi Park and a flyer that pegs the band’s sound perfectly as “Tropacadelic Pascoalcore”. Which is a compact way of saying they take elements of Tropicalia, psychedelia, genius Brazilian folk-instrumentalist Hermeto Pascoal and their own hardcore origins, wrap them up in one big cone and smoke it like this:

Hununhum are fairly active in the Tokyo area. The best place to see them is at Super Deluxe where they played a Tropicadelic Dance Party with Jebiotto! last October and supported Mike Watt’s Brother’s Sister’s Daughter (not his niece, that’s just the terrible name of the band) last Friday. A bootleg is doing the rounds online but any studio recording will have to wait until some essential rewiring work is completed in the ceiling.