zOoOoOm

The uncategorisable zOoOoOm whooshed, screamed and battered their way into my affections during a show at Kyoto livehouse Whoopies exactly four years ago. They were supporting another act (probably Limited Express) and I remember thinking how lucky I was to have stumbled accidentally on the missing link between Hawkwind and the Slits, a link which had remained hidden for so long because no-one had bothered to look for it:

zOoOoOm - Rumble Bush

 

They are quite simply no ordinary band. While displaying the usual Kansai tendency towards lurching heaviness, zOoOoOm are rescued from dirge oblivion by sheer danceability and the yelps, wails and general restless energy of singer Nakasima. In summer 2004 they released their first and so far only album Eight My Heart. Things have been pretty quiet ever since.

Fast forward to the present and it turns out zOoOoOm are even greater admirers of the Slits than anyone had imagined. A couple of months ago the following footage turned up of the band at the same venue last year performing a Slits song: the wondrous Love Und Romance. The vocalist that night? None other than chief mouth of the Slits Ari Up! Although be warned, she does cut a less than wondrous figure these days:

They say you should never meet your heroes. It’s wisdom that zOoOoOm may eventually concur with, although it’s hard to fault them in this case. For those still unfamiliar with the Slits’ 1979 debut album Cut, a jawdropping fusion of Studio One and Marvin Gaye with the abrasive spirit of London’s punk scene, let me just say that in socioeconomic diagrams that compare countries, the overall joie de vivre of each nation could be no better represented than by a mud-caked, barebreasted Ari Up inflated in direct proportion to how revered Cut is in its territory. Japan would have almost as swollen an Ari as her native UK, which is why she seems to be hanging around here a lot.

At around the same time the Slits reunion tour reached Japan late last year, Ari found time to go into the studio with Tokyo dub outfit Rebel Familia and record with them a truly diabolical song called Musical Terrorist (visit the band’s MySpace to see what I mean) which seemed to prove only that her faux-Jamaican singing voice has grown more embarrassing in proportion to Cut’s influence. The Ari of today seems a lost, even tragic figure minus the presence of the other Slits, not to mention the guiding hand of Cut producer Dennis Bovell. She was, after all, only 15 years old when Cut was recorded.

The latest news is that zOoOoOm are now also in the studio recording new material with the former Slit. We look forward to finding out if having a young Japanese band behind her can finally get Ari working properly again.

Syzygys

Syzygys (pronounced she-jee-jeez) were a female duo comprised of Nara-born Hitomi Shimizu on the microtonal organ and Tokyo-born Hiromi Nishida on the violin. Between 1985 and 1995 they created some of the most offbeat music ever to fall under the banner of pop. The phrase ‘quirky lunacy’ always seems to appear in their maddeningly short biography and, as much as I hate to recycle perceived wisdom, I see no reason not to agree.

A typical Syzygys composition is deliriously askew, barrelling through various time signatures almost to the point of breaking up before gliding back into the slipstream of a warm contagious melody. The Syzygys sound is driven by the mysterious cadences of Harry Partch’s 43 note-to-the-octave microtonal organ, pictured above, a conventional Yamaha reed organ reassembled and relabelled to indicate special ‘Syzygy chords’. You too can try your hand at playing most of Harry Partch’s musical inventions online at this genius website.

While the original Syzygys releases have remained locked away in obscurity, the duo’s entire recorded catalogue was compiled on one CD by Tzadik Records for their New Japan series in 2003 and now lies within tantalising reach of your mouse pointer. That may have served to release the fluttering butterfly that is Syzygys’ music from its jar, but it didn’t shed much light on who the original protagonists were.

Until now, that is! Hitomi Shimizu has recently relaunched the Syzygys website which, as well as allowing you to ‘play’ (in my experience, ‘press the keys of’ always feels like a more apt description) the microtonal organ itself, includes more biographical details and updates on both members’ current activities.

Since they ceased making music together, the pair have pursued very different musical careers. Shimizu is an award-winning film composer who works with Yamamura Animation Studios, lending her quirky atmospheric style most recently to a film version of Franz Kafka’s A Country Doctor in 2007. For these projects she still uses the Syzygys name. Nishida, whose Arabic-flavoured violin lunges were just as integral a part of the duo’s sound, went on to study the instrument further in Cairo in the late ’90s and has toured Tunisia, Egypt and France. Here’s what made them special in the first place:

Syzygys - Fauna Grotesque

4 Bonjour’s Parties

Some bands just make it hard for themselves. 4 Bonjour’s Parties practically insist that I DON’T buy their 2007 debut Pigments Drift Down To The Brook. For a start, the name of the Tokyo seven-piece is symptomatic of the overrated ’90s Shibuya-kei scene, suggesting an unwanted package of nostalgic vanilla pop lies in wait.

The title of the album impresses me even less: seemingly invented for Pitchfork reviewers with its lazy invocation of the kind of pastoral analogue electronica that automatically gets rewarded with an 8.2 review. No offence, but I already have at least ten as-yet-unheard albums of pastoral analogue electronica waiting for me at home, so I don’t need another, thanks. Shall we end today’s post right there?

No, let’s pursue this a little further. Los Angeles-based Mush Records have just picked up Pigments Drift Down To The Brook for international release after glowing reviews in Japan and they are kindly making lead single Satellite available as a free taster. Watch the video and download the song if you like it:

4 Bonjour’s Parties - Satellite

Again, 4 Bonjour’s Parties are going all out to dissuade me. I don’t really like this video. It’s clever and beautifully executed but leaves me cold. The story of the dog Laika, the first sentient creature in space, may be the subject of Satellite but that’s not something I really need to know. The storyboarded action diminishes not enhances the song, turning it into the kind of perfumed lifestyle product on sale at Beaux-Arts or Afternoon Tea. Before we go any further, I should balance this with a confession: I don’t really like any music videos that aren’t straight-to-camera performances.

However, there’s something about Koji Ueno’s vocal that gets under the skin. Wracked with the same quizzical sense of detachment as that of Maher Shalal Hash Baz’s Tori Kudo, it’s augmented on this record by light and skippy female vocals from his cast of magical musical supporters. Unlike Maher though, 4 Bonjour’s Parties tend towards lush, expansive arrangements that suggest commercial success is nothing to be afraid of.

This next video finally persuades me. Watching 4 Bonjour’s Parties onstage is like seeing alchemy performed live. The seven-member cast fulfill their roles with minimal fuss, hand-sewing what in chamber pop circles must always be referred to as a ‘quilt’ of elegant song in a performance as genuinely beautiful as it is shorn of theatrics. I recommend this album:

OORUTAICHI

As we’ve covered his pal Shabushabu and his supergroup Obakejaa in recent days, we may as well fully triangulate by giving you… what exactly? OORUTAICHI hasn’t done much recently but when you’re the mad digital cypher responsible for the irresistible alien-funk masterwork Misen Gymnastics, where do you go next? Another galaxy?

Actually, there is some activity of sorts to report: first album Drifting My Folklore, still the best introduction to music from the fictitious country known as OORUTAICHI, has been given a proper worldwide release as of December 2007 (samples here).

The Osaka-born DJ, who counts Queen, Stevie Wonder, Aphex Twin and The Residents among his influences has also put out a video for Misen Gymnastics long after the track’s original release back in 2003. It’s a pretty minimal affair featuring the man himself freestyle swaying to his own cosmic jungle-funk and miming to his own made-up language while projected cartoon critters gyrate with the naive innocence of the music:

You simply must watch this. As OORUTAICHI puts it: “Large scale melody and unprecedented singing are very unique.” Or, as we say: “Get those Beatles songs back from space! Here’s the ambassadorial message we should be sending…”

Obakejaa

Let’s not shy from the fact that Obakejaa is that most maligned of creations: a supergroup. DJs Shabushabu and OORUTAICHI, a kind of Cheech and Chong of the Kansai music scene, began recording as Obakejaa - which can be translated as ‘It’s a Ghost!’ - in 2004 and have released two albums on Okimi Records.

With its heavy debt to dancehall rudeness, B-movie production values and yosakoi stylings, the pair describe their own sound as like “clumsy toys”. In this video for the song Butamatsuri - ‘pig festival’ - from their self-titled debut album, Obakejaa hitch a ride to the farm to show off their down-and-dirty call-and-response skills, try out their latest Oinktronics mixing desk tools and end it all with a meet-and-greet with some appreciative curly-tailed fans. Oddly enough, Butamatsuri didn’t even make it onto Japan’s 2004 shortlist for word of the year, which went instead to 「災」sai, meaning disaster. Overlooked by history but not by Japan Onchi, here are Obakejaa:

Shabushabu

One of the strangest objects to emerge from the Japanese DJ-ing underground in 2007 was the first album proper by Kyoto’s Shabushabu. Released by Okimi Records in November, All In One Pot is a hodgepodge of musical ingredients ranging from the onchi to the damn catchy, all given the ’shabushabu’ treatment, i.e. lightly dipped in a self-consciously wacky broth.

The standout track is unarguably Honyanko Bushi, which answers the hitherto unasked question: what might OOIOO backing the Spice Girls actually sound like?

Shabushabu is also the man primarily responsible for the faltering output of OORUTAICHI. He’s been keeping the lyrical genius and Okimi Records founder busy in their two-man caper Obakejaa, the terrifying results of which will be shown here later today.

Hagure

Yesterday’s Japanese no wave act Prostitute created an appetite for the kind of frantic rhythms and blaring sax attack most often associated with Ted Milton’s Blurt: an appetite it ultimately couldn’t satisfy.

Hagure might just stave off the hunger for another day. They’re an unsigned band from Kyoto who describe themselves as making “weird instrumentals” and have so far released just two self-financed singles. Information on the band is pretty scarce so I’ve translated just about everything on the band’s MySpace page, where they also let fly with some tracks of rare quality.

Hagure began life as a four-piece in 2004. In November 2006 they released the astounding double-sided single Uchuu-Hirune b/w DISCO! which should be still available on iTunes. The same year they were featured in issue 13 of Cinra Magazine. In July last year they lost a bassist (not in the euphemistic sense, or even the literal last-seen-wandering-in-the-fuuzoku sense - he left the band) and are now recruiting. The current members are alto saxophonist Shi Fukuyama, guitarist Youichi Nozaki and drummer Seiji Kurakawa. They released a follow up three-track EP imaginatively titled 3 in November 2007.

The name 「はぐれ」Hagure is literally an exhortation to roll up or turn over and the music does not disappoint: choppy post-punk guitar rhythms take care of the feet and leave the mind wide open for Fukuyama’s deft sax-playing. Here’s a live version of Uchu-Hirune which, for all you slumberous space cadets out there, means Space Nap:

Yoshino Daisaku & Prostitute

If you consider yourself a disciple of challenging but danceable music, chances are you own at least one compilation of late ’70s/early ’80s no wave featuring the likes of The Contortions, Bush Tetras and Arto Lindsay. The chances are also that said compilations don’t feature any Japanese bands, even when widened in scope to include international acts. That is, unless you’re counting Ikue Mori, New York-resident drummer of DNA. But here’s a track which proves that discerning Tokyo live music attendees would have been fully primed on frantic, sax-bleating no wave antics by 1980:

Yoshino Daisaku & Prostitute - Yama No Naka No Doppel-Kenken

Yoshino apparently came up with the bizarre German-Japanese portmanteau Doppel-Kenken himself as it features nowhere else but in this track, the title of which translates as Double Pandemonium in the Middle of the Mountains. The song appears on a compilation called Impossibles! 80’s Japanese Punk and New Wave. Yoshino Daisaku & Prostitute also released an album by the name of Shinu Made Odoritsuzukete (Keep Dancing Until You Die) in 1981. Other than this, very little is known. Wikipedia Japan has only one entry for musicians by the name of Yoshino Daisaku (吉野大作): a Gunma native born in 1951. The date of birth and listed musical styles would appear to indicate that it’s the same Yoshino, although there’s no mention of his no wave leanings or dalliance with Prostitute. Improbably, the entry lists his real-life occupation as teacher of classical literature at a major cram school chain in Japan!

And the eye-catching illustrations? My Yoshino-related search didn’t turn up any conclusive pictures but I did find out about the magazine Flying Body Press which appears to have run for a short time in Japan during the punk era and featured the slogan ‘Music Head Rock’ on every cover. Yoshino Daisaku did collage art for the May 1980 issue (top left) which was devoted to ‘avant gals’ such as Phew and the Non-Band. Yoshino also featured in the August 1980 issue (top right), having changed the spelling of his name to Yoshino Daisuck by that time. The lead feature on the cover is intriguingly titled ‘The Tombstone of Patriotism’. You had to be there.

Boredoms

Meet the Boredoms or, as they prefer to be known in Japan, V∞redoms: a noise collective based in Osaka but almost perpetually, it seems, on a global mission to deliver the gospel of righteous Japanese love-energy to ineffectual Western youth still transfixed by the ‘Capitalist savagery’ of approved alternative rock offerings.

Let’s stop right there. If you don’t know who the Boredoms are, you wouldn’t be here. Since you are here, why don’t you do the decent thing and stand for this year’s State of the Boredoms address?

The first major news to report is that the Boredoms have signed with Thrill Jockey outside Japan and the label will finally give 2007’s Super Roots 9 a proper worldwide release. This is the band’s first official live release and an essential document of the Boredoms’ transformation from the sometimes puerile, guitar-abusing ‘alternative’ act of the ’80s and ’90s to become arguably the world’s greatest percussion ensemble. Here’s that ensemble on a humanitarian mission to Copenhagen last summer to pummel some much needed love into once-tolerant Danes. The tree-shaped object at the back is Eye’s seven-necked guitar: the one he plays with, what else, a stick:

According to Thrill Jockey: Singles, special limited editions, along with albums will all be packaged in special custom designs by the Boredoms. Our focus will be to deliver ther records and the concepts behind the music in highly collectable formats of the band’s design. We will do so while also making the records available at a domestic price, and on formats, such as 320 bit-rate DRM -free downloads, not previously explored by the band.

The ‘domestic price’ promise is interesting as it would appear to clash with the promise of ’special custom designs’ by the band for their own releases. Here’s what you can really expect: last month the Boredoms released Live At Sunflancisco on Ryuichi Sakamoto’s Commmons label in Japan. It consists of a DVD of live footage that you’re unlikely to watch more than once plus a bonus CD featuring eleven minutes of new music that happens to be utterly essential. The list price? ¥4200, or around US$40.

So the Boredoms, like many a band that has reached middle age, find they have to somewhat shamelessly milk their core constituency to survive. Even that mountain of cash tipped over the band by Warner Music in the early ’90s doesn’t buy many seven-necked guitars! It can’t be much fun being the world’s most awe-inspiring, all-drumming juggernaut if you have to borrow money from lesser acts on the bill to fill up the tank.

For once, I’m willing to look the other way. In fact, more than that, I want to start the Boredoms Relief Fund. Listen to this eight minute excerpt from Super Roots 9: the only album to marry a celestial space choir to punishing taiko madness in 2007. The void that unfolds in your heart as the music fades out could well be the compulsion to go out and buy the album:

Boredoms - LIVWE! (edit)

Optrum

Tonight I will attend the promisingly titled Fuck Up! My Underground Era event at Shimokitazawa’s Basement Bar. Some Tokyo area bands that I feel the urge to investigate - namely Coma* and Henrytennis - are performing, while the light show is being taken care of by Optrum:

Let Optrum take care of all your lighting needs. Their fluorescent bulbs conserve energy and reduce bills by switching on and off at random intervals! Sure, there will be moments of terrifying darkness, but you will be guided on your way to the bathroom by the thunder of (renewable!) drumming to ensure that you never lose your bearings or drift off to sleep.

Please feel reassured as co-founder and ‘Optron player’ Atsuhiro Ito is a graduate of the Masters programme at Tama Art University and Optrum have already appeared at Barcelona’s Sonar Festival, considered by many to be the Olympics for professionals working in the field of electricity. The profile on the duo’s own website states their policy clearly:

“The light of the blinking fluorescent light, and the explosion noise emitted in connection with it. The rhythm which does not have the context at a reckless-run (stray?) & slam on the brake. Live performance which is not kind to ears to eyes, either. Those who see are made uneasy and allured to the whirlpool of a burst of laughter. 2 person groups of the rumor which does not make progress at all although it is a practice lover.”

So that settles it, then. It’s Merzbow meets Sonny & Cher. But which one is the abuser?