Two questions are typically asked surrounding Fujirock: “Are you going?” and “How was it?” Recently the answer to the first has been yes, while the answer to the second generally begins with “Wet” and gets more complicated from there. Despite the weather perpetually being an issue during the three-day megafest in the mountains of Yuzawa, a little known town in rural Niigata, the mainstay of the now 13 year-old music festival is almost always the sideshows. So a fan would be excused if they were lured to the expensive midsummer …

HESO contributor Maria Golomidova shows off her photographic skill at the Tokyo Crossover Jazz Festival

HESO heads to the mountains of Niigata for Fujirock to see My Bloody Valentine, Tricky, Grandmaster Flash, Lee “Scratch” Perry, Special Others & more

On paper they read like a relatively run-of-the-mill, up and coming alternative rock band: two guitars, bass, drums, female vocalist all playing their hearts out for an eclectic independent label from backwoods, USA. Yet Deerhoof is not your typical San Francisco band. Nor is KRS (Kill Rock Stars) your typical label. Though somehow the two are a perfect fit, Deerhoof ranking as the all-woman-run, Olympia-based label’s oldest and best-selling act. Originating as a drums and guitar duo in the mid-90s, it has taken over ten years, ten albums and ten …

Cornelius is not a man. Nor, for that matter, is he an ape (though the name comes from Planet of the Apes). Cornelius is a musical group founded by Oyamada Keigo (小山田圭吾) in the early 90s after his Shibuya-kei duo with Ozawa Kenji, Flipper’s Guitar, split up. Suddenly a solo act, Oyamada spent the next five or so years crafting his persona and honing his production skills, a sabbatical ultimately culminating in what made it all worth the wait—the music.
1997 saw Cornelius break into various European and American indie scenes …

THOU SHALT THINK FOR YOURSELVES

They say a picture’s worth a thousand words/ so with this thousand words/ I‘ll paint a picture in your mind that breaks the rule of thirds…sound the first lines of Scroobius Pip’s album opener “1000 Words”. “Anyone can write a poem if you’ve got something to say,” he says when we meet before one of his recent London shows. Be that as it may, not everyone can stand and deliver like Scroobius Pip. Each time I revisit his self-released debut album No Commercial Breaks, I find …