Shugo Tokumaru has a busy year ahead of him. Shortly after releasing his fifth full-length album, In Focus? (out now), Tokumaru confirmed a U.S. tour opening for Kishi Bashi, including first ever trip to the west coast & SXSW. Kicking off on February 22 in Seattle and concluding March 9th in New Orleans, Tokumaru will [...]
As the sparse synthesizer and video games breaks beep to life on the first track of The Stone Collection Of Tim & Puma Mimi we hear a Puma Mimi ask a question, “Acchi, kocchi, acchi, kocchi, dochi ni ikou?” (Here, there, here, there, which way to go?). It is unclear if she’s asking us or [...]
Nisennenmondai Fan (美人レコード、2010) Fan is not music. It is not the deliberate construction of an emotional narrative employing intervals of sound and silence. At thirty-five minutes and a single track, Tokyo trio Nisennenmondai’s (translated loosely as “the Y2K Bug”) 2009 recording for 美人レコード (Bijin Records) thwarts the listener at every turn. It is played like [...]
Millions in this our twenty-first century have danced with abandon and sensuous joy to music played under the sun and moon, clouds and stars, on massive sound systems, to humongous crowds, where it may be just as hard to remember the music as to forget it: I’m alluding to those events known as rock festivals—those [...]
They made me sign a contract stipulating I wouldn’t badmouth the show. By writing this I will most likely not be invited back. I am fine with this. I am of the opinion that these massive festivals should be done way with altogether. The only thing a baseball stadium should be used for is burning [...]
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, [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
