Welcome! ようこそ!

I set up this blog to hopefully introduce those outside Japan to some of Japan's best music and a taste of Osaka and Kyoto's thriving underground music scene.

Alot of what I post will be CDR's and CD's sold by bands on the Kyoto/Osaka live circuit. Hopefully giving a little exposure to the bands outside Japan. The rest will be Japanese bands from pretty much any and every generation and genre. From 60's Rock'n'Roll and folk to 00's noise and electronica.

If anyone has an issue with me uploading their music please contact me and I'll remove the links immediatley. My intention is to introduce this music to new audiences. So please help support these bands by buying their releases or catching them live if you have the opportunity. Alot of these guys are working full time jobs on top of making great music. Please send comments, complaints, recommendations and seasonal greetings to stinkinhippy@hotmail.com

Tuesday 28 September 2010

SEX+Y - SEX+Y

Talking of un-google-ble band names meet SEX+Y (Apparently just pronounced sexy.) Ignore that awful cover artwork for a moment and you'll acutally find a pretty cool band. SEX+Y lie somewhere between the lo-fi bedroom pop of Shonen Knife and the batshit-cutesy crazyness of Afrirampo. Sweetly sung pop one minute, wailing banshees the next. It's very girly, very Japanese, very loud and also very good.

Myspace
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RaP - Chaos/Process vol 2

I was hoping to find this bands website or myspace before I posted this but after hours of endless searching I can tell you that Rap is quite possibly the most un-google-ble band name you'll ever come across. Unfortunatley there's also no cover artwork or track listing for the bands CDR either. What you get is 10 tracks of what sounds like semi-improvised rehearsal studio recordings. Noisy, sometimes jazzy, sometimes funky freeform experimentation. There's some pretty impressive fret work in here but it's not all pretentious noodling. When it hits a groove you'll probably find yourself doing a bit of good old fashioned toe tapping and head bopping.

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Gezan - Ichijitekina Chou (下山- 一時的な腸)

The bassist is naked, the guitarist is wearing some some of sequined transparent leotard and the vocalist has set his mic stand in the middle of the crowd and is busy climbing and jumping off anything that's strapped down and throwing around anything that isn't. These guys just don't really give a fuck. The Osaka quintet spew feedback drenched psychedelia and noise that would make a hippy weep. No peace, love and happiness here. The band have to be seen live to be properly appreciated and it's not that their music is the greatest but their "Fuck you all!" approach to things has a definate charm to it. 






Monday 6 September 2010

Groundcover - Psycho Bass

Don't really know much about these guys other than that they're from Tokyo and seem to have been together for around 3 or 4 years. Caught them when they came over to Kyoto with Bossston Cruizing Mania a few weeks back. They're definatley one of the more memorable bands I've seen recently. Brutal hardcore noise mixed with the schizophrenic experimentalism the Boredoms, a touch of Boris' more groove orientated slab rock and some kazoo. "Psycho Bass" is the band's 2nd full length album released back in June and even came with a free Groundcover branded Kazoo. Awesome.

Myspace
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