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

Thursday 2 June 2011

Mach 1.67 - Star Burn

I'd been after this CD for quite a while so was happy as a pig in shit to find it lurking in Forever Record's Japanese underground/indie section for 500 yen. Mach 1.67 is the band formed by influential 70's Japanese new wave movie director Ishii Sogo (Who's groundbreaking movies inspired directors like Tsukamoto Shinya: Tetsuo Iron Man and Takashi Miike: Ichi The Killer among others.) and acclaimed Japanese actor Tadanobu Asano. The band originally formed in 1996 and released an LP before the members went their seperate ways on various film and music projects. The band reformed in 2000 and put out the single "Star Burn". A year later Ishii Sogo used the single as the soundtrack and visual inspiration for his awesome 2001 film "Electric Dragon 80,000 Volts". A 50min black & White punk movie about 2 rival "superheroes" battling it out in down town Tokyo. A cinematic audio/visual overload of face melting proportions.

Mach 1.67 much like Sogo Ishii's own movies deliver some harsh balls to the wall punk rock but the standout track on the single and the movie is without doubt epic 9 minute sleezy, ghetto dub creep of "Electric Buddha". Hopefully we'll see the winning combination of Sogo and Tadanobu pairing up again someday.

Download
Electric Dragon Trailer 

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