Bossston Cruizing Mania - Live

Apologies for the lengthy lull in posting. A variety of distractions are to blame including work, various music projects and diving into the world of ipad/iphone music/noise production. Anway I'll try and make it up for the next week or so by updating more frequently.

I posted some Bossston Cruising Mania stuff quite a while back and got quite a positive response from people including some requests for more material. Sadly the bands output during their 15 plus year lifespan has been limited to a handful of difficult to find studio albums and a variety of even more difficult to find self released CDRs. Being that the band are from Tokyo they only head over Osaka way very infrequently. Luckily I did pick up their most recent CDR during their appearence at the Kyoto Boredom festival this summer. "Live" is as the title suggests a recording of a live set made at Tokyo Enban 12-11-2010. The recording quality isn't great but is definatley listenable and a bit of DIY rawness never hurts a band like this.

For those that didn't already check out the earlier Bosston post their music could be best described as a mix of post-punk, dub and no-wave. Think Public Image inc. fused with the Contortions and a splash of The Specials with socially charged rapped/spoken word lyrics scattered over rolling dub basslines and staccato guitars. The band recently put out their 4th studio album "Loaded, Lowdead, Rawdead" (Poking fun at the inability to distinguish between the 3 words when rendered in Japanese or spoken in shaky Japinglish.) and is well worth checking out for fans. You'll find many of the same tracks that appear on "In Dub/No Dub" and "Live" albeit with slightly different arrangements. It's an excellent album but the band have a tendency to overproduce their studio recordings when the band actually sound their best when their at their most sparse and minimal.

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Nohshintoh - Cannibal Circus (のうしんとう - Cannibal Circus）

"Nohshintoh is like a baby, both cute and grotesque at the same time..." is how the band describe themselves on their website and it's pretty accurate. Nohshintoh (Literally meaning concussion in Japanese.) are a Nagoya 5 piece who have actually been around for over 20 years and have finally got round round to releasing their first studio album. It's a new release so I won't be uploading it just yet (It is superb though and worth checking out.) but luckily the band have an open policy of letting people record at their shows and even have a free archive of live recordings. So I picked through a few of them and plucked out the one that had the best sound and performance and uploaded it for your listening pleasure. If you'd like to hear more just check out their archive here. All files can be streamed or downloaded for free.

This recording was made at KD Japon in Nagoya in 2008. As for the music, well it's a wonderfully schizophrenic mix between no-wave punk, dub, ska and funk. One minute it's steel drums and thick reggae bass lines and the next it's frantic hardcore drumming and rabid guitar savagery all mashed together a refreshingly un-self concious manner that Japanese bands seem to do so well. Equal parts catchy and sweet and equal parts challenging and "grotesque". Imagine James Chance & The Contortions jamming with Manu Chao and you're halfway there. Many of the tracks in this recording also make an appearence on the album albeit in a slightly more refined forms.

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Killer Bong - Osaka Dub

...and I've saved the best for last. The awesomely named Killer Bong is another local Osaka DJ and beat maker and he has some awesome music to back up his awesome name. Killer reminds me alot of early DJ Krush with a similarly sparse, minimal ambient sound. This is dark and grimy down-tempo, trippy instrumental hip-hop/dub at its best. There's not alot of info around on Killer Bong (His utterly perplexing website won't help any either.) but what I do know is that he released his first album back in 2003 on the Osaka hip-hop label Black Smoker Records created by local Hip-hop unit Think Tank. (K-Bomb, Baba, Jube, D.N.A., DJ Yazi, Wadake and Chi3-Chee.). Most recently he hooked up with the legendery vocalist Suzuki Damo (Best known for his work with Krautrock band Can on their albums "Tago Mago" and "Ege Bamyasi") to release a collaboration of improvised music. It's just come out so I won't be uploading yet but it is fairly limited release so I won't make you wait too long.

"Osaka Dub" is the first in his series of "Dub" CD-R albums released in 2005 which also include "Tokyo Dub" and "Moscow Dub". Not sure what the significance of the cities is as none of the albums are live recordings or seem to figure into the albums in any way. "Osaka Dub" is probably my favourite of his releases but pretty much eveything he's done is gold and despite being fairly elusive is well worth the trouble of tracking down.

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Bossston Cruizing Mania - No Dub/ In Dub

Had the pleasure of seeing these guys play at Metro on Satruday. Interesting mix of broken funk, dub and spoken word vocals with a touch of Captain Beefheart. Bossston Cruizing Mania (That's 3 s's) are a Tokyo band that have been around in one form or another since 1993. "No Dub/ In Dub" is a pair of live recordings they are selling at their shows. Same track list and order but recorded at different venues. Apparently the only real difference is that "In Dub" has some dubbed over effects and instrumentation in it. Although to be honest it's barely noticable.

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