The Autopsy Report of a Drowned Shrimp - Himitsu Daigaku Vol.4 (溺れたエビの検死報告書 - ヒミツ大学第四回)

O is for Oboreta Ebi No Kenshi Houkokusho

Oboreta Ebi or the bands official English translation The Autopsy Report of a Drowned Shrimp are a band that even amongst Kansai's legion of off-the-wall eccentrics are in an oddball league entirely of their own.

Oboreta Ebi are the brainchild of visual artist and contra-bass player Yamamoto Kazuki (山本一慶). Kazuki developed a childhood obsession with "kaiju" (monsters) from Japanese movies and TV shows like Godzilla, Ultraman and Kamen Rider and dreamed of one day forming his very own kaiju band. Young Kazuki spent hours sketching designs and concepts in his school notebook before eventually settling on the idea of creating a band of monster shrimp. Fascinated by their alien-like exoskeletons he began making his own masks and costumes. But the concept didn't end there. Kazuki also wanted the band to sound like the sort of music one might a imagine a group of overgrown, sentient prawns making. 

So what sort of music do shrimp make? As it turns out they sound like a sort of cinematic, nautical themed P-Funk mixed The Residents and the Star Wars cantina band.In fact Kazuki's own dreadlocked shrimp mask is a tribute to to the grand wizard of funk himself George Clinton. Kazuki's frantic slapped basslines form the backbone of the crustean 7-pieces groove accompanied by a polyrhythmic percussion section and some grandiose horns. The bands also draws the inspiration for its name from the Frank Zappa album "Ship Arriving Too Late to Save a Witch".

The bands been together for over 10 years now in various evolving forms and have just recently put out their first proper release on Osaka underground label Gyuune Cassette which you can get here.

I won't be uploading that so the best alternative I could think of was to rip the audio from a DVD the band gave away at a talk show/performance I attended about 2 years ago. What you get is 3 tracks and over 15 minutes of decent audio quality music from one of the most unique and entertaining bands in Japan. Be sure to catch them live if you have the chance for and experience you won't forget.

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Chinchilla Silas Hole - Chinchilla (チンチラシラスホール - ちんちら)

I've posted about this Kyoto trio before as one of my favourite bands of 2010. (I liked them so much I even recruited their drummer into my own band.). The band are currently on hiatus due to work constraints but hopefully the band get back to playing regularly in the not to distant future as they showed a great deal of promise.

In my previous post I bemoaned their lack of recorded output and resorted to posting some of the bands bootleg recordings. Well it seems the band took it to heart and put out a CD-R of studio recordings mid-last year. The recording quality although a little underwhelming is at least clear and clean.

The drum, bass and vocals trio have a very distinctive style that is a little hard to describe.. Coming off as a quirky fusion of early Red Hot Chilli Peppers fused with a healthy dose of punk and occasional ramblings into noise territory. It's weird, catchy as hell and at the same time extremely natural sounding. The vocals are one of the most standout elements of the band as singer "Lighter"raps, rants and jabberwockies about his obsession with pets aresholes (See track 2 "Ano ana - That hole") and other such jibberish ramblings over basslines that hop scotch their way between funk breakdowns and punk workouts.    

With the band on hiatus and them only making about 50 copies of the CD (Nicely packaged in a shiny cardboard sleeve with artwork by vocalist lighter by the way) I'm not sure if the band are still selling the CD but feel free to contact either me or the band if you are intersted in tracking down your own copy. Enjoy!  

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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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ALTZ - Funk Do Wap

ALTZ is another local Osaka mix DJ I've discovered recently. "Funk Do Wap" is one of ALTZ recent mix CD releases but he's also a multi-instrumentalist who performs his own music and is a frequent remixer and collaborator. While DJ Memento's mix is straight up old-school ALTZ draws from a much more diverse pool of music ranging from classic funk right upto modern house and electronica. ALTZ has quite a reputation in Japan's club scene and frequently plays shows up and down the country. His reputation has also landed some high profile gigs in Europe and has had a number of his releases put out on U.K. label Bear Funk. ALTZ also sometimes performs under the name WALTZ.

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DJ Memento - Badassfunk Gets Nice and Mad

Recently I've been trying to crack my way into the local underground hip-hop and DJ scene as it's sadly been an area of neglect for me thus far. I've only just scratched the surface but have already made some great discoveries. DJ Memento is a local mix DJ and collage artist who plays sets every Friday night at Panorama in Osaka. "Badassfunk Gets Nice and Mad" is the 2nd mix CD-R from Memento and contains one non-stop 60 minute mix of the finest funk, jazz, psychedelic rock and retro TV samples. Memento likes to keep it old-school using only analogue techniques in his mixes/collages lifting all his music and samples from vinyl and videotapes.

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LIVE LOG: Degurutieni

A few weeks ago I went to the launch party for the release of the theater group Kodomo Kyojin's (子供鉅人) latest DVD. The group hired out a large warehouse and ran various performances, activities and bands throughout the evening. The highlight of which for me was Degurutieni. Never heard of him before I was very impressed. Something about that Tom Waits inspired down-tempo, jazzy groove really really clicks with me. I promptly bought his album but unfortunatley through itunes so as soon as I can figure a way of converting the files so they'll work for other people I'll be sure to upload it. For now this will have to do.

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Chinchilla Silas Hole - Socrates Live 2010 (チンチラシラスホール)

I'm going to partake in a little bit of Psuedo bootlegging here but it's all for a good cause. With consistantly impressive live shows and a well developed sound all their own Chinchillas Silas Hole were probably my favourite band of 2010. Everytime I've seen them I've begged them to put out a CDR of some sort but since the band have yet to do it themselves I decided to take the initiative. I ripped the live recordings off their Myspace page and ran them through some EQs and noise reducers to improve the quality a little. The audio quality isn't great but is hopefully listenable enough to appreciate this truly great band. 

Chinchilla are a Kyoto based bass, drums and vocals/Kaoss pad trio who have since 2009 slowly been building up a buzz on the Kyoto underground circuit along with bandmates Shut Up Merry. Pinpointing their sound is a little tricky but I think what I like about them so much is that they combine many of the traits familliar to Kansai's avant garde underground (Randomness, noise, humour, spontaneity and freneticism.) and roll them into some seriously catchy, hook laden grooves. One part punk, one part funk, one part Boredoms and 100% fuckin' great. 

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Osaka Monaurail - Reality For The People

Y'all feeling funky? Then ladies and gentlemen I present Osaka Monaurail. This 9 piece funk machine seriously know how to kick a groove. What you get here is 8 hot slabs of old school JBs, Sly Stone, Charles Wright style brass heavy deep funk. Unfortunatley these guys are probably much better known in Europe than inside Japan. Back in 2006 they put out an album with former JBs backing singer Marva Whitney and quite frequently do European tours. So if you get the chance check these guys out live an I promise a good time.

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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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