Chittsu - Tokugawa Kotaro (チッツ - 徳川幸太郎)

Chittsu have been around for quite a few years now and have slowly been picking up a loyal following for their catchy punk romps that are a satisfying mix of nostalgic Blue Hearts-esque anthemic punk and some of Osaka's more disperate underground sounds. The appeal is that the bands "rough around the edges" punk is merely a guise for some seriously infectious pop tunage.

The local 4-piece were recently signed up by a Japanese label so 2012 promises to be a big year for the band. In preperation for their label release they've slowly been taking their DIY CDR's out of circulation sadly making their much sought after releases an increasing rarity. Tokugawa Kotaro is a CDR album the band put out in a limited quanity in late 2010. 

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Kasumi Trio (カスミトリオ) - Tsunashi 十

Kasumi Trio (Although there are actually 4 members on this outing.) are a local supergroup of sorts made up of Michishita Shinsuke (LSD March) on electric guitar, Ueno Takashi (Tenniscoats) on acoustic guitar, Takahashi Ikuro (Nagisa Ni Te) on drums and artist and frequent Tenniscoats collaborator Umeda Tetsuya playing around with a variety of noisy homemade contraptions and instruments.

The music actually ends up being a fairly balanced mix of all the members own musical projects. The breezy acoustic stylings of Nagisa Ni Te, combined with the experimental wanderings of the Tenniscoats and topped off with a touch of LSD March's brand of sombre psychedelia. The tracks combine delicatley composed repeating acoustic passages with subtle use of noise and atmospherics courtesy of Michishita and Umeda. The band are best experienced live if only to catch a glimpse of Umeda Tetsuya's bizarre and wonderful noise contraption that includes vibrating ping pong ball platforms, magnetised oscillating tube amps and electrified spark fans. (Checkout the youtube clip.) The whole album has a nice laidback breezy feel to it but spices it with some experimentation to create an interesting counterpoint. The album also comes in a rather cool foldout cardboard package that resembles the cutout paper snowflakes children make.

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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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Wada Shinji (和田晋侍) - Pana 8

Wada Shinji is one of Osaka's best and most respected drummers. Probably known best for his work with Psychedelic supergroup D.M.B.Q. and his own sideproject Kyojin Yueni Dekai Wada boasts techincal ability, imagination and wall rattling brutality in equal measure. "Pana 8" is a rare self released CDR Wada was selling on his tours last year. What you get is 20 minutes of Wada beating his drums into bloody submission in an extended improv session with the occasional bit of filtered effects to add a little texture to the proceedings. Thankfully Wada manages to keep things reigned in and stop the whole thing feeling like a self celebratory wank-a-thon and actually delivers a rather listenable and engaging experience that will still hold appeal for even non-drum nuts.

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Capuchin - Takaramachi (Capuchin - 宝町)

Well it's time to put my money where my mouth is I guess. This is actually my own album. Capuchin was a solo project I started shortly after coming to Japan. Inspired by the sights and sounds around me in my new enviroment I set about trying to fuse my field recordings with live instrumentation and to try and use sound collages as a part of the music. I was listening to alot of Four Tet and Manitoba/Caribou at the time so it has a "Folktronica" feel to it. Though almost all of the instrumentation is from live recorded instruments rather than samples which were then later chopped up and looped etc. The recordings date back to around 2005/2006 but the album was put out by Easel a Japanese sub-division of Prefuse 73's own Eastern Developments label in late 2008.

The title "Takaramachi" refers to the name of the neighbourhood in which a group of my Japanese friends shared a flat together. Around the time the label decided to release the album the friends, many of whom had been close friends ever since kindergarten went their seperate ways after getting married, changing jobs etc etc and genrally being caught up by lifes ebb and flow. So I named the album after the flat as a nostalgic tribute.

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Hamah Moh - Ghost Slider

Hamah Moh is a Kyoto based singer/songwriter who writes some impressively dank and dingy ballads using his disctinctively raspy resonator guitar and slide setup. Backed by harmonium and the occasional bit of didgeridoo and percussion Hamah's lengthy. sparse, bluesy dirges have an almost Eastern flavour to them managing to fuse blue grass, folk and eastern influences with elements of traditional Japanese folk music. To be honest I find his vocals to be a little grating after a while (He has a slight "tang" in his voice that sounds a little forced, but perhaps it's not so noticeble if you don't know Japanese.) but he does a great job of creating music that manages to be dark but also surprisingly uplifting and upbeat. Hamah even manages a worthy cover of Japan's multi-talented comedian turned actor turned songwriter turned painter turned author turned movie director turned university professor Kitano Takeshi's "Asakusa Kid".

Dim the lights and break out the cigars and whisky for maximised listening pleasure.

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Ultra Jr. - We R ULTRA Jr.

OK I got a couple of great responses and requests from the Ultra Bide post so I thought I'd upload this rare CDR. Ultra Jr are one of Hide from Ultra Bide's many sideprojects. Featuring Jinichiro Ida (A.K.A. JJ) from Limited Express (Has Gone?) and current Shonen Knife drummer Reo. Sadly the band were fairly short lived and only put out 2 CDR singles. The band have been on indefinite hiatus since Reo joined as Shonen Knife's drummer after the tragic death of their previous drummer China in a car accident while touring the U.S. Unfortunatley I don't have the other single otherwise I'd bundle them together.

Jr. are much closer in spirit to JJ's band Limited Express (Has Gone?) with Hide taking a backseat role and letting JJ and Reo share vocal duties. Sadly the single is only 2 tracks long but shows alot of the promise the project had which will hopefully one day be fullfilled.

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