I’ve had a strange fascination with the rapper Illreme ever since I saw him back in 2005 with Bloodthirsty Butchers, Your Song Is Good, and BREAKfAST, among others at a small festival in Ebisu, Tokyo. I had no idea who this gangly, effeminate goofball sporting a microphone headset and sampler on his shoulder was, but he was cartoonishly likable enough. His set time passed by rather quickly and I would’ve probably forgotten about him otherwise, but he returned later on that day to rap over a song with Your Song Is Good as his backing band.

Soon enough, that song ended up on a 7″ split that Your Song Is Good would release with Mu-Stars (who, featuring Morimoto Zakkan from BREAKfAST, would deliver an equally wacky team up on the record’s other side). I snapped that record up, as a devoted YSIG fan, but didn’t expect to hear too much more out of our weird ol’ friend Illreme.

Then came We Love Katamari Damacy, the sequel to possibly the greatest game ever, featuring a song performed by none other than that thorn in your side with that high-pitched voice, Illreme. His contribution, “Kuru Kuru Rock,” was actually an amazingly catchy tune, with an appropriately shuffling beat with cute little falsetto voices and sound effects littered throughout. It’s truly a great compliment to a cute and silly game such as Katamari.

I’ll admit to having bought a few of Illreme’s records since, but I’ve never quite completely come around to his insane style. I think I may have latched onto him as my hope for something good to finally come out of the Japanese hip-hop scene (sorry for the blanket trashing, J-rap lovers), but I’m not sure if I’ve put my money on a good horse or not. Then again, even he’s got more class than something like this:

While digging up Illreme videos on youtube I was inspired to try to find other Japanese artists who I may have been missing out on in my hermit’s shell, but even the best I could find was still kind of disappointing, in that stilted vocal delivery sort of way:

I hate to be some sort of pro-English snob, but maybe the Japanese language doesn’t lend itself well to hip hop. Heck, even the catchy chorus of that Cypress Ueno song above uses an English phrase, “Make Money Money!!!” Furthermore, if Illreme is the most interesting thing I can find in Japanese hip-hop, what does that have to say for the whole country? Seriously, even a blind, albino rapper from Minnesota has more flavor than this stuff:

No, snazzy suits and booty shaking skanks do not equate to flavor, Rip Slyme. And, what exactly are they trying to do at the 3:15 mark? It almost looks like, well, the way a blind, whitey would dance (sorry for the blanket trashing, whiteys, but if it makes you feel better, my white half makes me a horrible dancer too).

Illreme will be touring Europe later this month as part of a group with Belgian DJ Duo Afrojaws called the Baleine 3000 Crew. He’s definitely a strange ambassador for Japanese hip-hop, but I hope the tour goes well.

23 May a-musik shop, Germany, (http://www.a-musik.com/)
24 May Koln, Germany Borderclash Radioshow
24 May Koln, Germany (http://www.tsunami-club.de/index.php?page=termine&id=263)
25 May Hamburg, Germany, Golden Pudel Club (http://www.pudel.com/)
27 May Aarhus, Denmark, TBA
29 May Copenhagen, Denmark, TBA
31 May Cherbourg, France, La Terra Trema Festival (http://laterratrema.com/)
01 June Cherbourg, France, (http://chaudelande.free.fr/) Residence
02 June Cherbourg, France, (http://chaudelande.free.fr/) Residence
03 June Cherbourg, France, (http://chaudelande.free.fr/) Residence
04 June Cherbourg, France, (http://chaudelande.free.fr/) Residence
06 June, Lille, France, TBA
07 June, Brussels, Bozar (http://www.bozar.be/home.php?lng=fr)

Beloved readers, we are proud to present to you a [mostly] unedited excerpt from a dialogue between Ricardo and Bob two days after The Kaze to Rock Festival show featuring Romanes, Sakerock and The Ging Nang Boyz on July 10, 2007.

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I had the misfortune to have been in attendance at Anime Expo this past weekend in Long Beach, California. The weather was beautiful, but I was unfortunately sequestered in a dimly lit dealer’s room peddling nerd wares to nerds, instead of enjoying the cool ocean breeze and ogling southern Californian honeys.

The convention organizers managed to snag some big name rockers to perform this year, among them punky diva Anna Tsuchiya and androgynous heartthrob Gackt’s new band S.K.I.N. The other guy working in the booth with me decided to go see Anna Tsuchiya, so I agreed to cover the booth while he took a short break to catch some of her noon time concert. Not only is scheduling a concert at noon a moronic idea, but Ms. Tsuchiya didn’t even start promptly, forcing my coworker to come back from break before he could even catch a single song. Apparently he missed out on a great show though, as I read in Anime Expo’s newsletter: “Dressed in a punk style of ripped tank top and cut-off shorts, she strutted across the stage like a teenager in a mall, not a care about what people thought—I am Anna Tsuchiya; love me for who I am.”
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You know what I’m talking about. There’s a certain quality that’s shared in the sound of bands like Sparta Locals, Vola and the Oriental Machine, and to a much lesser extent 9mm Parabellum Bullet. None of these bands are too similar to each other, but there’s certain aspects inherited from bands like Television and Gang of Four that they share, be it driving octave fueled bass lines and really tight, yet danceable rhythm.

So now we have… Chatmonchy, an all girl group that has a few of these qualities, but in a much more derivative manner. It seems like they were more influenced by bands like Sparta Locals rather than directly by Television, but the influence is there. It’s cool that there’s a girl group going for that type of sound. However, I’d say they’re 85% ZONE, 10% Television, and 5% GO!GO!7188. I guess being a cute girl band that plays cute songs with a cute singer that sings off key is what makes them popular. It’s also because they’re much more willing to go into a pop ballad than any of the other Televisoneers. I definitely see them getting more popular as time goes by. I bet they’re slated to be the next ZONE. Is this a good thing?

I think I’ve mentioned to death how awesome I thought the HY and Doug E. Fresh performance of “Street Story” at New York’s Japan Nite concert was. It totally came out of left field for me. It’s not like Japanese and Western collaborations are not possible, but they are pretty rare. Sometimes they turn out great (Christopher McGuire in Quruli) and sometimes they don’t meet all the hype (Utada Hikaru and Timbaland). What do you think would make a good team up as far as some of your favorite Japanese and Western artists?

I don’t know what street musicians are like in other cities of the world, but here in Tokyo, I’m sad to say, most of them suck.

There are exceptions to the rule. I always like to brag about the one time I saw PE’Z, before anyone knew who they were, play at that square off the east entrance of JR Shinjuku station. Needless to say, upon seeing them my mind was filled with a cornucopia of expletives, all of which run somewhere along the lines of “holy fucking shit!” That’s an extraordinary example of course, but PE’Z aside, it’s not entirely impossible to encounter music that’s actually worthwhile on the streets. Just don’t go out expecting to, because those instances will be rare and few.

Of course, most people in this day and age are equipped with the ability to tune out distractions of this sort, so they are mild annoyances at worst. But it does leave you wondering - can’t Tokyo do any better? The music scene here has got to be one of the most vibrant in the world, so why can’t some of that awesomeness trickle down to the amateur-level street musicians? Or more to the point, why can’t those said street musicians, in light of all the exposure to their better peers that this city affords them, realize how much they suck and keep their shitty music to themselves?

This rant was inspired by one such experience I had yesterday at Kichijoji, on my way from Tower Records to the JR station. It was a typical rock band arrangement - a three-piece consisting of a guitarist/singer, a bassist, and a drummer. I’ll admit to being predisposed to assume they suck, but I can assure you that a more open mind on my part would not have proved me wrong in any way. I couldn’t have spent more than a few seconds listening to their music to (whilst still walking of course, I’m not going to waste any amount of time on these fuckers), so none of this would’ve been worth noting in a blog, except I witnessed something for the first time - though I suspect it’s actually a common occurrence. The musicians have suddenly stopped playing, and are exuding an “oh shit” vibe. I whip my head around to notice that a couple of policemen are walking towards this direction. The rest you can infer.

Seriously, I don’t like policemen in general, and I’m pretty sympathetic to musicians, but the fact of the matter is that the band was horrible, and had resoundingly failed to earn my support. So instead of “come on boys, stick it up to authority” I was thinking “haha.”

Sure I may be a jerk, but at least I don’t engage in indulgent noise pollution, right?

Sometimes when I feel like torturing myself, I’ll go on the Keikaku Myspace page and look through the tons of Japanese bands out there and add them as friends. It’s an arduous endeavor; not only do I have to sift through tons of fake band pages made by fans so they could host music for their friends, but I also have to go through many boring bands. Like there’s these metal bands. They all sound the same. I’ve decided to have a set of criteria when adding bands:

1. They should have an interesting or familiar name.
2. They must have some sort of band photo as their main photo. No bad logos, no pictures of girls they met in a bar.
3. They should have neat music samples on their Myspace page.
4. They have to stand out somehow.

This band applies to #4 perfectly.

Maybe I should do recurring blog posts listing some of the neat bands I find on myspace.

I remember the first time I listened to a song and knew that it was Japanese. I thought, “Hey! This is new and different!” and as the years went by I later found out that Japanese music and music from Western countries weren’t all that different. You have your avante garde jazz groups, your punk rockers and pop punk poseurs, even your reggae and dub all stars.

Yet one thing has always bothered me. There’s a rare quality among Japanese musicians that Western musicians have no trouble obtaining: beards. I can think of several bearded American and British artists from The Beatles all the way down to System of a Down. Out of all the Japanese artists out there, only Tetsuya Fukagawa of envy comes to mind. Maybe I’m just not listening to enough bearded artists, or maybe I just don’t realize how many artists I do know that possess at least a goatee. Being half asian myself I do know how difficult it is to grow facial hair, but with enough effort it can be done.

So come on guys. Do Oda Nobunaga proud. Grow a beard.

Hello all, this is my first blog post. Let’s see how long and epic (and pointless) I make my posts.

So apparently Sparta Locals made their next album, Maboroshi Forever, in just a few short months WHILE they were touring. For the last few years they’ve been consistently pumping out albums, so it really shouldn’t have been a surprise, but they had lost their drummer. (The Mo’Some Tonebender drummer, Isama Fujita, is apparently appearing on the album as “guest drummer.”)

Most fans seem to believe that their last two albums, Dreamer and the self-titled, come nowhere near the awesome that is Second Fanfare and Sun Sun Sun (to a slightly lesser extent). Will this one be the one that starts going back uphill? If we follow the trend of how good their album art is, the answer is “yes.”

Polysics have a new album coming out this week. Based on the singles (check out the PVs… there are links to them in the Polysics thread in the forum), it sounds much more poppy and slower than what you’d expect from them. They actually pull it off though. I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised, since they’ve pulled off songs (”My Room”) like that before.

 That’s it for my first post. The end.