dDamage are good friends of mine. They also happen to be the hottest shit in the french electronic scene these days.
They started by doing some weird noisy post hip-hop, now they having fight with gigantic apes in the middle of Tokyo.
Their new video(quicktime) for their soon to be released ep Ink 808(Tigerbeat 6) is directed by french illustrator/musician/cartoonist Ra and as the one before it, it just “défonce” like we say in France.
Enjoy.
It’s a bit of a short notice but still :
2006/05/27(Saturday Evening!!)
?Lo-bit Playground Volume 4.0?
“8 Bit Peoples VS Lo-bit Playground!!”
open - 18:50 / start - 19:00 / close - 22:00
location - ???ForthFloor?http://fourthfloor.sub.jp/?
fee - 2,000yen@door / 1,500yen@adv. or with flyer
8 Bit Peoples(USA) side;
aonami, Bit Shifter, Nullsleep
Lo-bit Playground side;
coova, Saitone, quarta330
You’ll notice that my friend Aonami is playing along with Nullsleep and Bit Shifter who are like the beatles and the rolling stones of 8-bit music.
When gaijins have too much time on their hand they hang out at fuckedgaijin.com. When they really have too much time on their hands they browse youtube and end up making a summary of every sides of japanese pop music.
Mulboyne is such a guy, he has compiled every interesting jpop video on youtube for you to lose your time.
Here’s the coca-cola commercial for which The White Stripes made a jingle:
Now, here’s japanese pop diva Yuki’s video for her song Sentimental journey :
Am i paranoid or what ?
The thing is, an acquaintance of mine is actually in the Yuki video. She’s playing one of the Yukis. I would never have seen it otherwise since Yuki is probably the most annoying voice in j-pop today. And boy, do i hate j-pop.
Anyway, if you want to know more about Yuki, here’s her website. She’s one of the most popular singer in Japan where she fills the role of the slightly deranged girl. That prompts everyone here to compare her with Bjork.
Anyway, i don’t really know if the guys at the Coca-cola Company really ripped her off or if the concept was already used before the Yuki video. It might even be the same director for all i know.
I can’t possibly believe that a guy, at Coca-cola or at the super duper advertising company they contracted to do the spot, could be dumb enough to think this would go unnoticed if he ripped the concept of his next commercial on a music video of one of the biggest pop star in Japan.
Naah, no way.
UPDATE : It’s the same director, see the comments for more info.
Mothers Against Noise (M.A.N) is a group of parents concerned by the effects of noise music on their children. But it’s not as simple as it might seems. There are at least 3 different M.A.N websites; respectively .us, .net and .org.
My guess is, if one is legit then it’s the .us. The .org is clearly a protest site against M.A.N and the .net is just a one page copy of the content found in the .us.
Anyway, noise music is a disease and some of the testimonials of the concerned parents are nothing short of appealing:
“The record is by two groups called Nicole 12 and Prurient. It comes with a lyric sheet of some of the most horrid descriptions of pedophilia and fantisies of sex with AIDS patients. And I DO NOT know where this record cover could have been manufactured legally”
Another horrified mother says :
“And I thought Marylin Manson was the sickest thing around. I am just sick to my stomache that things like this exist.”
It gets worse :
“Well as I already said noise has had an adverse effect on both mine and my son’s life, in fact my house almost burnt down because of it:(( Besides that episode there has also been blown speakers on my new stereo, my dog has taken to hiding when my son is home, and my daughter Ella cried all of last halloween because the sounds reminded her of those that emanate from my son’s room.”
The effect of noise on our youth is terrifying really. Hopefully, M.A.N will be the voice of dissent in a world where the music industry has gone mad. Living in Tokyo, i have on occasion, been subjected to noise music. You see Japan can be considered the birth place of modern noise music with such atrocities as Merzbow, Massona, or the dreaded C.C.C.C.
Recently i was conned into going to a live event featuring japanoise “wunderkinds” Zuinosin and Ove Naxx.
It was not pretty to say the least but i’m a grown man with an unusually high tolerance to sonic assaults(this is due to my past career as a professional pachinko player).
One can only wonder the terrible effects those sounds would have on a child.
M.A.N biggest success up until now has been their quasi interuption of a Wolf Eyes show in 2004. There’s a mention of it in this Metrotimes portrait of Wolf Eyes.
I sincerly hope that their efforts won’t stop here. Noise music is much more nefast than just audio pollution as this article points out, it’s Antisocial, Amoral, Undemocratic and Anti-American.
Yurayura Teikoku is one of the most popular indie band in Japan. They’ve been recording stuff for almost 10 years and they can fill huge venues. Yet they’re almost absolutely unknown in the west. Wait, it’s not weird that they’re not famous in the west, after all they’re japanese. Only dorky hipsters like myself care about japanese music. What’s weird is that even with the dorky hipsters crowd they’re totally unknown.
Once you come here you realize that most of the japanese stuff that you heard about in the west are almost totally unknown in Japan.
Take all the indie japanese filmaker that are considered like medium geniuses in the west like Tsukamoto, Kyoshi Kurosawa, Takashi Miike and all that bunch, completely unknown here. Same thing with bands, nobody ever heard of Acid Mothers Temple or Afrirampo or Zeni Geva here. I went to an Acid Mothers Temple show here and the microscopic club was almost empty and there were at least 10 gaijins amongst the 30 people present. Hell, Kawabata was ordering a drink at the bar when i came in.
When i saw them in Paris a couple of years back, the place was packed.
The weird thing is that japanese hipsters will talk about bands and filmakers that you probably never heard about before. It’s like there’s two completely separated undergrounds, the domestic underground and the exported underground.
Yurayura teikoku was part of the domestic underground, was because now they’re more like on White Stripes popularity level. I saw them live in the Tokyo equivalent of Central Park where they were giving a free concert. There were people everywhere coming from every background. The weird thing is Yurayura’s music is not even catchy. They’re playing this kinda weird repetitive psychedelic-garage rock, you can’t even sing along to.
It’s not like they’re fucking Weezer or anything.How they can move such huge crowd is a total mystery to me.
Now i’m talking about yurayura because recently Pitchfork every dork favourite media has written a review for their last album, Sweet Spot. Oh, and i found this video on youtube which is pretty neat.
Oh and here’s some other Yurayura related links:
Yurayura Teikoku’s american label
Yurayura Teikoku official site
Yurayura Teikoku’s profile on keikaku