Connect And Receive – Summer 2021 Japan underground picks

I’ve put this blog on hold while I’m trying to finish writing the terrible book I’ve been putting off working on for the past five years, but as a compromise, I made this mix of tracks from Japanese underground and weirdo punk releases that have come out during the first half or thereabouts of this year. You can listen to it here:

TRACK LIST:

OOPS – Riso no Morning / 理想のモーニング
An up-and-coming punk band from Osaka, taken from their Out of Pictures 7-inch single.

LLRR – Anonymous
Released on streaming sites last year, this Kyoto art-punk band’s debut < = > EP got a limited cassette release this spring (full disclosure: from my Call And Response label).

THE QUESTONS – I am I
This garage-punk trio from Okinawa have put out a couple of releases this year, with this track coming from their Koi no Yokan EP in February.

M.A.Z.E. – Spread the Germicide
Punk with oblique no wavey flourishes, from this reliably in-your-face band’s short, sharp, sub-15-minute 9-song collection II.

Ignition Block M – Houses of Fire
There’s a lot of buzz around this Tokyo punk band, with this song the title track of their recent Houses of Fire EP.

KLONNS – Gehenna
One of the core bands of the Discipline event, usually held at the great Koiwa Bushbash live venue, which combines punk, metal, psychedelic noise and intense techno, Klonns hold up the ferocious, gothic grindcore end of the spectrum on this single. The label Black Hole has also carved out a noteworthy space as a key hub for young, stylish, noisy artists in Tokyo. Aisha from Ignition Block M appears as a guest vocalist on this track.

Ms. Machine – 2020
Another young band with connections to the Discipline and Black Hole crews, Ms. Machine’s debut album was one of the few underground releases to really attract a buzz in Tokyo this year, combining simple hooks in swirling, gothic no wave squalls of noise.

Barbican Estate – White Jazz
Another hotly tipped Tokyo indie band, this 4AD-esque psychedelic swirl came out as part of the Rhyming Slang label’s Japan/China compilation cassette early this year.

yokujitsu – Just Vibes
This Tokyo psychedelic band released a live EP earlier in the year, followed up with this cassette single in the spring.

concrete twin – Nigella
Lo-fi shoegaze that builds up towering walls of distorted sound around its fragile melody in this track from their “Re​:​encounter” sound source #04 EP. The band claim a trip-hop influence, which is hinted at in the shuffling drums, although I get more of a Madchester vibe from it.

BD1982 – THEW3ST
One half of the team behind Tokyo’s fantastic Diskotopia label, this track hails off BD1982’s excellent Ryuichi Sakamoto-meets-Throbbing Gristle solo album Distance Vision.

Jesus Weekend – Forever Breeze
A welcome return from what was once a curiously meandering Osaka lo-fi band and is now a more ambient-focused Tokyo solo act, with this Eno-esque piece taken from the lovely Rudra no Namida cassette EP.

rima kato – today was so bad
This is an old track, from the Four Songs EP, originally released by the aotoao label in 2010 and just re-released this year. Rima Kato’s simple, melancholy melodies and gentle, warm delivery are always worth checking out.

Mitsuru Tabata – Nichijo Part 1 / 日常パート1
Another old song, re-released this year as part of eclectic underground legend Mitsuru Tabata’s (ex-Boredoms, Zeni Geva, Acid Mothers Temple and a billion other bands) large archive of tracks released for compilation albums over the years, Compilation Breakdown.

Closh – I don’t care bcz I’m just ????
A curious and always interesting presence in the Tokyo indie scene, Closh released a couple of mini-albums with the band Doodless before joining alt-rock band Wetnap. As far as I know, this is her first solo release but her exasperated vocal howls and catchy, lo-fi indie-punk guitars are instantly recognisable.

Merry Ghosts – Scotch Egg Struggle
Previously known as Trespass, Merry Ghosts are a post-punk-edged Osaka-based (I think originally from Kobe) alt-rock duo, with this track a deceptively catchy, scuzzy highlight of their very good new album Pink Bloom. It’s not available on Bandcamp, but there’s a CD out there if you can track it down.

Worst Taste – New creation
A mainstay of the Tokyo alt rock scene over the past 15 years or so, this piece of sparse yet intense art-punk comes from their recent Ultra Power EP, which seems to be available only as a cassette directly from the band at the moment.

PANICSMILE – Have You Seen The Bridge
Another album not available on Bandcamp, but the self-titled CD album it comes from is available pretty widely from label Like a Fool Records (and you can find it on the evil Spotify if you don’t want the band to get any money). Put together last year through a sort of pass-the-parcel remote recording process between Tokyo, Nagoya and Fukuoka, this album revels in its fragmentation and unexpected turns, but comes together with an urgency that it’s amazing a band with such a long career can still summon.

Top 25 Releases of 2019: No. 10-6

CD, self-released, 2019

10. O’Summer Vacation – Wicked Heart
Navigating multiple lineups over the past few years, 2019 finally saw the chronically unsteady O’Summer Vacation finally unleashed an album’s worth of their particular brand of brutally short, jagged nuggets of breakneck bass-led shrieking. If you’ve seen the band live, you’ll know exactly what to expect from Wicked Heart. There’s a clear parallel with Melt-Banana here, although it’s the sparser 1990s Melt-Banana that O’Summer Vacation recall more than the richly layered guitars, blast beats and electronics of their more recent material. With no guitar to thicken up the sound, it’s left to Hirofumi Miki’s bass to carry much of the sonic burden, coaxing all manner of unexpected sounds from his instrument with the help of an array of effects and loop pedals. The results are a fierce, frenetic and raw twenty minutes of propulsive, surf-tinged bubblegum hardcore.


CD, self-released, 2019

9. Gotou – Gotou
(Text taken from my personal blog)
Hailing from Hokkaido, Gotou did what so many promising Japanese underground bands do and released a marvellous album before immediately going on indefinite hiatus. It’s a shame, because this album really is something special. Drawing from the gloomier end of post-punk and German new wave, the vocals scrape the lower end of the singer’s range in a way that pays clear homage to Malaria! (the band declare this openly in their Twitter profile and even cover Malaria!’s song Your Turn to Run on the album) but while it may not be blessed with an overabundance of originality, this album stands out as something distinctive in the Japanese underground scene.

Vinyl, Debauch Mood, 2019

8. Soloist Anti Pop Totalization – S.A.P.T.
(Text taken from my personal blog)

This Tokyo-based artist takes his cues from the sound of early Mute Records artists like Fad Gadget and The Normal with his relentless machine rhythms, dentist drill synth intrusions and squirts of analogue electronic interference. About half the album is made up of experimental instrumental tracks, and where vocals emerge, they do so as a series of distant, lo-fi, Mark E Smith barks and utterances. There are moments too, on songs like Depression (Part 2) and Other, where the music slips into a more accessible and even pop groove, and this helps S.A.P.T. take the listener on a surprisingly diverse journey through its synthetic dystopia.


CD, Junk Lab, 2019

7. Folk Enough – Lover Ball
(Text taken from my personal blog)
This album by Fukuoka-based indie rockers Folk Enough is absolutely horrible to listen to, taking the lo-fi recording aesthetic to the sort of scuzzy extremes it hasn’t seen since Twin Infinitives-era Royal Trux. Swimming around in this sonic murk, however, are moments of fragile beauty that recall Lou Barlow at his most beaten-down, and moments of rock’n’roll swagger that hint at Jon Spencer at his most explosive. Across the whole album lies a sort of confused, alcoholic fug that means you’re never sure whether what you’re listening to is genius or a terrible mistake. Folk Enough’s secret is that it’s both.

Cassette, self-released,2019

6. Ignition Block M – Ignition Block M
One of vanishingly few new bands currently jolting underground audiences out of their jaded inertia, Ignition Block M share some roots with the excellent and sadly missed Pinprick Punishment (not to mention fellow Pinprick refugees My Society Pissed) and assault you from a similar position of ferociously energetic, riff-slashing punk rock with few complications but just enough jagged, art-swagger to keep keep the music from feeling to complacent in its genre. Add in a powerful, charismatic vocalist and a tight, propulsive rhythm section and you have the makings of potential breakout underground stars.