Sometimes all it takes to put a smile on my face is three dudes goofing off in dog masks. Members of Satanicpornocultshop did some rapping at ArtYardStudio in Osaka January 22th, 2011. The three-song set includes “mi2yo”, “coyote”, and “skull buddah.”
If you haven’t heard their new album Kesalan Patharan e.p. download it for free here. Buy more at Amazon.com and JAAPAN.
Programming the common people’s subliminal orchestra to wake up and say yes. Rocknrollas let out a doggie howl that’s wasted on Scarface’s shining head. You’re in treble, boy. Tonight’s forgotten story.
PTP added disco to their screams. Turns out pretty good, even the old man in the top hat is dropping balls over it.
Eddie Legend Story is a visual-kei band fronted by the infamous Eddie Legend. He was previously a bōsōzoku (motor cycle dude) in Hell-Racer and MAD3 before turning into a blood-sucking vampire. More interestingly he played guitar for the all-girl group The 5,6,7,8’s in the mid-nineties. The Story band formed in February 2010 and currently consists of four vampires. They released their first album Undead August 2010.
Their brand of mostly instrumental garage rock is pleasingly raw. The only true vocal song, “You Can’t Put Your Arms Around a Memory,” proves that Eddie Legend is a vampire with feelings. I’m sniffing just thinking about that title. The VK scene seems stuck in the goth/metal genre, but these rockabilly vampires prove otherwise.
It seems Undead is only available in Japan, but you can still find Eddie’s MAD3 stuff at CD Japan and Interpunk (Eddie Legend Story borrows songs from them anyway).
I’ve been putting off posting these for a while. So I figured I should do a roundup now since more than one of them are shipping.
Caroline- Verdugo Hills
Caroline dropped her debut album Murmurs on Temporary Residence in 2006 and kind of disappeared. But she was slowly putting together her followup, as well as touring with Mice Parade, even lending vocals to their latest album. Verdugo Hills will be released January 25 in the US by Temporary Residence on CD and vinyl. &records released the album in Japan earlier this month.
Pre-order: Amazon.com, Temporary Residence
Japanese Release: CD Japan
Deerhoof- Deerhoof vs. Evil
Deerhoof switched to Polyvinyl for their tenth album release. The band decided to leak the album track by track on various music blogs worldwide. You can find a bunch of them on Polyvinyl’s SoundCloud. In addition to vinyl and CD, Polyvinyl will also release it on cassette. Yay for dead formats! It was released earlier this month in Japan from P-Vine.
Pre-order: Amazon.com, Polyvinyl
Asobi Seksu- Fluorescence
Asobi Seksu’s fourth proper album will arrive February 15 from Polyvinyl. Download “Trails” for free by giving them your email. EMI Music Japan will release the album in Japan on February 2. That would be a major label. Congrats!
Pre-order: Amazon.com, Polyvinyl
Japanese Release: CD Japan
Shugo Tokumaru- Port Entropy
Port Entropy made blogosphere headlines when it was released in Japan last year. Europe got it late 2010 and now Polyvinyl will release it in America the same day as Asobi Seksu. The CD will be limited to 2000 copies and 1000 copies for the green vinyl. Get it while you can!
Pre-order: Amazon.com, Polyvinyl
Japanese Release: CD Japan, Play-Asia
ironomi- sketch
Singapore-based Kitchen. Label released ironmomi’s latest batch of “delicate field recordings” at the tail end of 2010. They’ve now set up worldwide distribution at places you can find here, including America.
Order: Darla Records
It’s happening. Videos below.
Check out Eiko Ishibashi’s cool new video for “shadow.” A lot of interesting things come up in in a Eiko Ishibashi search, such as her involvement in punk bands Panicsmile and Mong Hang (Keitamo’s band before he joined BEAT CRUSADERS!). But judging by this peaceful track her solo career is chill as can be. Her new album carapace, produced by Jim O’Rourke of Sonic Youth, came out last week in Japan.
Happy new year!
Let’s start the new year off right with Shugo’s new shadow-play video for “Linne.” It’s from his excellent 2010 album Port Entropy, which is *gasp* coming out in America next month!
Second Royal had a good year. Great albums were released by label veterans and newbies. But no one topped Parables of Fe-Fum by Turntable Films.
Turntable Films is a Kyoto based alternative-folk-rock band. It started as a bedroom project by founding members Yosuke Inoue (Vocals,Guitar) and Kento Tani (Bass) and turned into a band when Natsuki Tamura(Drums) and Nozomi Funada(Keyboard) joined in 2008. They self-produced a self-titled mini-album by the end of the year. In 2010 Second Royal signed them and they released two more mini-albums, Parables of Fe-Fum and 10 Days Plus One. They describe their music as “sensitive romantic song-writing, expressive improvisation-smelled performance, and the nostalgic sound influenced from American roots would let you show an alternative view in modern times??”
“2steps” was the single from Parables and it’s a fun Brit-influenced rock song with nice flute work. “Collection of You” from 10 Days follows suit with more flute. The one song from their self-titled release, “Music River,” is another beast. It has more of a country-folk vibe as did the rest of the songs on this release. The last song on their myspace is Handsomeboy Technique’s remix of “2steps” from their 7″ 2steps EP.
Although “Collection of You” was similar to Parables material the samples of the rest of the album indicate that they went back to the folk sound of their self-titled debut. Another Parables would be more successful for the band but I would still like to get my hands on 10 Days.
Buy Turntable Films’ stuff at CD Japan and Jet Set Records.
One of the things I missed out on when I skipped Stuff To Look forward To last month was Akira Ishige’s solo debut. “Flowers On The Wall” shows a more delicate side to Ishige. Gone are the high pitch screams and the disco synths replaced with pianowork. It reminds me a lot of Atsushi Horie of STRAIGHTENER’s side-project (coincidentally they both worked on film scores earlier this year).
from my bedroom came out December 15. More samples can be heard at ototoy.
Got this email from WordPress this morning and thought I’d might as well share. Thanks for visiting J-Rock Explosion! Tell all your friends!
The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:
The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.
A helper monkey made this abstract painting, inspired by your stats.
About 3 million people visit the Taj Mahal every year. This blog was viewed about 36,000 times in 2010. If it were the Taj Mahal, it would take about 4 days for that many people to see it.
In 2010, there were 131 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 390 posts.
The busiest day of the year was October 16th with 179 views. The most popular post that day was Flavored Animal Droppings.
The top referring sites in 2010 were twitter.com, Google Reader, neauxclicks.wordpress.com, absolutepunk.net, and en.wordpress.com.
Some visitors came searching, mostly for gackt, j rock, dir en grey, ellegarden, and gackt camui.
These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.
Flavored Animal Droppings August 2007
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Gackt Goes Hollywood April 2008
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buddhistson- SLOWDANCE ~wisely and slow, they stumble that dance fast~ (LYRICS) February 2009
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Don’t wake up the KIDS!! May 2010
world’s end girlfriend starts his own label, fills it with awesome July 2010
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