Nidney aka naff idea does not end yet is an unsigned indie band that formed in 2010. The five-piece includes Teppy (guitar, vocals), Mari (guitar), HSM (bass), Yuzo (drums) and one more guy they don’t mention on myspace. Their first EP The Way To Be Happy was self-produced and is only available at Diskunion.
http://www.myspace.com/nidneys Read the rest of this entry ?
Riot Dance Party may think J-Rock is dead, but they’re just going to have to deal with some J-Rock Explosion love. This two-man band, Hiro (vocals, bass,programming) and Tsuyoshi (drums), comes from Osaka. Their music is a mix of everything: funk, samba, reggae, but mostly rock and punk. They have toured with a lot of overseas bands and toured in Australia a few years ago.
Download Riot Dance Party latest EP Life or Death at Amazon or CD Baby.
Talk is Kensei Ogata (guitar, vocal), Yuriko Takahashi (guitar, vocal), Jun Kawamoto (guitar), Hitomi Takakura (keyboard), Shirou Murakami (bass) and Takuma Nishimura (drums). The band formed as a three-piece in March 2009 in Kumamoto. Their debut Waltz For Feebee was self-released in 2011 and sold out quickly. Dead Funny Records re-released it earlier this year with three new tracks. Not only does talk combine shoegaze with catchy twee melodies but also devotes half their debut to solid post-rock tunes.
Waltz For Feebee is available at CD Japan and Amazon MP3. Grab a couple free tracks at their bandcamp to try.
LOW-PASS is an instrumental/math-rock trio from Kyoto. The trio formed in 2005 and the current lineup is Kanazawa Takayuki (guitar), Ono Yasunobu (bass) and Sannomiya Hiroe (drums). Their first release was a split EP with French band fago.sepia from Friend of Mine Records in 2009. Stiff Slack released their first album Trimurti in March 2012.
Trimurti is available on CD at Jet Set Records. Keep It Together Records, an indie label based in Wisconsin, released the album on cassette tape in America a few weeks ago.
Yucca is a 5-piece indie pop band from Tokyo, not to be confused with the Japanese new age/opera singer of the same name. The band formed in 2003 and their current lineup is Yusaku Enomoto (guitar), Ayako Shinada (keyboard), Katsuyuki Umezaki (bass), Yuki Kawana (keyboard) and Kazuyuki Chujo (drums). Their first album Laboratory Products came out in 2005 and their second album The Orange Sun In My Room in 2006 through abcdefg*record. In 2007 Shinada (former drummer) broke her lower back and the band was out of commission for a while. But they’ve kept it together and with new drummer Chujo released their third album Our Journey (To Anywhere We Want) a month ago.
Yucca’s first two albums are available at CD Japan or Bandcamp. Their new album Our Journey was released through net label Sayonara Novels, owned by the same people who run abcdeg*record. You can download it for free here or pay for it at iTunes and the like.
Podo is an electronic rock trio from Tokyo. Masudapodo (guitar) and Yukipelo (vocals) met in high school in 2000 and formed a band. Their current bassist Risapodo joined in 2002 and they started to play as a trio in Kumamoto. They were originally went by the name pedo until they realized what it meant in English. In 2007 they officially changed their name to podo and relocated to Tokyo in 2009.
Their third mini-album Raw Life was released in April and is available at Hear Japan and all other digital outlets.
Gargle is an instrumental duo from Tokyo. Jun Minowa (guitar, glockenspiel) and Satoshi Ikeda (accordion, programming) provide a cinematic take on “a gleam of light in the darkness” mixing elements of ambient and post rock. In 2009, Gargle released their first EP Looming through the Russian netlabel Clinical Archives. Nevada based label Fluttery Records released Gargle’s first full length Glow In the Gloom on April 6, 2012. Minowa also has a side project called Yawning on Fluttery Records who released his EP in 2010.
Looming EP is available as a free download at Archive.org. You can pick up Glow In the Gloom at bandcamp and a lot of other places.
Taffy is an alternative/shoegaze band from Tokyo. Iris (vocals) and Koichin (bass) formed the band as Salt Water Taffy in the early 2000s after their previous bands had broken up. After years of lineup changes, the band name was shortened to taffy when Asano (guitar) and Ken (drums) joined last year. Taffy’s sound has often been compared to various Britpop acts with The Beatles being an obvious influence.
London based label Club AC30 has signed taffy and released their first album Caramel Sunset this week on vinyl and CD. You can read more about taffy’s focus on Britain at the Japan Times.
kyojaku (虚弱。) is an all girl post rock band with an average age of 21. The current lineup– Kana Tsuboichi (guitar), Miyuki Arai (Bass), Mana Kohno (drums) and Umi (piano)–reformed in 2008. They started to play live in 2009 and have been invited to many big festivals since. Their first CD-R Kabetosogy was released in 2008 and their second Donguribouya in 2009, both sold out. Kilk Records signed kyojaku. last year and released their first album Kokou No Gaden in March.
Kokou No Gaden is available now on iTunes and the CD will be available to purchase in America from Darla Records in June.
The Eglle is an all-girl post-punk band from Tokyo. Sugar (vocals,guitar), Tomoyo (bass) and Sayumi (drums) formed the band in 2010 originally under the name the brown. Their first 7″ record Swimming / My Moaning was released in December 2011 from ACCOMO.
Swimming / My Moaning is available at Jet Set Records. A free download of their new songs “Perfect of Triangle’s Balance” and “Disorder” can be found here.
J-Rock Explosion 