Suzannah Tartan - The Japan Times

CULTURE / Music / PLAY BUTTON

Feb 24, 2002

Like Bauhaus architecture or a Charles Eames chair, Stereolab is retro yet refreshingly new. Beneath the surface of their shiny, polished pop, the lilting melodies of '60s lounge music, the drone of German progressive rock and the lightest hint of dance-floor beats coexist in a controlled upheaval.

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Jan 27, 2002

Yuji Katsui: An anomaly on the dance floor

Whether jamming with techno-trance outfit Rovo in front of a seething dance floor, adding to the psychedelic vibe of prog-rockers Bondage Fruit or frolicking in the pop carnival of Demi Semi Quaver, Yuji Katsui is something of an anomaly. With all these groups, the 38-year-old plays neither a sampler...

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Jan 23, 2002

Brian Wilson's 'Pet Sounds Tour'

For most people, whose impression of The Beach Boys probably begins and ends with pop ditties like "Help Me Rhonda" or "Surfer Girl," it might be difficult to fathom that the band's 1966 album, "Pet Sounds," is ranked right up there with "Sgt. Pepper."

CULTURE / Music

Jan 20, 2002

Blonde Redhead: Melody of the inexpressible

New York's Blonde Redhead is an excellent reminder of what made "indie" rock independent in the first place. Trying to pin them down, to encapsulate their music in a pithy phrase or two is, to quote the title of their fourth album, like trying to give "an expression of the unexpressible."

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Dec 26, 2001

'Jazzin' ' with UFO

It is a rare trick to be both popular and cutting-edge, a trick that the DJ unit United Future Organization has pulled off with aplomb. In the quicksilver world of club music, it is even more unusual for a dance event to last one year, much less ten. "Jazzin' " celebrates its 10th anniversary this month...

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Dec 23, 2001

Buffalo Daughter: A new addition to the family

Being in a band is like being married to more than one person simultaneously. And like any married couple, bands have their own special neuroses. The dysfunctions of any given group are compounded by long hours in the hothouse confines of a studio and even longer hours on the road.

CULTURE / Music

Dec 19, 2001

Rap's finest women (and fully clothed)

Remember the Prince protege Vanity and her hit "Nasty Girl?" Probably not. With their Victoria's Secret wardrobes and sexual boasts, most women in rap are, like Vanity, titillating, sometimes liberating, but for the most part forgettable after the record finishes.

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Dec 16, 2001

Japan gets into the swing of things

The swing revival never really got going in Japan. Maybe it was an age thing. Though Japanese young people cotton on to nearly every American trend, swing wasn't quite a product of youth culture. Instead, it was championed by folks who listened to Nirvana or the Red Hot Chili Peppers as teenagers and...

CULTURE / Music

Dec 9, 2001

Soundtrack to life on the edge

Mexicali, Baja Calif., and Calexico, Calif., have been called poster children for NAFTA. Though divided by the Mexican-American border, they are in fact one sprawling megalopolis. Neither fully American nor fully Mexican, and not yet a comfortable mixture of the two, they are geographically and psychically...

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Dec 5, 2001

Bulgarian Voices

It is difficult to fathom the sensation caused by the Bulgarian folk song collection "Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares" when it was first released in 1986. At that time, world music was still the realm of ethnomusicologists and geeks. Then, suddenly, black-clad hipsters were sandwiching their Sonic Youth...

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Nov 28, 2001

Play Records Night

From its roots in Jamaica's production studios to London's "sound systems," dub has become as much a descriptive musical term as a genre. To be "dub" is to pay attention to silence as well as sound, to have a spaciousness (and often spaciness) absent from other electronic or club-derived music.

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Nov 25, 2001

Where the twains meet and swing

Certain musical phrases, combinations of notes, chord changes and rhythms appear consistently in the folk music of Hungary, Turkey and China.

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Nov 21, 2001

Dagmar Krause

Dagmar Krause has the thin, consumptive look of a cabaret singer, as if she is about to expire at any moment from want of a man, money or the simple pleasures of a hot meal.

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Nov 7, 2001

Belly dancin' the night away

W hether at hip, ambient club events, in evening classes, at gyms and sports halls, or at Middle Eastern restaurants, belly-dancing is experiencing a revival in Tokyo. It is tempting to dismiss this as an oriental cliche: either a titillating amusement for bored suburban housewives, or an exotic divertissement...

CULTURE / Music

Nov 7, 2001

The boy is back in town

'Fantasma," released in 1997, was arguably the most internationally acclaimed Japanese pop record since Yellow Magic Orchestra's "Solid State Survivor." A sonic journey through musical history, from Bach to the Beach Boys, it became a fixture on critics' "best-of" lists that year its creator, Cornelius,...

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Oct 31, 2001

University Music Festivals

If you can avoid the drunk undergraduates and terrible yakisoba, the university festival season is an excellent time to see good bands for cheap. Musashino University consistently draws crowds to its Ekoda campus with cool, offbeat groups. It's worth going just for the venue: a Meiji Era concert hall...

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Oct 28, 2001

A rough guide to the indies

Japan's indie music scene is a fractured miasma of competing and collaborating subgenres. The sheer number of bands is, as anyone who has looked at Pia's live house listings recently, overwhelming. Like a fan searching for a hidden venue in the twisted back streets of Shimokitazawa or Koenji, you can...

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Oct 3, 2001

Shelter

In a hidden corner of almost every major city there is a grotty club that serves as rock 'n' roll's nerve center, a place where a talented band with a good idea can be catapulted to indie-rock notoriety. In New York, it was CBGB; in L.A., it was the Whiskey, or maybe Spaceland; and in Tokyo, for the...

CULTURE / Music

Sep 30, 2001

Going off the beaten track

Relaxed is not a term one would usually associate with Ken Ishii. As Japan's premier techno producer and DJ, he has created a sleek, cutting-edge repertoire that is bristling with tension.

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Sep 23, 2001

Hip-hop takes responsibility

Once upon a time, hip-hop reflected -- and reflected upon -- the urban experience: It was another black art form akin to jazz. These days, its purpose appears to be to give suburban white teenagers a vicarious thrill. In the commercially driven dichotomy of contemporary hip-hop, the gangstas and their...

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