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September 27, 2024
 

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Suzannah Tartan
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Sep 19, 2001
Stereolab: 'Sound Dust'
With a musical foundation in German progressive rock and political roots in the playful tradition of the Situationists, Stereolab is as avant-garde as they come.
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Sep 12, 2001
Kakraba Lobi
Kakraba Lobi is a virtuoso master of the gyil (pronounced JEEL or JEE-lee), the traditional instrument of the Lobi people of Ghana, Burkina Faso and the Ivory Coast. After stints as a cab driver, farmer and just about every occupation in between, Lobi realized his calling as a gyil player, becoming,...
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Sep 5, 2001
Space Shower
Space Shower TV, the homegrown version of music television, has been instrumental in promoting what might be best called Japanese pop, as opposed to J-pop. These groups may not make the upper reaches of the chart -- they are either too raw or too offbeat -- but they are also too accessible or too popular...
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Aug 29, 2001
Roxy Music
If any band personified the decadence of the '70s, it was Roxy Music. Singer Bryan Ferry epitomized the dissolute lounge lizard made handsome by a glib tongue and good fashion sense. The band's torch-song pop, poised on the periphery of disco and New Wave, chronicled the underbelly of the good life:...
CULTURE / Music / PLAY BUTTON
Aug 26, 2001
Between Sonic rock and a hard place
At first glance, the biggest thing happening in Makuhari last weekend was the sale at the local outlet mall. No banners. No bullhorns. No hype. Just a silent, eerie cityscape of hotels and empty family restaurants. In short, there was nothing to indicate that Summer Sonic, Japan's second-biggest music...
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Aug 22, 2001
Wiggle
W iggle combine the hard, harsh beats of The Chemical Brothers with the noisy exuberance of The Boredoms and an occasional female vocal that sounds like Shonen Knife on speed. Bravely straddling the accessible and the arty, they would be worth going to see for the music alone.
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Aug 8, 2001
Sonicmania
The music world is going ape for apes. Nigo, of fashion label A Bathing Ape, has just issued the latest installment of his Ape Sounds hip-hop project; Cornelius (named after the leading simian of the original "Planet of the Apes") will release the highly anticipated follow up to his "Fantasma" album...
CULTURE / Music / PLAY BUTTON
Jul 22, 2001
Bourbon Street comes to town
If seen on the street, minus their sousaphones and trombones, the guys from the Black Bottom Brass Band would look like any of the other slightly hip types that wander around Shibuya or America-mura. A guess about their musical tastes would probably run toward some obscure DJ or indie rock's flavor of...
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Jul 18, 2001
Eminem: 'Devil's Night'
Eminem (aka Marshall Mathers) is America's teenage id made hysterical from too much junk food, too much TV, too many drugs and too little parental supervision. He is also a record company's dream. A white boy whose dysfunctional biography makes him "real" enough to market to the suburban white kids who...
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Jul 11, 2001
Nick Currie
Nick Currie looks like a B-movie villain with his wicked black eye patch and ever-so-slightly menacing gaze. For a certain segment of Japan's music-buying public, however, he is a hero.
CULTURE / Music / PLAY BUTTON
Jun 24, 2001
Singing the body electric
The only body parts usually involved in house music are the twirling fingers of the producer, tweaking samples with a twist of knob or dial, or the swaying, sweaty bodies grooving to the finished product on the dance floor.
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Jun 20, 2001
Hot Cha
Hot Cha has become the Tokyo home of slightly askew pop. From the arty, new-wave gyrations of Delaware to Fan Boy There's equally arty jazz inflections, the label attempts to reshape Tokyo's pop landscape in its own eccentric image.
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Jun 13, 2001
Lois Maffeo
Lois Maffeo is the grande dame of the next-wave feminist riot girl movement, icon to countless sensitive American girls (and boys, too).
CULTURE / Music / PLAY BUTTON
May 27, 2001
Going at it the hard way, while playing with the mix
Selfridges, one of London's poshest department stores, looks more Shibuya than Oxford Street these days. As part of London's Japan 2001 Festival, the store has made itself into a Japanese-style depaato, complete with elevator girls and counters piled high with azuki bean sweets and twee stationery goods....
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
May 23, 2001
'Naturalizms': Sukpatch
The Beastie Boys are one busy crew. If fighting for a free Tibet, periodically reinvigorating hip-hop and dressing a good percentage of the B-boy hipsters wandering around Harajuku weren't enough, they continue to deliver the goods on their Grand Royal label. Luscious Jackson, Buffalo Daughter and Money...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
May 9, 2001
Aiha Higurashi
Aiha Higurashi makes both girls and boys swoon. Boys because they want her. Girls because they want to be her. The tight dresses and frankly erotic gaze have inspired a million wet dreams, but the strutting guitar and in-your-face f**k-you attitude are provocative, too. Higurashi's group, Seagull Screaming...
CULTURE / Music
May 6, 2001
The Modest Mouse that roars
There is something about Seattle. Maybe it's the water, the air, the rain or the amplifiers, but just as Austin or L.A. threatens to overtake it as the capital of alternative rock, Seattle's mosh pits belch out yet another batch of lank-haired, sullen-faced guitar heroes.
CULTURE / Music / PLAY BUTTON
Apr 22, 2001
Real block-rocking beats
With dance music gaining more of a presence on the charts and more play on many people's CD players, rhythm rather than melody is supreme. Granted, much of it -- from fey pop to dance crossovers -- is soulless. It is mechanical, not just in the way it is produced, but also in the way it sounds.
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Apr 11, 2001
Goldie
Goldie is a dark angel of drum 'n' bass. His sonic tricks swoop into the listener's consciousness, twisting time and space before rumbling onto the dance floor in a crescendo of breakbeats.
CULTURE / Music / PLAY BUTTON
Mar 30, 2001
Nighttime is the right time for the music of Tomovsky
Tomoyuki Ohki's pseudonym, Tomovsky, may have been inspired by the Russian masters of classical music, but his musical lineage is pure -- albeit twisted -- pop: equal parts John Lennon and Syd Barrett.
China fires long-range missile into Pacific Ocean in rare test
Chinese military vehicles carrying DF-41 intercontinental ballistic missiles travel past Beijing's Tiananmen Square during a military parade marking the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, on Oct. 1, 2019.
Russia has a secret war drones project in China, intel sources say
Russian President Vladimir Putin visits a drone production facility of the the Special Technology Center in St. Petersburg on Sept. 19.
As Onosato dominates the spotlight, former sumo stars exit the stage
Takakeisho during a one-day tournament at Kokugikan in Tokyo in February 2020
Japan MSDF warship sails through Taiwan Strait for first time
The Maritime Self-Defense Force destroyer Sazanami arrives in Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean during a scheduled port visit in July. The Sazanami became the first Japanese warship to sail through the Taiwan Strait on Wednesday.
Putin issues nuclear warning to the West over Ukraine striking Russia
Russia's President Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting of the Security Council on the subject of nuclear deterrence in Moscow on Wednesday.
A first look inside the new Nintendo Museum
The Nintendo Museum opens to the public on Oct. 2, but unlike the company's all-ages games, the new attraction may be geared more toward older rather than younger gamers.
Japan MSDF warship sails through Taiwan Strait for first time
The Maritime Self-Defense Force destroyer Sazanami arrives in Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean during a scheduled port visit in July. The Sazanami became the first Japanese warship to sail through the Taiwan Strait on Wednesday.
Weather makes for an unpredictable artist at Nagano art festival
“A Whisper in the Eye of the Storm,” by Canadian artists Caitlind R. C. Brown and Wayne Garrett is an outdoor installation of around 14,000 recycled lenses of varied prescriptions.
China fires long-range missile into Pacific Ocean in rare test
Chinese military vehicles carrying DF-41 intercontinental ballistic missiles travel past Beijing's Tiananmen Square during a military parade marking the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, on Oct. 1, 2019.
People of all ages and sizes scale new heights amid climbing boom in Japan
A climbing wall at a kindergarten in Fujiyoshida, Yamanashi Prefecture. The sport has been on the rise in Japan, mainly due to the popularity it gained from the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, and new climbing walls are popping all over the place.

Podcast

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.
Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Longform

A woman passes an "akichi" (vacant lot) in Bunkyo Ward, Tokyo. The capital is littered with such small lots in part because of Japan's aging and shrinking population.
Dealing with rising land vacancies as Japan shrinks
By Alex K.T. Martin

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Azabudai Hills, Tokyo’s green new downtown ‘village’
Azabudai Hills, Tokyo’s green new downtown ‘village’

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