Philip Brasor - The Japan Times

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Jan 9, 2002

What most people respond to when they first hear Basement Jaxx aren't so much the recognizable references -- the Prince and P-Funk nods, the Latin rhythms, the beats-per-minute rules of late-'80s house music -- but the even more basic stuff, like song structure. Even if you're a champion of electronica...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Jan 6, 2002

Faces of 2001: who's hot and who's not

Media Personality of the Year: Ichiro Suzuki or Junichiro Koizumi

JAPAN / Media

Dec 30, 2001

'Kohaku': the best, or just best behaved?

"Kohaku Utagassen," NHK's New Year's Eve music extravaganza, which celebrates its 52nd anniversary on Monday night, has traditionally been seen as the year's most significant event for Japanese singers, with selection to appear on the show truly "legitimizing" a performer's career. As well, certainly...

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Dec 26, 2001

Nathaniel Merriweather: 'Lovage'

Makeout music is as old as the phonograph (older, if you believe that Bach really wrote the "Goldberg Variations" to help Herr Goldberg get Frau Goldberg in the mood), but Barry White was the first recording artist who made a conscious effort to emphasize only those musical and lyrical elements that...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Dec 23, 2001

Robbing the little guy of life's pleasures

Following the government's eleventh-hour decision to forgo a planned increase in the tax on happoshu foamy liquor the Asahi Shimbun ran an editorial cartoon showing a happy man sitting at the kotatsu and hoisting a can of the beerlike stuff in tribute to his TV, which showed Koizumi father and son toasting...

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Dec 19, 2001

Asylum Street Spankers: Live in Europe 2001 & A Christmas Spanking

If you're one of those people who never buys Christmas albums because they're not cost-effective, then you're probably sick of the Como/Sinatra/Elvis collections. However, a trip to the record store in search of something new will likely result in disappointment. Destiny's Child? Kenny G? Michael Bolton?...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Dec 16, 2001

The final downfall of a hard-boiled harridan

Just audible under the cheers that greeted the birth of the new princess was the tip-tapping of bored fingers coming from the direction of the "wide shows," where smiling faces and mandatory keigo barely masked acute impatience. Nine months of being forced to keep quiet about the crown princess's pregnancy...

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Dec 12, 2001

Sloan

Like a lot of indie guitar bands, the Halifax, Nova Scotia quartet Sloan regard rabid rock fandom with a certain degree of ambivalence. Unlike a lot of indie guitar bands, however, Sloan itself enjoys the attention of a sizable Tiger Beat-like international cult. They show how they deal psychologically...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Dec 9, 2001

Drivers wary of the troll who collects the toll

With new highway construction suspended and the prime minister pledging to abolish public corporations, the business of the Japan Highway Public Corp. at the moment is anything but business-as-usual. As both the overlord of the nation's vehicle-choked intercity expressways and the troll who collects...

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Dec 5, 2001

Clive Gregson

The fickle finger of fashion has confounded more than a few artists who lack confidence in what they're doing. For some, however, it can be an elevating challenge.

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Dec 2, 2001

Mad cows reveal meaty contradictions

Two weeks ago, the Asahi Shimbun ran opposing editorials by an assistant professor at Kanazawa University and the president of a municipal board of education in Akita Prefecture. The two educators faced off over a program that had been proposed by an idealistic elementary school teacher.

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Nov 25, 2001

Failed chemistry experiments in the media lab

Two weeks ago, a friend faxed me an article from the weekly news magazine Aera about a new advertising trend called "collaboration CF," which is the selling of two different companies' products in one TV commercial. I had already read about collaborations two days earlier in advertising critic Yukichi...

CULTURE / Film

Nov 21, 2001

Firmly on the map

The Sixth Pusan International Film Festival proved to the rest of the film world that it means business, both figuratively and literally. Attendance was down by about 40,000 from last year, but PIFF still managed to fill 143,103 seats over nine days (Nov. 9-17), during which 201 films from 60 countries...

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Nov 21, 2001

Tori Amos: 'Strange Little Girls'

Tori Amos, whose most famous song, "Me and a Gun," is an a cappella description of her own real-life rape at gunpoint, wanted to do an album of rock songs originally written and performed by men, so she asked male acquaintances for the names of songs that made an impression on them. Cover albums are...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Nov 18, 2001

Judgment day falls on celebrity panelists

On Nov. 9, one of the long-discussed judicial reform laws was finally enacted. Next month a committee task force will be set up under the Cabinet to discuss its implementation. How should committee members start such a huge, long overdue task?

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Nov 14, 2001

Dismemberment Plan: 'Change'

Travis Morrison sings as if words are pouring into his mouth faster than he can spit them out. On the first three albums from his band Dismemberment Plan, the lyrics shifted between self-deprecating irony and plain old self-deprecation. What Morrison was saying was honest and unsentimental, but there...

CULTURE / Music

Nov 14, 2001

Where do we go from here?

Almost 20 minutes into my interview with Aidan and David, two members of the Montreal-based band Godspeed You Black Emperor!, Aidan said that he didn't think my questions were very good and that the interview was a waste of time. He expressed himself not angrily but with genuine frustration at my transparently...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Nov 11, 2001

Trying to sell the news to kids who don't care

We've heard a lot lately about the decline of literacy in the developed world, as more people turn to new technology as their principal source of information. Commentators often illustrate this claim with figures demonstrating how no one reads novels anymore or by citing the decline in advertising revenue....

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Nov 7, 2001

MC Solaar: 'Cinquieme As (Fifth Ace)'

In order for something to be exotic, there must first be an accepted cultural standard. In the case of the music of MC Solaar (Claude M'Barali), a Senegalese musician who relocated to Paris in 1990 and has since become the best-selling Francophone rapper in the world, the standard is American hip-hop....

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Nov 4, 2001

Shaking preconceptions in the land of tourists

A few weeks ago, a friend visited from Europe. It was her first time in Japan and she wanted to see as much of the country as she could. She had purchased the discount JR rail pass that only foreigners can buy in their home countries, but besides that, all she came with was the Lonely Planet guide to...

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