Tokyo's Coolest Sound

Last week, on Friday October 22, was Fantastic Explosion's release party for new mini-album "Sounds In Space". The event was held at heavysick ZERO, a small-sized 2-floor club in Nakano, and featured various DJs as well as live sets by the Explosion and Dorian.

I got there at 24:40, in time to see Yoshida Tetsuto's DJ set. He mixed techno-kayō and other stuff, including Ueda Maki's "aitsu wa Invader" that I love from the Tokuma Japan techno-kayō compilation.

On October 12 I went to a public live recording for pay TV channel WOWOW's "Music Ltd." show. The recording isn't done in a TV studio but at a regular live house, and a good one, Shibuya AX! The whole recording was really well organized, almost just like a normal show with 15-minute set changes. The only difference were the large robotic arm cameras flying around silently. There were shows by 4 artists recorded, each playing about 5 songs. The whole lasted less than 3 hours.

I have trouble with big concert venues. A phobia of sorts. Ax, Zepp, Tokyo International Forum...I'm not a fan of any of them. Visions of animals being herded through the slaughterhouse... But these places can't always be avoided. Some good musicians are going to be successful and play the big halls, and I still want to see them. Recently, finally, I got into Ego-Wrappin, and bought a ticket to see the popular group at a large venue. I even considered catching Perfume at the city's ultimate mega-venue, Tokyo Dome, until figuring out the tickets were long sold out. It's clear I need to build some tolerance to these places. So, in that respect, going to see Hoover's Ooover's Japan tour final show at the O-West was probably a good thing.

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Continue reading at Japan Live

Last week, on Friday September 24, I had the chance to go to a live event in a very special place. Nakatsuka Takeshi threw a release party for his new download-only album "53512010", a collaboration with fashion brand 5351 Pour Les Hommes.

The event was held aboard Jicoo Floating Bar, which transforms Matsumoto Leiji-designed futuristic water bus Himiko into a bar at night. At the entrance, all passengers were given a specially designed digipak CD sleeve complete with a blank CD-R, meant to hold the new album. I felt sympathy for artists who really care about having their works come in a nice package even in this digital age, here going all the way to distribute a package separately from the download.