CLEAR AND REFRESHING

Last month I interviewed Tachibana Hajime of new wave pioneers the Plastics in advance of their reformation and new tour. The article is now up on CNNGo, but due to space constraints there was a lot of stuff I had to leave out, so I'm posting a more complete transcript of the interview for anyone who wants to get a bit further beneath the surface.

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To coincide with capsule's new album Player, his work on the Liar Game soundtrack, and the group's appearance at the Harajuku Girls' Collection fashion show, I did another brief interview, this time for CNNGo, with Nakata Yasutaka. I met up with him at Studio Ghibli's Ebisu office, where they keep a radio studio near the top of a fancy apartment building. As before, his comments about his own music weren't particularly illuminating, but his comments on fashion were, as usual, delivered with great enthusiasm and at great length, which is in itself an interesting revelation about his inspiration and creative process.

I shan't post it up here as well since it's already on two other blogs of mine, but I wrote an article about the legendary 1970s pop trio the Candies last week. I posted it on the Call And Response Records blog since it ties in with the label's latest release, but the article itself crosses over into the general interest area of Clear And Refreshing, so by all means check it out.

Short feature on the disco-punk quartet published in the Japan Times last Friday. You can read it here.

A long feature for the Japan Times last December summarising some of the key events in music over the previous twelve months, and looking forward to some of the best new music of 2010. Read it here.

Japan's main free English language magazine Metropolis has a feature on the "Best Japanese Songs" in the latest issue featuring contributions from a number of Japan-based music folks. Friends of mine like Cal Lyall, David Hickey, Daniel Robson and Fashion Crisis event compadre James Hadfield all have excellent contributions, and if you scroll down pretty far, you can find me spouting guff about P-Model.

A couple of months ago I met with musician, producer and author Saeki Kenzou for an interview, part of which appeared as part of a couple of features I wrote for The Japan Times on the Drive to 2010 punk and new wave festival at Shinjuku Loft. The event forms part of a series together with 1979's Drive to 80s and 1999's Drive to 2000, all of which focussed on Japanese punk and new wave music. I wasn't able to use all of the interview, and I was forced by space restrictions to cut, edit and paraphrase more than I would have liked, so here's a slightly less edited version of the interview.

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Tokyo Boredom is an irregularly organised event bringing together a number of bands from the Tokyo's underground scene, particularly bands with a no wave or post-punk bent. In advance of the next event, a two day extravaganza held at Tokyo University on the 19th and 20th of September, I caught up with the organising committee to talk to them about the show and more generally about Japanese punk music. » Read More

An interview with musician and producer Nakata Yasutaka of the post-Shibuya-kei/electro group Capsule, not to mention production and songwriting credits as long as your arm (hello MEG, Perfume, Suzuki Ami and more) is online now (Japan Times as usual). Some of the quotes might be a little wonky because his somewhat elevated and arty Japanese is apparently notoriously difficult to translate and even the excellent professional interpreter I brought with me said it was a task and a half. Also, small regret that I didn't get time to ask him whether he was ever tempted to go all Serge Gainsbourg on groups like Perfume and slip in some saucy double entendres into their lyrics (I've always suspected Take Me Take Me off GAME was an example of this, but then his English is apparently more or less non-existent so perhaps it was just unintentionally naughty, a la Love Psychedelico).

I wrote a short piece for The Japan Times last week on this month's Haikou Fes event, an indie festival held in an abandoned school in Shinjuku. To find out more about the event, I met up with the chief organiser, Takeuchi Tomoji, and asked him a few questions about it. » Read More