UR Sensation

Alt-rock heroine Aiha Higarashi (ex-Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her) and her latest band The Girl ease out of their comfort zone on their second album UR Sensation. Where their debut Lost in Wonder stuck mostly to straightforward indie rhythms and sing-songy melodies, the new album offers a wider palette of atmospheres. On “Do What You Want To” Higurashi talk-sings like Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon, while drummer Naoko Okamoto lays down a nightclub-flavored house beat on “Know Wow Wow.” Higurashi also breaks out her acoustic guitar on several numbers including the contemplative “Touch My Lips.” On “Don’t Ask Me” she plays the harried rock babe—Higurashi’s not saying she doesn’t have the answer, but issuing her admirers a command not to mess with her.

• UR sensation Release Party @Three, Feb 23
  
• Buy UR Sensation here

Released in December, Golden Zero is by far the Kinlay band’s ripest album to date, a sun-drenched, feel-good listen that showcases the group’s progress since forming eight years ago. British frontman Andy MacKinlay’s vocals and lyrical content have blossomed since the last album Triple *R*, and the band itself has only grown tighter and yet, a little more playful. Recorded at KRH Studios in Harajuku, Golden Zero includes contributions by Craig Harris (Cirque du Soleil) on bass and Pochi Hayashida (arranger of Exile’s Atsushi Solo project), and makes for the perfect antidote to a long, cold winter. A stalwart of Tokyo’s expat rock scene, MacKinlay continues to host regular jam sessions at What The Dickens in Ebisu on the first Tuesday of every month.

Buy Golden Zero here

Sometimes the pop of a needle hitting a record on a turntable is not the prelude to music but an end in and of itself. In the hands of renowned sound-based conceptual artists Christian Marclay (recently acclaimed for his 24-hour film The Clock), Toshio Kajiwara and DJ Olive, the turntable is transformed into the medium not for music but for the summoning of unearthly spirits. 21 September 2002 documents a performance the trio staged at Washington DC’s Hirshhorn Museum. While the recording lacks the drama and dimensionality that the concert no doubt had, with a pair of headphones on its vocabulary of unearthly squelches, bleeps, bloops, whirs and clicks and snippets of everything from opera to film soundtracks serves to transport the listener to an audio neverland.

Producer Masami Nishizawa at label Teichiku struck on the idea of reaching Japanese women with an album of hit J-pop from the ’80s and ’90s—all sung sweetly in English by native English speaking girls.

His concept—the start of a series—seems to have been to reach 30-something female listeners with a “healing” approach that also appealed to their interest in English. But the result is an album that also provides a way into J-pop for international music fans.

“There are some wonderful Japanese songs from the ’80s and ’90s,” says English-Japanese singer Emi Evans. “But unless people make the effort to delve through the archives, there is very little chance for these older hits to be heard by the contemporary non-Japanese ear.”

Many of the songs, like Yoshi Inoue’s “Shonen Jidai,” were written during the economic bubble, a time where Japanese dreamed big and creativity flourished. “The songs on this album,” Evans says, “have a positive, poetic and sometimes happy go lucky nature.”

Evans and fellow Japan-based songstresses Mandy Wang and Sorcha Chisholm deliver 12 capable renditions of chestnuts including Spitz’s “Cherry” and Fumiya Fujii’s “True Love,” arranged in soft-rock, bossa nova and piano jazz styles.

“Good songs like The Beatles’ continue to be listened to through different ages and countries—we have many songs in the same category in Japan,” says producer Nishizawa.

“Although the original sound has been rearranged and the lyrics have been translated into English, I would be very happy if that happened to the songs which I selected for the album.”

Buy the album here

Courtesy of Call and Response Records

Dancing After 1AM—a dig at Japan’s laws against late-night dancing—is the latest compilation from his Tokyo-based Call And Response Records, and bursts with offerings from no less than 18 Japanese bands.

Martin’s tastes run toward post-punk, new wave and “assorted experimental pop trash. ” As such Dancing After 1AM is more a snapshot of a certain side of Japan’s vast indie scene than a broad overview.

Anisakis lead off with “Poppukōn Hata Ni Kuroi Kage” (“Black Field Shadow Popcorn”), a driven slice of skronk in which the singer intones beguilingly about popcorn while guitars thrash about in the foreground.

The Extruders “Collapsing New Buildings” exudes a sense of calm quiet and wide-eyed wonder, while Jebiotto’s “Deacon Punk” is a standout—tuneful yet redolent with pheremonal synth-punk energy.

Indie stalwarts The Mornings are present with the chaotic, unsettling “Fuji,” and Tacobonds’ choppy, minimalistic “Ane” keeps things curious with a ceaselessly twisting and turning dance-punk narrative.

Dancing After 1AM may not be entirely representative of the Japanese indie scene, but it’s plenty intriguing temptation for a trawl through Tokyo’s claustrophobically welcoming live houses—assuming they haven’t been put out of business by police enforcing Japan’s no-dancing laws.

Courtesy of Adventure Music

Soulception sees the singer and flutist joined by guitarist Adam Rogers, accordionist Gil Goldstein and her husband Alex Sipiagin on trumpet for outings that explore Michiru’s love for Brazilian music, and her quieter, more contemplative side. She explains that “soulception” is a neologism for a sixth, spiritual sense.

The opening title track is a spoken word workout that asks, “Is there a God? Only the soul can really know.” On “Adventures” (the same name as her new label), Michiru weaves complex vocal harmonies over a softly funky rhythmic substratum built by drummer Nate Smith and bassist Boriz Kozlov.

But the dominant atmosphere on Soulception is a laidback, tropical vibe, over which Michiru’s sunny vocals shine brightly. The inclusion of Hamilton de Holanda’s “Brasilianos” and Milton Nascimento’s “Bridges,” a duet featuring Rio de Janeiro vocalist Ed Motta, round out the Brazilian picture.

Following on the Brazilian mood of Soulception, Michiru has also just overseen the creation of a new three-CD compilation entitled Adventure Music: Ten Years, which celebrates a decade of the label’s output of music by contemporary Brazilian musicians.