We talked in December, but what’s new with Kulu Kulu Garden since then?

Kotone Miyahara: We’ve started to expand acoustic Kulu Kulu Garden seriously. We ask our favorite musicians to come in and help us out. The non-acoustic side of us has been busy writing new songs. They’re a lot more poppy than before, but I think people will be excited when they hear them and I think they are turning out really well. I can’t wait for everyone to hear them.

Ryotaro Aoki: We technically have enough songs for a new mini-album already, but I think we’re going to wait a bit and let some more songs get written before we start any recording. We’ll be giving out a sampler CD-R with demos of some of the new stuff to people who buy our EP. It’s a bit of a preview of things to come.

How has the international response to Detorake Yuuenchi been?

Ryotaro: We see people on last.fm and stuff who are listening to us who probably couldn’t listen to us before. Hopefully we’ll see an even bigger reaction once we start the tour.

How did you get involved with this tour?

Ryotaro: Steven Tanaka, the organizer, came to see us play early last year at Shinjuku Motion. We didn’t know he was coming, much less did we knew who he was. Apparently he heard us on some free compilation my friend had made. Anyways, he came to see us, and we started talking after the show, and since then he’s come to see us a couple of times and we gradually started to get to know each other a bit more.

Some time last summer, he came up to me at another show and said that he was interested in taking a couple of Tokyo bands over to Canada and the States. I was overwhelmed, but at this point it was just a little idea of his, and nothing more. I expected it would be a while before things would start to materialize, but he e-mailed me just a couple weeks after, asking if we were still interested. I couldn’t believe it! We jumped on immediately.

What is one thing you want to do in Canada?

Kotone: I want to eat maple cookies while watching the Niagara Falls.

Ryotaro: I like going to record stores, so I want to check out as many stores in Canada as I possibly can.

Have you traveled abroad before? Where? What was it like?

Ryotaro: Kotone and I have both lived abroad. She lived in Hong Kong and I lived in the States. I was in a really rural part of the country, so it was very peaceful and quiet.

What would you like to say to Japanese music fans in Canada?

Kotone: We hope to bring you all the live power of the hottest Japanese indie musicians that you can’t get on CDs or youtube. I’m sure it will be a very worthwhile experience.

Thanks Kulu Kulu Garden!  The tour is currently underway.  Ironically, I’m in Japan while an amazing tour of Japanese bands passes through my hometown, so those of you in Canada would be well-advised not to miss these shows!

May 22   Vancouver @ the Biltmore Cabaret
May 25   Montreal @ il Motore
May 28   Toronto @ the Rivoli
May 29   Toronto (All-Ages !!) @ Whipper Snapper Gallery 

July 9  Tour finale in Tokyo, Japan @ Shibuya
O-nest !!

The Next Music from Tokyo tour is blasting through Canada right now and I was lucky enough to get to talk to mothercoat about the tour.  Here’s what they had to say:

How did you get involved with this tour?

A Canadian guy called Steve offered this tour to us. He is kind of famous among Japanese indie bands in Tokyo because he shows up at cool bookings too much often for a resident of Toronto. We got to know his high motivation to convey real indie music of Japan which he would enjoy so much to the audience in his own country where only limited stereotypes of traditonal and pop idols music are recognized as the ceiling of Japanese music scene. We were moved by his dedication and accepted the offer.

Have you traveled abroad before?  Where?  What was it like?

We have played in Fanime 2006 held in San Jose and SXSW 2007 in Austin, both in the U.S. They were great experiences, especially the visitors to Fanime love Japanese culture from the start so we were highly-welcomed. SXSW was so exciting in another way, we enjoyed playing in the stage of SXSW and also seeing other great bands like Sparklehorse much closer than we see them in Japan. We tried to talk and give our albums to Mark Lincous and he was so gracious, which becomes a sad memory at this moment.

Your style has a lot in common with many indie bands in Canada – what foreign bands have influenced your music?  Any Canadian bands?

Oh, we do? We haven’t given much of the exposure to Canadian indie music scene before, so your question arouses interest in them.

Do you hope to tour outside of Japan more often in the future?

Definitely. Actually we are going to be touring in the U.K. fresh off the plane back from Canada and would like to continuously expand the opportunities in the future.

What do you do when you’re not making music?

We do something other than music.

What is one thing you want to do in Canada?

We’re dead set on seeing the Horseshoe Falls.  (ed. note:  more commonly known as Niagara Falls)

What would you like to say to Japanese music fans in Canada?

We would like you to feel mothercoat in lives!! This tour is really an invaluable and rare opportunity for you to touch the real cutting-edge music scene of Japan that internet cannot tell you.

Thanks mothercoat!  Their tour is currently ongoing,  here are the dates:

May 22   Vancouver @ the Biltmore Cabaret
May 25   Montreal @ il Motore
May 28   Toronto @ the Rivoli
May 29   Toronto (All-Ages !!) @ Whipper Snapper Gallery 

July 9  Tour finale in Tokyo, Japan @ Shibuya
O-nest !!

Though, sadly, it is only for about 2 weeks, this trip will include recording sessions for their up-and-coming new album with producer John McEntire (Tortoise, The Sea and Cake), who they have been craving for working with, so I have to say it’s worth it.
Before they took off for this tour, I was lucky enough to interview them.

Q: On Feb 10th, the last day of the new EP tour, I enjoyed your performance much more than last year.  It was one of the best shows this year so far.
What kind of bands do you particularly respect?
A: 54-71. Their live performance has all the elements such as techniques, original ideas, surprises, and funniness, living on their stage. I have never seen any other shows that full of originality.

Q: What were good and regretful things during this tour?
A: Good: Had a great time touring with the band Marvins Revolt (Denmark).
Sad: The band (Marvins Revolt) broke up after this tour.

Q: I heard you are doing some recordings after the US tour, could you tell us about that?
A: We have been longing to have John McEntire to record our music. We couldn’t schedule it last time as he was busy, but this time we were able to have a chance to ask him for it.

Q: About the new EP “Turns Red”, I see there were some new things in your music, such as a synthesizer. Was there anything that influenced you? Were there any changes for making music?
A: We did not get influenced by anyone particular. We thought we have done enough in our former style of music, and wanted to try out something new and challenging. We finally have learned how to make music on our PC.  We did a demo on Garageband.

Q: When are you planning to release the new album?
A: We would like to release it by this Summer if possible.

Q: When it’s released, are you planning to go on tour abroad?  You went to several places on the last tour, what country was the best place to play? and why?
A: We would like to go to Europe again.  Hard to name one place since we have good memories at each location, but Dublin, Ireland, (the hometown of our label) was very lively.

Q: Do you have any confirmed plans for summer festivals? Do you prefer to play outside or inside?
A: We don’t know about summer festivals yet.
We like to play outside, because it seems more fun.

Q: Do you ever feel music is your job? If so, what makes you feel it?
A: We have never felt that music is our job.

- US Tour Dates -
3/4 – RHYTHM ROOM – Phoenix, AZ
3/5 – BOOTLEG THEATER – Los Angeles, CA
3/6 – THE CASBAH – San Diego, CA
3/7 – MERCURY LOUNGE – Santa Barbara, CA
3/8 – THE BLUE LAMP – Sacramento, CA
3/9 – BOTTOM OF THE HILL – San Francisco, CA
3/11 – DANTE’S – Portland, OR
3/12 – CHOP SUEY – Seattle, WA

LITE: MYSPACE

Hello Morning Glory! Please introduce yourselves for my readers:

RIMINA: I’m Rimina. I play the guitar and sing lead vocal. I’m also the main songwriter.

KANAKO: I’m Kanako. I play the bass and sing chorus.

You met each other in school. Please tell us the story of how Morning Glory started making music together.

RIMINA: I’ve known Kanako since childhood. Since we hung out together every day, when I decided to make a band I invited Kanako. She kept refusing in the beginning, but she got motivated after seeing a concert of GREEN DAY. I was told that a band needs at least 3 persons (I didn’t know anything about a band… *laugh*), so an acquaintance introduced me to the former drummer, Yousuke.

KANAKO: I’ve known Rimina since we were 3 years old. We were in the same class until high school except for the elementary school. When Rimina suggested making a band, I thought she was crazy! (laugh) But we always gave it 100%. We didn’t know anything, but we just decided to give it a try and started writing songs.

What musicians do you look up to as inspirations?

RIMINA: From music that goes in a completely different direction from MORNING GLORY. I often get inspirations from an acoustic type of sound that has singing with a piano or a guitar. Since I have a thing for voices, basically I get inspirations from singing.

KANAKO: I get influenced easily as long as I think it’s cool, no matter what genre it is. It feel the same whether it’s from a famous band with a lot of experience and from a new band that just started.

What are your favorite live houses in the Gifu/Nagoya area?

RIMINA: Shibuya O-nest in Tokyo, ell.SIZE in Nagoya. These are the places where we had our first one-man lives in each of those cities, so it brings back the nervous excitement each time I go there.

KANAKO: MUSIC FARM in Fujigaoka. They always value each and every band that plays there.

When you’re not playing music, what are your hobbies?

RIMINA: As I like videogames, I (want to) play games when I have time.

KANAKO: I’m with my dog, Tai.

You offered a support song to [soccer team] FC Gifu. Are you big sports fans? Do sports have a large influence on your music?

RIMINA: I like watching sports, and I like playing volleyball. Since sports are a mixture of motivation and ambition, I get different feelings and inspiration from watching them. In that sense, sports can become an influence in making music.

KANAKO: I love sports. When I play, I’m serious, but I don’t last long because I don’t have stamina. (laugh)

What message do you want fans to take from your music?

RIMINA: I want them to feel it’s fun. Though each song has a different feeling, I’d be happy if the fans tell me that they want to play in a band because of MORNING GLORY.

KANAKO: I want them to smile and feel positive and fun so they can try their best tomorrow.

Do you have anything you want to say to your English-speaking fans?

RIMINA: I know they say that music is for anywhere in the world, but I never thought an opportunity like this would come. MORNING GLORY is a band that we started to have fun! I hope our music can deliver the fun we wanted to have.

KANAKO: It will make me happy if they feel something when they listen to our music. Let’s have fun together at our live show!!

Download MORNING GLORY music at the JapanFiles Digital Music Store

MORNING GLORY Official Homepage | MySpace

Videos:

]]> http://www.nipponrock.net/2010/01/25/interview-morning-glory/feed/ 0 http://www.nipponrock.net/2010/01/06/interview-ayaka-ikio/ http://www.nipponrock.net/2010/01/06/interview-ayaka-ikio/#comments Thu, 07 Jan 2010 04:12:53 +0000 Jack http://www.nipponrock.net/?p=439 I’ve been enjoying Ayaka Ikio’s music since I first heard it.  She brings a heavy edge to the dance scene and both her mini-albums ( RE: ACID QUEEN and GOSSIP) make frequent appearances on my stereo.  I asked Ayaka about her music and here’s what she had to say:

NIPPONROCK.NET: You were a student when you recorded RE: ACID QUEEN, right?  Are you still in school or are you working on your music career full time?

AYAKA IKIO:  Yes, I was still in school when I started working on RE: ACID QUEEN. The proposal to record the CD came while I was still a student, so I didn’t want to miss out on that. I really didn’t tell most of the students at the school that I was doing it, so I only told my close friends – they were really supportive. When the album came out in January (2009), everyone found out about it, and they all said “Amazing!” “That’s great!” Everyone was really supportive.

NIPPONROCK.NET: How did you make the transition between modeling and performing music?

AYAKA IKIO:  I started when I was around 15 years old. I was featured on a website of a clothing store, and I entered into some contests. The thing I like most about fashion is that I can wear so many different [clothes]. At home I have so many!

NIPPONROCK.NET:  How involved are you with the songwriting on your albums?

AYAKA IKIO:  I get the music [from my producers] and then I add the lyrics based on my feelings. Before that it’s just a white space, I’m ready to experience anything. The spirit inside the music is really important — I base a lot on how I feel when I hear it for the very first time. Then I listen privately when I’m walking, and that’s when the images will start coming to me.

NIPPONROCK.NET: Why do you sing so much in English?

AYAKA IKIO:  The coolness factor of English is really important, and the English language matches the beat better in club music. And the atmosphere, too. There’s a lot of English [lyrics] in the Japanese club scene.

NIPPONROCK.NET: Autotune is a big part of your sound, but there is more of your natural voice on “GOSSIP” than on your debut and it occurs to me that your singing sounds more confident.  How has your vocal style developed between albums?

AYAKA IKIO:  I wanted everyone to know who I really was in GOSSIP. For me personally, I don’ think there was a major change — but there is a change in how I sing for each individual song. For example, “PLASTIC BABY” and “GET OUT” are high-energy, “up”- type songs, so I’m using a stronger voice and style, and I change what I imagine when I’m singing.

NIPPONROCK.NET: It seems like you enjoy pushing sexual boundaries in your music. Your lyrics depict a woman who is in control of her sexuality. Have you taken any criticism for your explicit lyrics?

AYAKA IKIO:  The audience response is 50/50. On the plus side, the females say it’s really cool. They’re the ones who seem to get into it the most at the club. But some people say it’s too sexy or it’s too bold or outrageous.

NIPPONROCK.NET: On GOSSIP there is a cover of “Anarchy in the UK” by the Sex Pistols.  Why did you cover this song?  Are you a big fan of the Sex Pistols and other punk rock bands?

AYAKA IKIO:  Someone suggested that we do a cover, and that particular song was one of the ones on the top of the list. I listened to it and I really liked it! That was my first time listening to the Sex Pistols. I thought the lyrics were really interesting, really aggressive. That’s probably what I liked most about it.

NIPPONROCK.NET: What plans do you have for your career?  Where do you see yourself in the future?

AYAKA IKIO:  I really love the ocean so I want to perform at a big beach party! of course in Japan the ocean is so beautiful, but I want to go outside of Japan to see places like Ibiza and Miami.

NIPPONROCK.NET: Do you have any message for your English-speaking fans?

AYAKA IKIO:  Please enjoy my music, wherever you are. I hope I’ll see you someday in your city or in Japan!

Download Ayaka Ikio music at JapanFiles Digital Music Store

Ayaka Ikio: Official Website | MySpace

Ayaka Ikio Videos:

Can you describe your music?

Kotone: Slappy, spanky, happy music♪

Ryotaro: I’m not sure about the “slappy” and “spanky” part, but it’s something like that, yeah.

You just played a show at Kichijouji Planet K.  How’d it go?

Ryotaro: It was a lot of fun.  We’ve only played once there before, but it’s a really great club.  The sound system is fantastic.  We all really got into it around the middle of the set, and Kyohei was just on fire for the last half.  It was a blast!

Who are the musicians who have influenced you?

Kotone: Puffy, Shena Ringo, and children’s music!

Ryotaro: When we started this band, I told Kotone that I wanted to sound like a cross between Afrirampo and Melt-Banana.  We’ve obviously expanded on that as we’ve put our sound together, but the fundamental ideas are still there I guess.

I listened to stuff like Sonic Youth, Boris, and At The Drive-In in high school.  Bands like Boredoms, Nisennenmondai, and Panicsmile have been very big influences too. I’m also into shoegaze-type stuff as well.  I love My Bloody Valentine.  And I’m a really big Smashing Pumpkins fan, which might come off as strange to some people, but that’s all I can hear when I listen back to our music!

But we listen to all kinds of things.  We like Merzbow, Brigitte Fontaine, and Deerhoof just as much as we like Perfume, Ego-Wrappin’, and Judy And Mary.

You’re a young band, and still establishing yourselves in Tokyo – what made you decide to release your music internationally so early into your career?

Kotone: I think that music fans abroad are more willing to accept and appreciate unique, weird, interesting music.  The capacity to accept different ideas seems larger.  It’s not that people in Japan aren’t willing to accept us, but I think that over here, people are very cautious when they’re faced with stuff like that.  A lot of people worry about what other people think.  So I think it’ll be nice if we can get people abroad, who aren’t like that, to listen to our music and get some sort of response from them.  And Japan is so tiny!  The world is so huge!

Ryotaro: I think a lot of bands our age in the local scene here spend a lot of time thinking about Tokyo, and to a lesser extent Japan, but not really about anywhere else.  Bands really don’t have any excuse these days about not reaching out to people outside their own local area.  And we just sort of felt like it.  I just woke up one day and thought it might be a cool idea.  And the e-mails from Italy and Canada asking for our CDs didn’t hurt either!

How do you find the music scene in Tokyo?  It is made of many small scenes, but do you feel like there is an overall musical identity of the city?

Ryotaro: There are a lot of tiny scenes so it’s hard to define one single musical identity.  Obviously some scenes stand out more than others, but on the other hand there are a ton of scenes we have no idea about or know that they even exist.  In that sense I don’t think the city is really unified musically or anything.  There doesn’t seem to be much cross-pollinating between scenes happening unfortunately.  But we’re not a part of any particular scene; we don’t really know what’s going on, so we can’t really speak for anyone.

The scene we’re most familiar with has been really exciting, with great bands like Owarikara and Far France.  I think there’s a batch of young bands who don’t really give a crap about “indie cred” or whatever, and are influenced by a whole slew of things, both underground and mainstream, and are sort of putting everything in a big blender and coming up with a bunch of crazy things.

Kotone: I honestly have no clue about Tokyo’s music scene.  But one thing for certain I think is that, the more you dig into it the more you find different things. But that probably has to do with the fact that there are a lot of people in the city.

How did you start working with Kyohei from Far France?

Kotone: We said, “Please play drums for Kulu Kulu Garden!!!”, and he said,“Sure!”.

Ryotaro: There was a bit more to it than that, but that’s pretty much how it went. I’ve been friends with Far France for about four years now.  I met Kenji, their guitarist, one day at school, and we had really similar tastes in music so we got along immediately.  I got to know the other guys through him.

We had a drummer when we first started out, but we had a lot of problems with him so we kicked him out.  When we were thinking of a replacement, Kyohei was really the only person we could think of.  I’m really picky when it comes to the drums, and he was the only guy I knew who could play our material.  I really love his drumming.  He’s very physical, and the little quirks he throws in make him very interesting to watch.  I like drummers who sort of engage you visually.

He was really enthusiastic about our band and our songs from the start, so it’s been a lot of fun playing with him.  He’s definitely the best musician in the band, and pushes us to be better.

When you’re not playing music, what do each of you like to do with your time?

Kotone: Sleeping, eating, reading, eating, reading, eating…

Ryotaro: We like to watch movies a lot too, and so we end up talking about that sort of stuff when we’re not playing music.

Do you have any message for your overseas fans?

Kotone: I want to see you guys in your countries!!!

Ryotaro: Hopefully we’ll be able to play in places outside Japan one day.  For now, please enjoy our records!

Thanks Kotone and Ryotaro!

Ian was kind enough to answer my questions about his work in the music business, the musical identities of different areas of Japan and why digital distribution hasn’t caught on in Japan.

Could you describe the work you do with Clear and Refreshing and with Call and Response Records?

Clear And Refreshing is a web site I started in 2003. At that time I was mostly writing about UK and US music […], but increasingly I started finding myself going to local bands’ gigs. A year after starting the site, I organised an event in Koenji (the suburb where I live) and then a year after that I made a compilation album with some of the bands I liked, under the name Call And Response.

Now I have the label, of course, and three regular or semi-regular events that I do. First is my label’s live showcase called Telephone Club; then there’s a monthly free DJ night with a couple of live electronic or acoustic bands called Fashion Crisis that I do with a band called Candles and a journalist friend of mine; lastly there’s Switched On! which is a sort of new wave/electropop night that I do with Dr. Usui from the band Motocompo.

You’ve been in Japan for a good number of years now, what made you want to move there?  What made you stay? And what made you get involved with music in such a big way?

I can’t remember why I moved here really. I was a really awful, self-absorbed student type, so I think it was mostly that I’d read Murakami’s “Wind-up Bird Chronicle” and I wanted to come to Tokyo and get swept up in a whirlwind of metaphysical adventure. Getting involved in the music scene was just a consequence of being interested in music, albeit really terrible music at that time.

I think the problem at first was that to start with I was looking for bands that matched UK/US bands on the same terms, but I realised gradually that you can’t judge the music scene here like that. The very worst Japanese bands are the ones that try to ape currently fashionable Western music, and the best ones are the ones that just get on and do their own thing.

What music are you really excited about at the moment?

There are some quite young bands that I love at the moment. There’s this band called The Mornings, who are just gloriously fucked up and brilliant. They play about a gazillion shows a month and just tear everywhere that they play apart.

I’m interested in this strange little group called Puffy Shoes, which is two girls being all sort of kooky and quirky, like Afrirampo or Kiiiiiii, except they have some really, really good songs. I find it a bit annoying when girly Japanese bands put on this self-consciously cute facade, but if a band is really sincere about what they do, it always comes across well in the end.

Has being a foreigner caused any extra challenges in the music business for you?

My Japanese is nowhere near as good as it should be considering how long I’ve been here, so that’s one thing where I have to call mea culpa, but I more or less get by. More subtle cultural issues only show themselves more rarely.

One thing is that when I disagree with someone over whether a band’s any good or not, people will often immediately respond, “Ah, that’s because you’re foreign,” when I’m just thinking, “No, it’s because you’re wrong!”

The other is the issue of “sempai” and “kohai”, which pervades the music scene. This basically translates as “senior” and “junior” and means that the longer you’ve been around, the more respect people beneath you have to give. It means that even if a band is really popular, they’ll sometimes find themselves lower in the pecking order than older bands with much smaller audiences just out of respect, and leads to a situation where younger bands are perhaps not as confident in themselves as I think they could be.

You’re based in Tokyo, but can you tell me about the musical identities of different cities in Japan?

I’d say that pretty much any big city in Japan has pretty much any kind of music in it somewhere, and the differences are more in the atmosphere, or perhaps in the influence that certain famous bands have on young bands following them.

Bands like Number Girl and Panicsmile, both of whom came out of Fukuoka, have probably had a kind of influence on the development of subsequent generations of punk and experimental bands there. I’d guess bands like Katsurei and Nohshintoh have had an influence on subsequent generations of Nagoya bands, and the Boredoms and Acid Mothers Temple have certainly had an influence on Osaka music.

One thing that I thought was an interesting observation was when I interviewed Hajime Yoshida from Panicsmile a few years back. He said that bands in Fukuoka basically wanted to be like Tokyo bands but because of the remoteness and the lack of any real flow of information between the cities’ underground scenes, the Fukuoka bands always got it wrong. He then went on to say that this made the scene interesting, because they got it wrong in a very Fukuoka-esque way, so when they actually went to Tokyo, people thought it was something very cool and original.

You’ve spoken of the Tokyo music scene as being fragmented, do you think that Tokyo is disadvantaged in this regard?  You’ve mentioned that Fukuoka, for example, has a more unified scene, how do you think this affects musicians and fans in different cities?

The small suburb of Tokyo where I live, Koenji, has I guess about 15 or 20 live venues. Shinjuku perhaps the same or more, Shimokitazawa more than 20, Shibuya probably more than 30. In Tokyo as a whole, I’d hazard a wild guess at about 500 live venues. Tokyo and the area close by it has a population of perhaps 20 million (which is roughly the same as Australia) or if you take the whole urban area that Tokyo is a part of, more than 30 million (roughly the same as Canada).

Fukuoka has a population of 1.4 million and has probably fewer live venues than Koenji. Naturally there are fewer bands in smaller cities, and as a result they’re forced to play together with different types of bands and there’s less scope for fans to pick and choose events according to genre.

I’d have to say in the end that it’s an advantage to Tokyo just because of the sheer volume of great music that you can find. The greater number of bands means that genres can develop with the support of a more dedicated fanbase and with the inspiration and support of more like-minded bands. For someone entering into the scene though, it requires a lot of dedication to just find out about all the different scenes.

In any case, in Tokyo it’s easier to find a niche or a space to do your own thing, whereas in a town like Fukuoka it’s perhaps a bit easier to find a sense of community. In Tokyo you often have to build up your own community from scratch.

That’s a good point.  I think it’s easy for me, as someone from Toronto, to see Tokyo as a similar city, just bigger.  But you’re right to point out that that the Tokyo area has as high a population as Canada – which makes it very different than anything I’m used to.  Is it more accurate to compare the differences between neighbourhoods to the differences between Halifax and Edmonton or between Brooklyn and San Francisco?

Probably more so in the past than now, but some districts still hang onto a musical identity. The net has made it much easier to spread information about shows, so people can find out about gigs pretty easily just by following their favourite bands’ web sites rather. As a result the music has become more and more divorced from its location.

The reputation of certain areas and certain venues does do a bit for the local flavour of places like Koenji or Shimokitazawa though, but it’s fading. Shimokitazawa’s undergoing redevelopment, which will probably end up making it much more like the rest of Tokyo, and if rumours are true, the last two proper punk venues in Koenji closed down after the fire there the other week.

It seems like you really promote the music you love, and not necessarily what will make money – for instance, you released a tribute to Wire, but have admitted that “no one in Japan knows who Wire are”.  Do you think you’ll ever want to work with more commercially successful artists?

I exaggerated a bit there. Lots of people know Wire, although they’re not anywhere near as influential in the Japanese music scene as they are in the UK or even the US. The Pop Group seem to get way more kudos among bands I know, which is nice for me, coming from Bristol, but Wire’s icier, more cryptic and ironic approach doesn’t seem to translate so well into the Japanese way of doing things.

As for working with more commercially successful artists, I don’t know. I’d love it if Mir and Hyacca became really successful. My wife would certainly love it if all those boxes of unsold CDs would stop clogging up our closet. I release stuff by bands first and foremost whose music I love to bits, who I get on with as people, and who I feel share a similar kind of philosophy with me. I have no ideological problem with working with a commercially successful band as long as they fit all those criteria.

You’ve criticized the music press in Japan, but do you think the internet is improving things by making it easier for bloggers and writers to publish a variety of opinions?

The Internet makes it easier to do that, yeah, but it still needs the people to come out and actually do it. At the moment, Internet media in Japan still seems to follow the same uncritical, offend-no-one model as print media.

Media in Japan generally takes a way less confrontational approach compared to the UK, where people are often just dicks simply because they can be. That’s not in itself a huge problem, especially since nowadays people are just going to check it out on  Myspace anyway rather than take a journalist’s opinion as gospel.

The problem in Japan is the general lack of fan involvement. Fans and musicians interact on a much more equal footing, and in a much more communal way compared to the UK, which is great, but the fans don’t feed back into the scene and proselytise about the groups they love through fanzines and such to the same extent. It’s not that Japanese people don’t do this kind of thing though: just look at anime and manga otaku. They have an awesome fan infrastructure and if music fans could borrow just a bit of that attitude (although please rather less of that awful Hatsune Miku stuff), it would have a huge impact.

Have you released any Call and Response artists outside of Japan?

Nope. I’d love to but I haven’t had the opportunity. I’ve tried to at least set up some kind of method of making my CDs available abroad, but so far every attempt has floundered on the problem of how to accept payments from overseas. PayPal has been the be-all and end-all of money transfer for people I’ve spoken to so far, and unfortunately I’m the only person in the world who can’t use it.

What is the best way for fans outside of Japan to get ahold of Call and Response music?

Good question. I have no idea (see above). In Japan they’re available through Tower Records, HMV Online, Amazon, Disk Union and some smaller independent stores, and you’d think some of them would export overseas.

Obviously none of these options are ideal though. If any of your readers own a small-scale, Japan-based online indie CD export shop, preferably one with a strict no-visual-kei policy and without any cutesy fake anime drawings on the web site, contact me by all means.

I often wonder why more Japanese labels don’t set up international distribution with stores like iTunes -  Do you mind if I ask why that hasn’t been an option for you?

In many ways Japan has been quite slow to catch onto the Internet, and digital distribution just generally isn’t a big deal with customers yet. Until recently CD sales have been holding up better than in the west, although that’s really starting to break down now. Major labels make the situation worse with their general suspicion of all things electronic (DRM hatehatehate!) iTunes isn’t a big deal in Japan at all, and I think only accounts for about 10% of the download market or something. Most of it is mobile phone downloads, and most of that is distributed through one company, which is run by the major labels and excludes almost all independent music.

Added to that is the fact that indie music fans in Japan are among the most conservative in the sense that they generally seem to prefer having a physical CD in their hands. The main reason though, is that a CD sells for 1,500-3,000 yen and gets you 7-14 songs, which works out at a bit over 200 yen per song. Digital downloads go for about half that, so I guess labels are scared of harming their CD sales by making a cheaper version available.

I have no objection to making C.A.R.’s stuff available for download though. I will at some point, it’s just that it hasn’t been a priority for me when shifting the CDs I already have here in Japan is more of a worry.

Thanks Ian!

Links:  Ian’s articles at his website Clear and Refreshing and at The Japan Times.

Nathan Reaven is the President of HearJapan, a site that offers digital downloads of Japanese artists to an international audience. HearJapan launched in February 2008 and currently has 2500 different titles available. Nathan counts Qomolangma Tomato, Soutaisei Riron, Michita, sgt., Cro-Magnon and nhhmbase among his favourite bands.

First off, could you tell me a little about yourself?

My name is Nathan Reaven. I grew up in New York and was given the opportunity to go on an exchange program in Japan while I was a high school student. I studied in a small city in northern Japan called Hachinohe. I had always been a huge fan of music growing up, but when I lived in Japan I was exposed to a whole new world of amazing music and also played in a few bands while I was there. When I came back to America, I made it my goal to expose as many people as I could to all of the awesome music I had found in Japan; most of it completely unheard of in the US. This passion to get as many people as I could to listen to the music was what led me to later start up HearJapan.

What are your most successful titles?

When we first started some of our more successful titles were new visual kei releases like D’espairsRay – Brilliant. Recently genres like chiptune and vocaloid have been incredibly popular. We have a recommendation system on HearJapan called Hot Picks which sell quite well. These are releases that the staff of HearJapan liked so much that they wanted others to enjoy the music as well. We don’t let the music companies interfere in our recommendation system so many of the items that we recommend sell consistently well. We keep “Hot Picks” untainted from label influence so that the truly great items get the spotlight shone on them.

Do you rely on a few hit records for most of your income or do you rely on having a large number of records that sell smaller quantities each?

The latter. Japan has such a wide range of diverse music that we get customers from all over the world who are looking for different types of music. Illegal downloads also play a large role in this as mostly popular releases are affected by them. Most of what HearJapan does is introducing new music to exploring music fans. So whatever they find on the site is usually quite random, which is reflected in our sales.

What was your motivation for starting HearJapan?

To let people buy Japanese music without any hassle. I thought the CD import distribution model was flawed in big ways. The price of a Japanese CD is extremely expensive as it is. Then you throw in shipping costs, exchange rate, a long wait, cracked CDs, etc. and it just simply wasn’t worth it.

I, like all fans of Japanese music, wanted to see a Japanese music distribution system that would do the following:

1. Get the music to the fans overseas on the same day it is released in Japan.
2. Have the music priced at a comparable rate to that of the country in which it is sold.
3. Be convenient to locate, purchase and get information about.
4. Have absolutely no country or territory restrictions–available to everyone.
5. Introduce new artists to people through English information.

Why Japanese music? What is it that drives you to work with Japanese bands in particular, instead of working with American artists or other english-speaking musicians?

I feel there is a lot of great bands here that are completely unrepresented and unknown abroad. I am someone that also supports the underdog. If it’s not a challenge, it isn’t fun.

One of the themes of HearJapan that we are known for in Japan is being the “Kurofune” (or black ships) of the Japanese music industry. Kurofune refers to the ships of Commodore Perry who opened up Japan to the west in the 19^th century. Before that Japan had a policy of “Sakoku” or closed off country. I always felt that Japanese music still has a “Sakoku” policy in place. HearJapan is an allegory to the Kurofune. To trans quote one of my favorite DJs, DJ Kentaro, “music is fuckin’ music, not a barrier in the way”.

What kind of challenges have you had convincing major labels to release DRM free music?

It’s the most difficult part of my job. Japan is the only music industry in the world that solely relies a DRM distribution model. In fact, HearJapan is one of the only stores based in Japan that sells DRM free music. The reason for this is most digital sales come from cell phone purchases in Japan. All music on the cell phone is highly restricted and protected. When sales are doing very well with the DRM and very few consumers seem to be complaining there is no reason for the labels to switch. Many companies have a ‘DRM-only’ policy that won’t allow them to sign contracts with companies that have a DRM-free distribution model for any of their content. The labels are not willing to open Pandora’s box just for the comparably smaller international pie. However most of the labels we distribute for only distribute their music in without DRM through us. If the DRM issue didn’t exist there would be a lot more music on HearJapan, but we are making headway every day. We currently have 800 labels signed to the site and that number is always growing.

Do you find many of the artists you release taking further steps towards success outside of Japan? (ie: tours, hiring publicists etc.)

Some do but nothing is ever sustained. Financially speaking, it’s very hard to do continuous activity abroad. Many do go on tours, some hire publicists, but for the most part once they invest money to go abroad, most of the time the return doesn’t come back, so they don’t give it a second try. Sometimes it works out for the band, but besides anime conventions, it almost always ends up running a significant loss.

Recently I’ve seen going abroad as a way to build publicity within Japan. To me this is unfortunate because many of these bands are going for all the wrong reasons. Many bands go over and have a documentary shot about them that shows how they are breaking some sort of cultural barrier which later airs on Japanese TV. I have found some bands do a foreign tour solely for press coverage like that in Japan. For the management, it is a one time investment that they don’t intend to recoup from overseas sales or overseas tour revenue, however their visibility in Japan is greatly increased by this. I see this a lot. We try to help the bands that are going over to try to connect with a foreign fan base and promote themselves overseas for the right reasons. We have also sponsored many bands to go overseas who had trouble doing it on their own.

We financially sponsored Quaff in March of this year when they went to Texas as well as OMODAKA in March and a later tour. We have also done the legwork in getting bands overseas by bridging connections and the like but we did not make any financial donations.

In the future, do you think there will be more bands making a serious effort to break the international market? What do you think the future has in store for fans of Japanese music?

I know for a fact that there are a ton of bands that genuinely want to break into this market. There are just a lot of forces working against them that are complicated and they probably don’t even know exist.

The biggest problem is there is not enough financial support through purchases or grants from the international market to support international touring or promotion outside of the realm of anime conventions, which are usually limited to a one day performance in another country.

In light of this the majority of bands to go over are doing it for PR opportunities or don’t care if they lose a lot of money. This really whittles down the selection of possible bands significantly.

There are also few steady promoters of Japanese music overseas. Many promoters go bankrupt after two years of activity and close shop. Taking on the cost of bringing over a band from Japan can be quite risky. Also the way major labels contracts are arranged in respect to international licensing makes it legally impossible for them to sublicense an album to a label in another country. These are just a few of the issues that come up.

I hope sales through HearJapan can start to fund tours directly and bring over what’s popular with fans overseas.

Few bands have careers that span three decades, least of all bands with song titles like ‘Banana Chips’ and ‘Muddy Bubble Hell’.  Not only have Shonen Knife endured such a span of time, but they’ve retained the enthusiasm and energy of a band just starting out.  When I spoke to the group before their Toronto show at the Horseshoe Tavern, they seemed excited, rather than the slightest bit weary, to be playing thirty cities in thirty-five days during this tour.

The past few years have seen some line-up changes for Shonen Knife (singer Naoko Yamano is the only remaining founding-member) but it seems like they’ve settled into a cohesive unit with the addition of new bassist Ritsuko Taneda.  Naoko explains, “For this album our bassist Ritsuko joined the band and we became more like a rock band.”

It’s impossible not to get swept up in the enthusiasm and energy that Shonen Knife projects on stage.  In Toronto they drew from their entire catalogue, playing sparingly from the new album in order to fit in older favourites.

Playing fan-favourites rather than just plugging their new album isn’t a surprise from a band that is all about being fun and entertaining.  Naoko is anything but a self-indulgent songwriter and claims, “Music should be a fun thing.  I don’t want to sing about something serious like political things or something.  That’s why I pick the topics for my lyrics as cakes or candies, and sometimes animals.”

Shonen Knife had as much fun as anyone at the Horseshoe during their show.  Naoko jumped during guitar solos, Etsuko bounced along with her drums, and Ritsuko wore a huge grin for the entire set.  This is a band that loves to play live, and sure knows how to entertain their fans from all over the world.

For many groups, Japan is a large enough market to make their living, and with little financial motivation (or opportunity abroad), it is rare to see Japanese bands touring outside of their home country.  Shonen Knife is a whole other story, though.  This year alone they’ve been to Europe, Australia and North America.

When asked what drives them to play in the west, Naoko says, “We are influenced by American and British bands.  The music of Shonen Knife is more westernized than Japanese pop bands and our lyrics are in English.  Mainstream Japanese bands’ lyrics are in Japanese and the melody line is a little bit different than western music.  They’re not so rock, but pop.”

Ultimately, Naoko concludes, “We want to go anywhere there are fans.  We like everywhere in the world.”

Flickr Photo Set: Shonen Knife – Live @ Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto – 2009/10/18

Also see: Review of Shonen Knife’s new album Super Group.

Shonen Knife Website | MySpace