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 !!

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!

A good start with a new-wavy spiritual less-punkish pop group, Thai Kick Murph kicked in with a great vibe into the event, resulting in people already flooding into the venue. Not only Thai Kick Murph was there, but also the promisingly up-and-coming experimental-ish psych-heavy rock OWARIKARA was funky enough to bring a large audience, and was on the verge of taking over the show.

It was already crowded with a warmed up audience by four other bands before Kulu Kulu Garden started. Regardless of riskily having a great line-up for a CD release party, Kulu Kulu Garden drew attention from the audience. Intensely pitchy Kotone’s (vocal/bass) barely understandable vocal, (which in a lot of cases sounds cheesy – hers didn’t, of course) flew into the audience keeping them engaged.  Also, Ryotaro’s punk-influenced guitar riffs and Kyohei’s unexpectedly well-built drums made the atmosphere into a rock comfort-zone.

Even seemingly gaining their followers already and having solid music skills, surprisingly and respectfully Ryotaro Aoki(Gutar) and Kotone Miyahara(Bass/Vocal) leading the band are still young.

The event could have been tough for Kulu Kulu Garden since the sub-headlining acts have decent fan-bases and performed well. As seeing them not ending up with disappointment in comparison to other bands, they definitely did the audience good.

Click here to see pics from the show

MYSPACE WEBSITE

That’s why I was pleasantly surprised to hear the sonic barrage of ‘Age Zen Suezen’, the first song from their EP Detorake Yuuenchi. Ryotaro Aoki’s High-voltage punk guitars drive the first half of the song, followed by an intense Boris-influenced feedback-ridden transition into an eerily mellow bridge, finally building back up into an enormous climax with vocalist Kotone Miyahara screaming her head off with all the intensity of a Fever To Tell era Karen O. They sure open with a monster of a track (the first time I heard it I listened about six times in a row), and the rest of the album – although not quite as immediate – lives up to their first impression.

Far France fans will find that Kulu Kulu Garden has some familiar elements: 1) They have a similar indie-rock sound, combining dissonant instruments with melodic song-writing. 2) Far France’s drummer Kyohei has been playing with the band since their previous drummer split and it’s hard to imagine them playing with anyone else. The trio has a sense of dynamics and momentum that demonstrates that they have great chemistry together. The songs on Detorake Yuuenchi are concise, and the EP, clocking in at just over 26 minutes, never drags or gets dull.

Kotone Miyahara’s vocals took me a couple of listens to get used to, her tone is unusual and there are a few places where she’s not pitch-perfect. Ultimately she balances this with great energy in her performance though, and it’s refreshing to hear a bit of raw-ness in an era when everyone and their mother is using autotune. Where Miyahara’s vocals really shine is when she’s at her most intense or her most mellow. She’s great at intense screams and wails during fast songs, and during the acoustic-driven ballad, ‘Mori No Kumasan’, her harmonies come across as ethereally beautiful.

Kulu Kulu Garden write the kind of melodies that really stick in your head – balancing pop songs with a hard-indie sound – and that’s what makes Detorake Yuuenchi such a compelling listen. The first thing that impressed me on this record was their sense of momentum, but what maintains that momentum is that they’re always heading somewhere good. Kulu Kulu Garden’s songs sound spontaneous, but they’re very structured and well constructed – I get the feeling that a lot of time has gone into these songs. Although they’ve recorded a few demos in the past, this is Kulu Kulu Garden’s first official release and they already sound like they’ve been together for a decade. This is an album that is worth getting excited about from a band that is well-worth paying some serious attention to.

Listen: Age Zen Suezen

Kulu Kulu Garden website

Kulu Kulu Garden MySpace

Video: (This song isn’t on Detorake Yuuenchi but it gives a good idea of Kulu Kulu Garden’s sound).