The better part of a year ago, I started stumbling through an experiment to chronicle my frequent, curious brushes with Japanese music. The result is the blog you see here. I haven’t updated as much as I originally planned. Frankly, I haven’t done much of what I originally planned.

That’s all going to change. We all have to grow up sometime and Nihongaku is no exception. From now on, you’re getting a full-on 1,000 percent of your daily allotment of Japanese music. More MP3s than your mortal ears can handle; more pics of Gackt than your inner fan girl can squeal over; more X Japan than even I can stomach; all this and more awaits you. You’re just going to have to hit up a slightly different URL. The quest continues at http://rockoutjapan.com.

Sour made up of the various icons and profile pics that make up my digital life.

You should really see Sour’s new music video “Mirror.” You’re in it. Or at least you will be when you give their site access to your Twitter account, Facebook profile and your web cam (or as few as one of the three). The result is a collage of your digital foot print and Sour’s three members intriguingly-animated in pop-up windows. Trust me, you’ll be glad you checked it out.

“Mirror” follows a few months behind The Arcade Fire’s brush with HTML 5 interactivity and Google Chrome in an interactive film called The Wilderness Downtown which makes use of “We Used to Wait” from the band’s The Suburbs album. Where “Mirror” cuts and pastes your various sites and followers, Wilderness asks you to type in your childhood address to “geopersonalize” the video; a fancy way of saying your old house will appear prominently in the video. Also a sight to be seen.

So who is Sour anyway? I hadn’t heard about them until “Mirror” started getting passed around the net. I guess that makes me proof positive that their interactive marketing campaign/experimental video project worked.

It turns out Sour is a trio of Japanese dudes with international upbringings. Hoshijima (vocals and guitar) was born in France and grew up in Britain. Sohey (various forms of bass) grew up in Germany but came into being in Spain. Takahasiken (on drums and “toys”) grew up in Tokyo’s Ginza district. The band describes their sound as “organic, urban, tight, mellow, sharpend, and totally comfortable sound.”

According to a post from Creativity, directorial credit for “Mirror” goes to Masashi Kawamura (a creative director at advertising agency Wieden + Kennedy New York), Qanta Shimizu, and Saqoosha.

Gackt

Earlier today, video game-centric blog Kotaku published a post by Senior Contributing Editor (Japan) Brian Ashcraft all about Japanese rock star/multi-instrumentalist/actor/vampire Gackt. Apparently Ashcraft has discovered Gackt and, after doing so, felt an intense need to shower him with adoration. Not that the guy doesn’t deserve it, you understand. Gackt is an extremely interesting rock star/multi-instrumentalist/actor/vampire.

It just goes to show that Japanese music has a strange way of penetrating the West. When and where it will rear its glittery, glammed-out face is anybody’s guess. This time it was because of Gackt’s involvement in various video game projects. Still, it feels strange to think that there are now thousands of dedicated Kotaku readers who know about Gackt because he lent his likeness to Bujingai and not because of his solo albums or his work with Malice Mizer.

Ashcraft points out that despite his many other talents, Gackt’s comedic delivery may be his most refined. I had not seen Gackt’s Metal Gear Solid 2 commercial before. It turns out vampires are hilarious.

X Japan in Phoenix New Times.

There’s something that will never get old about seeing your work in print. I know, I know. We’re all Web 2.0 and slaves to shiny black boxes from Apple these days, but seeing a story in print has this tangible quality to it that beats digital hands down. Of course, when the story happens to be about one of your favorite bands, it’s even better.

If you’re in the Phoenix area, go pick up a copy of New Times in which you’ll find my music feature on X Japan; the significance of their Lollapalooza gig and what it might mean for their future. If you’re too smart to live in the great, American desert, you can also read it online.

There was a lot I didn’t get to in this article simply because I had to keep it to 1500 words. It was 1499, I believe. I’m still working on the X Japan retrospective series here on Nihongaku, so expect to hear more about the Lollapalooza performance soon.

Shonen Knife's current line up.

Four thousand people in the audience, and I get stuck sitting in front of the woman packing heat. No, not the kind you load with bullets. Much worse. Balled up into some sort of cotton torpedo and wedged into the pocket of her designer jeans was a pair of granny panties on which various love notes to John Rzeznik were scrawled in T-shirt paint. Halfway through the Goo Goo Dolls set, Granny Panties awkwardly snuck toward the stage and let ‘em fly…right into the back of some dude’s head. I wonder if he figured out what hit him.

What was I doing at a Goo Goo Dolls show and why am I bringing this up on a blog supposedly about Japanese music? Would you believe it if I told you Goo Goo Dolls bassist Robby Takac started a record label that releases Japanese albums called Good Charamel Records? I didn’t believe it either until he responded to my e-mail asking if he’d like to spend a few minutes talking about it while he was in town.

One full set and an encore later, a buddy and I waited at the front of the stage for Mr. Takac to come out and chat. He showed up bearing gifts; namely Shonen Knife’s new English album Free Time and Good Charamel Records’ latest J-Rock compilation I Love J-Rock.

Molice

It’s the compilation that piqued my interest. First of all, it prominently features Shonen Knife, a band of Osakan females lead by Naoko Yamano who admittedly deserves much more discussion than I’m going to devote to them today. Suffice to say, they’re about as successful as a band can be and still consider themselves indie. They toured with Nirvana. They played Lollapalooza. They still regularly tour in the states and in Japan. They’re a big deal. Maybe that’s why they’ve got three of the twelve tracks.

First up is “Perfect Freedom” from the aforementioned Free Time. Part Ramones, part Beatles vocal harmoney, this track is a great example of Shonen Knife at their best: simple, catchy and just plain good. There’s also a live version of “Explosion” an older track (and a personal fave) from the 1997 album Brand New Knife and “Ramones Forever” from Fun! fun! fun!.

Aside from Shonen Knife, there’s TsuShiMaMiRe whose song “J-POP” is almost a spoof of J-pop hooks ranging from sparking background effects, higher-than-normal pitch, and a random children’s chorus for no reason. Much more indicative of their overall sound is “Strobe,” a piece that walks that fine line between sugary sweet and straight aead rock that just about every anime ending theme seems to have in common.

Erupting out of a fuzzy bass with piercing guitar goodness is LAZYgunsBRISKY who appear on the comp with tracks “Navy Star” and “Bitter Day.” There’s also a track from DJ Sashimi called “Japanese Girl in New York” a play on Sting’s “Englishman in New York.”

The best track on the disc is easily “Romancer” by Molice. What starts off with an atmospheric, guitar lead-in quickly turns into a funky dance jam. It’s seductively menacing and yet you can’t help but shake it even though you know its a trap. The compilation is worth checking out for this song alone.

Speaking of which, how can you get a copy of this disc without reaching out to the Goo Goo Dolls? Check out Good Charamel Records’ store where you can pick it up for the low, low price of $10.

While you’re listening, ponder this: What drives a successful American musician to start releasing albums from Japanese indie bands? The answer to that question and more quips from Mr. Takac are coming soon.

The final shot of X Japan's Lollapalooza performance.

It’s confession time. Some of you may have already read the about page and, as a result, know that in addition to updating Nihongaku, I work as a (sometimes) journalist for Phoenix New Times in Phoenix, AZ. Why bring this up? First to substantiate my initial claim on the about page that I’m “a bit of a journalist.” Also, It’s imperative to understanding how I went about meeting X Japan pianist/drummer/song writer Yoshiki.

Initially, Phoenix New Times’ music editor received an e-mail from X Japan’s publicist regarding another band she also represents. As luck would have it, her e-mail ended with “also contact me about the following bands:” followed by a list of acts including Slayer, Anthrax, Rick Rubin, and you guessed it, X Japan. Despite his best efforts to get me to listen to Kanye West and The Arcade Fire, the music editor decided to indulge my love of Japanese music by forwarding me the contact information and suggesting I get in touch.

Two minutes later I fired off an e-mail to the publicist. We talked about a phone interview leading up to the band’s performance at Lollapalooza. I was absolutely stoked and, for a while, I was considering going to the show as well. I understood that this was to be the biggest show a Japanese band has played. How could I miss it?

Let’s just say there are certain financial obligations one must make to travel across the country and gain access to an event like Lollapalooza. I said I’m a journalist, not an independently wealthy journalist.

Once again the music editor came to the rescue. I don’t know what he said to X Japan’s publicist. What I do know is that I suddenly had access to the show and an in-person, actual interview with Yoshiki. I packed my bags and jumped on a plane; my ticket blessed by a bit of financial support from mi madre.

Six hours, one layover and a short cab ride from O’Hare later, I was standing on the ground floor of the Ritz Carlton, moments away from speaking to the man behind X Japan. I was desperately trying not to look disheveled in the lobby when the publicist came down to meet me. She informed me that Yoshiki was upstairs doing a phone interview with someone from ABC. We killed time talking about X Japan and how I came to know them (the subject for another blog post perhaps).

Suddenly she got “the call” and we were riding up to the top of the Ritz together. Thirty seconds after that I was standing in Yoshiki’s suite waiting to begin the interview; all of which is posted in Q&A form on the Phoenix New Times music blog.

What you won’t get by reading the Q&A is a sense of how honored I felt to speak with Yoshiki. I didn’t know what to expect, but I was prepared for the worst: a total rock ‘n’ roll diva. What I found was a passionate man who refuses to compromise his music or his standards and has somehow managed to stay humble after all of his success. He constantly played down his importance while putting his band mates and fellow musicians on pedestals. It was a great interview.

Coming up next: I’m writing an X Japan music feature for Phoenix New Times which I will link to (and possibly add commentary to) right here. Stay tuned.

Perry Ferrell may not be the world’s best interviewer, but we can let him pass for continuing to produce Lollapalooza and, you know, that whole Jane’s Addiction thing.

In the above video, Ferrell walks the American audience through questions like “What was Japanese music like when X started” and “How will the Lollapalooza show differ from the recorded shows we’ve seen from Japan?” Yoshiki’s responses aren’t much, but there are a few insights to be had and a lot of awesome concert footage eye candy. Keep an eye out for Sugizo playing violin on what sounds like “Amethyst” toward the end of the clip.

Yoshiki and Toshi in July of 2010 after a press conference in Paris.

It was the winter of 2006 and the blistering cold stabbed right through my coat even after I walked into Shin-Osaka station. I’d just witnessed my first Yo La Tengo concert with a good friend of mine and, in an attempt to get to know him a bit better, I delved a bit deeper into his musical leanings. His favorite band, he explained to me as we climbed the escalator to the train platform, is the Beatles, but not because they wrote Sgt. Pepper or sold more albums than Jesus. No, he prefers the Beatles because of the wealth of bootlegs treasured and fawned over by music aficionados while the rest of the public remains content knowing what they know about the Beatles: Please Please Me through Let It Be.

Ah, the bootleg. A not entirely legal, yet time-honored tradition in music fandom that sets the truly dedicated apart even if only in their own minds. Still, legit or not, it can’t be argued that these scratchy recordings often taped by smuggled audio equipment can provide some insight into how the band so meticulously edited and polished on their official albums came to be.

At least that’s what I hoped when I began listening to some long-forgotten bootlegs from X Japan’s past. I’ve known them only as the sold-out Tokyo Dome kings of Visual Kei that they were in their heyday. What, I wondered, could they have possibly sounded like without a full stage crew or a legion of fans screaming their lyrics back at them. What did they sound like at say, their high school festival in 1983? I was about to find out.

A high school photo of Yoshiki and Toshi.

Various interviews and scattered details strewn about the net all seem to agree that Yoshiki Hayashi (known simply as Yoshiki) and Toshimitsu “Toshi” Deyama formed the band that would become X Japan in 1982 while still attending high school. At least five tracks from this early time exist; recorded at Awa High School in Chiba Prefecture (if the bootlegger’s notation can be believed).

To say they sounded rough would be putting it lightly, but I’m not here to pick on the high school incarnations of future rock stars. It’s worth mentioning that one track quotes Deep Purple’s “Burn” before segueing into “The World Anthem” by Frank Marino; a track they continued to play live and on 1989’s Blue Blood. At the very least we can point to these two rock icons of that period as some sort of influence on the then still-percolating X, but it is the third track on this bootleg that is even more telling.

Starting with the iconic clock chime permanently burned into the heads of every Japanese school kid, Toshi suddenly erupts wildly into Loudness’ “In the Mirror.”

Loudness

Loudness, it seems, was a few steps and a few years ahead of the youthful Yoshiki and Toshi, but shared a similar path. Loudness started as Lazy, formed in 1977 by a group of high school students and named for the song by, you guessed it, Deep Purple.

Lazy was forced into a boy band mold despite their desire to rock out leading to an eventual break up in 1981 and the forming of Loudness the same year. Logically then it follows that Loudness’ rock ‘n’ roll antics would influence two would-be rockers planning and plotting between classes. But if you need proof, I submit that one can not watch a performance of Loudness’ “In the Mirror” followed by X’s admittedly darker “I’ll Kill You” (a song already in the works in 1983) without seeing a natural progression from one to the other.

Influences aside, this high school recording also contains many of the hallmarks of the X that was to come.

The bootleg continues with “We Are X,” a song that sounds almost nothing like what would become “X” on Blue Blood. Yet the melodic and foreboding lead-in before the inevitable explosion into machine gun drum hits and Toshi’s searing vocals over a flood of electric guitar trills is all there. It’s rough as hell, but it’s there. The bootleg concludes with “I’ll Kill You” which is slow, unfinished but otherwise not too different from the track that eventually wound up on the band’s first full album, Vanishing Vision in 1988.

Also present is English. That’s right. Even at their earliest, X included at least the occasional English phrase. Whether this was the result of their English language rock influences or just a prophecy of what may still be to come is anybody’s guess.

Want to hear some of the X Japan tracks mentioned in this post? Check out this podcast featuring old and new versions of X Japan’s “I’ll Kill You.”

Japanese homegrown reggae icons U-Dou & Platy.

“Japanese Reggae?” So posed a headline in the New York Times Style Magazine online last week when it ran Jonathan L. Fischer’s post on the subject. In it, Fischer suggests that Japanese Reggae has evolved from its imported roots and turned into something nihonjin can claim as their own.

I’m not terribly versed in reggae (Japanese or otherwise) so I did a little digging on one of the bands mentioned in Fischer’s piece. Called U-Dou & Platy, one of Fischer’s sources suggests they may represent the current state of Japanese reggae. Give ‘em a listen below. I did and they’re not half bad.

Anamanaguchi's Airbrushed features animated cover art from Paul Robertson

It’s quiz time. What’s the Japanese name for what we Americans know as the Nintendo Entertainment System? Answer: The famicon short for “family computer.” The original system featured a red and white design with hard-wired controllers that actually fit on to the system between rounds of play.

Why am I fussing over Nintendo’s ancient history? I do so in an attempt to rationalize writing about a band who merely sounds Japanese. Fast forward almost three decadess from the release of the Famicon and you’ll find a New York City-based band called Anamanaguchi who pumps out kick ass tunes played in part on a hacked NES. It’s a flimsy link, but let’s go with it, okay?


Anamanaguchi performing the theme song for the upcoming Scott Pilgrim vs. the World video game at PAX 2010.

On July 15, the band that blends sequenced, 8-bit magic with guitars and drums, launched “Anamanaguchi Summer 2010″ featuring a new single every two weeks available for download at the sensational cost of zero dollars. You can grab the first single, Airbrushed, from Anamanaguchi.com. Attentive fans of Scott Pilgrim and the various forms of media Bryan Lee O’Malley’s titular character appears in these days might recognize “Airbrushed” from the trailer for the upcoming Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World video game. Anamanaguchi recorded all the music for the side-scrolling, beat ‘em up soon to be out on the PS3.

Hear more from the Scott Pilgrim soundtrack courtesy of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s site radiomaru.com.

Interesting side note: when it was released in Korea in 1983, the NES was known as the “Hyundai Cowboy.”