Connect And Receive, August 2011

Episode 2 of Call And Response's Japanese music podcast is now up. Enjoy!



It can be downloaded from its host at Archive.org.

1. Ydestroyde: zzzzzMONSTERzzzzz (from the 2011 album Synzosizer)
2. Skyfisher: Zero Emission (from the 2005 album Eco-Side 21)
3. Umibachi: Body Conscious & Joystick (from the 2010 album Body Conscious & Joystick)
4. bctnx: Zombie D (from the 2011 CD/R mini-album Dareka no Karuma)
5. otori: Kaitai/Sai Kochiku (from the 2010 CD/R mini-album Seisei1)
6. Miila and The Geeks: New Age (from the 2011 album New Age)
7. cottonioo: Three Girl Rhumba (from the 2008 compilation Post Flag)

Bye bye Miha and Zana; hello new Trinitron EP

We had a going away party at Koenji One last night for Miha (a.k.a. N'toko) and Zana (a.k.a. Kaki), with the Fashion Crisis crew and members of Trinitron on the decks. Kaki did a live guest appearance on N'toko's DJ set, and he then returned the favour on her set later. I played a trashed-up set of bubblegum electro, Japanese technopop and shrieking noise punk that veered between tracks like Perfume's Jenny wa Gokigen Naname and Kyary Pamyu Pamyu's excellentPonponpon, and The Mornings' harsh, blood-and-sweat-drenched cover of The Dead Kennedys'Drug Me. Kaname K also made a rare DJ appearance playing an excellent set that took in Girls Generation, The Strokes, The Go! Team and sadly missed dystopian Tokyo indie-synth
shamblers Mir.

The night also featured the premiere of the rather fine new N'toko music video for Superhuman, which will be appearing on YouTube once final tweaking is complete. It's a fantastic achievement considering the entire thing was made for the cost of a single lightbulb, and director/editor Matt Schley has done a brilliant job recreating the late 70s/early 80s Suicide/DAF look we were shooting for.

And on the subject of Suicide and DAF, the tracks are all laid down for the new EP by Trinitron, the band henceforth known as "the coldwave ABBA". We have five new songs as well as a rather sweet sounding cover version of Edge by Perfume. The as-yet untitled EP will be out once Miha finishes mixing it, and it's already sounding rather fine. Think of it as a cloying, sycophantic love letter in musical form to Mute Records legends Daniel Miller and Vince Clarke. I was a bit worried that we'd taken the Clarke homage a bit far on at least one song, but then I listened to LCD Soundsystem again and was reassured. If you ever feel like you've been too shameless in ripping someone off, just crack open the LCD and you can be reassured that no matter how much you love someone, you don't love them as much as James Murphy loves Bowie, Eno, Kraftwerk and The Fall.

The EP ranges from avant-garde synth-noise to insanely catchy disco-pop via dirty electro EBM and some nice, scuzzy Kraut. We're still not sure whether the Perfume cover will make it onto the EP or whether we'll use it for something else. Miha and Zana are adamant that we include it, but I'm opposed. Lyrics-wise, it's a triumph of willful obscurity, fatuous nonsense and ambiguously worded critiques of pop cultural ephemera over, well, everything else really.

Anyway, keep your eyes on this space.