Happy New Year 2019!

The new year is shaping up to be a hectic one for Call And Response, with a lot of new releases planned, including one to celebrate us reaching the 50-release milestone that in theory will mark the halfway point of the label’s existence. We also have a lot of events and tours lined up.

Last weekend, Velvet Ants played a fantastic set at Hiroshima Club Quattro alongside DMBQ at an event organised by the fabulous Jailbird Y. It’s rare that a show will bring a tear to my eye, but seeing them at a big venue like that, holding their own on a bill alongside noise-rock big boys like DMBQ was a moving experience. Velvet Ants have a show at Nagoya Bar Ripple on February 9th and they’re visiting Kanazawa for the first time in April.

Next up, there’s CD-R Store Day at Koenji AMPcafe (and later at Green Apple) on January 20th. This isn’t strictly a Call And Response event, since it’s strictly DIY with no real involvement from labels. The idea is that a bunch of people make a CD-R featuring new or previously unreleased songs or remixes and gather together at a CD market to sell them for ¥500 a piece. I organised a similar event just over a year ago that went very well. This time round the response has been much less enthusiastic from artists, so this is probably the last time I’ll do it. There’s a lot of fun stuff involved and a diverse and interesting array of live performances though, so it’s going to be a lot of fun regardless. You can see info on the event’s Facebook page and on our homepage here.

After that, the Call And Response Indie Disco is back and punkishly contorting itself with a lineup featuring our very own noise-punk riot grrrls P-iPLE, experimental punk lunatics neccc and fastcore psychos Telepashits. The party will take place on Monday February 4th at Shimokitazawa Three, 7:30pm open/start.

Also in February, our avant-pop friends Miu Mau are visiting Tokyo for a slightly more melodic and restrained show at the always lovely Koenji Green Apple on Saturday February 23rd. They’ll be joined by Come To My Party and Kate Sikora, with hopefully one more act to be confirmed fairly soon.

Especially big news, though, is that stadium-synth-punks-in-waiting Jebiotto have a 7-inch vinyl single, “Get Down” coming out very soon. It’s coming out in the UK on February 8th, with copies starting to filter through to Japan soon after that, and will be a split with excellent Leeds-based postpunk band Treeboy & Arc in collaboration with Leeds-based label Come Play With Me.

This release is going to kick off a year of loud, fast, heavy or just plain noisy shit from Call And Response — 2019 is going to be all about taking punk and twisting it into all sorts of fun new shapes as we move into the second half of the label’s planned lifespan as our catalogue numbers count down inexorably towards zero. I’m thinking of a new corporate slogan: “The more of our shit you buy, the faster the label can die.”