Fashion Crisis (May 2011)

May Fashion Crisis will be our last show with electro-hip-hop MC N'toko for a while, since he returns to Slovenia at the end of the month. However, as a send-off from the Fashion Crisis crowd, it looks like turning into a bit of a Balkan special, with fellow Slovene electropop idol Kaki making her live debut, and the usual DJ culprits no doubt digging further into the depths of Yugoslavian 80s new wave.

Place: Koenji One
Date: May 6th
Time: 8:00pm-last train
Cost: FREE

Live:
- N'toko
- Kaki

DJs:
- James Hadfield (Time Out Tokyo)
- Ian Martin (Call And Response Records)
- Rally (The Mornings)

2:46 - Aftershocks: Tales From the Japan Earthquake

Available here, now.

Written in two days by people from all over the world, edited and put together in a week, and now on sale with Amazon donating all proceeds to the Japan Red Cross, the #quakebook project finally reaches fruition.

I'm in it, as are many, many others, including Famous People like Jake Adelstein, William Gibson and Yoko Ono. Read more about it here and here.

Kyushu Pop Festival 2011 lineup confirmed

This year's Kyushu Pop Festival will once again be held at Shinjuku Motion, and will feature nine bands either from Kyushu directly or with roots in the area.

Place: Shinjuku Motion
Date: May 21st (Sat)
Time: 4:00pm-11:00pm
Cost: ¥2000 adv/¥2500 door
Bands:
- Zibanchinka (Kagoshima)
- Hyacca (Fukuoka)
- MacManaman (Fukuoka)
- cynicalsmileisyourfavorite (Kumamoto)
- bctnx (Fukuoka)
- She Talks Silence
- Dotama Kachi World
- Fallopian Disco Force
- Jebiotto

Zibanchinka "Hatsubai Chushi" Pre-Release Party

Zibanchinka will be giving fans in their hometown of Kagoshima the first chance to get their hands on their debut album "Hatsubai Chushi" tomorrow (April 8th). Information is on the band's web site here. The album will be in shops next month, in time for Zibanchinka's next visit to Tokyo.

Fashion Crisis (March 2011 Fukuoka Special)

Because of the earthquake last week, there's been too much going on lately to post event info, but here's the flyer for today's Fashion Crisis Fukuoka Special:

Radio Activity

(Also posted on my other blog)

I'm in a small club in the Tokyo suburb of Koenji, drinking beer with a group of twenty or so young Japanese people. A man in a hard hat and face mask is conducting a mini orchestra of vintage 1980s synthesisers in a goofy cover version of the Korean pop group Girls Generation's recent hit "Gee". The audience rewards their set with a cascade of applause and whoops.

Beneath the cheer and good humour, however, these are people only too aware of the unsettling new situation that Japan finds itself in. The man’s getup is just one of the eerie reminders around the room of the tragedy that had struck northeastern Japan less than a week previously. His father was from Fukushima, close to the nuclear power plant that was dominating news headlines that day, and the band’s drummer also hails from the same area. There are smiles and laughs around the room when Kraftwerk’s 1975 song “Radioactivity” comes on in the background, but it’s a dark, ironic sort of humour on display – one that you would never normally expect from the kind of cheerful slapstick that dominates Japanese TV comedy.

A small TV in the corner remains tuned to NHK, Japan’s national broadcaster and most reliable source of news, and all eyes turn to the screen. An aftershock has been recorded near Tokyo. Here in our Koenji basement, no one felt a thing, but as numbers recording the strength of the tremor start appear on the onscreen map, a cheer goes up among some of the people present; the Koenji area scored 4, putting it in the level of most extreme shaking. There’s a sense of victory: we took the worst of that tremor and didn’t even feel it. The party goes on.

At the end of the evening, the audience and band members drift out, leaving money for the relief fund in a small tin in front of the DJ booth. People talk of music as an agent of healing, but for people in Tokyo, it’s also a weapon of defiance.

Fashion Crisis N'toko Release Special (March 2011)

March Fashion Crisis is an irregular edition in aid of Slovenian electro/hip hop artist N'toko and his mini-album Ex Shanti / Future Shanti, released last October on Call And Response. It's his first gig in Japan since the release, so instead of the usual free Friday night party, we're doing a proper live event at a proper live venue, with a bunch of ace live bands, plus regular Fashion Crisis DJs me and James Hadfield.

Place: Higashi-Koenji 20000V
Date 3/5 (Sat)
Time: 6:00PM - 10:30PM
Cost: ¥1500 advance / ¥1800 door

Live:
- N'toko
- Quick Explosion Scratch Hurricanes
- Takashi Nakayama with LABSiCK Man-Machine ReMiX
- Fallopian Disco Force
- Steiner

DJs:
- Ian Martin
- James Hadfield