「獣の世界で、ほのかな甘さ」と自身のバンドを例えるIko CherieはLow-keyポラロイドポップミュージシャンのMarie Merletの直近のプロジェクト。Marieは今までLisbonne、Zooey、Monade(StereolabのLaetitia Sadier もメンバー)で活動してきました。Iko Cherieのデビューアルバム「Dreaming On」は2015年にElefant Recordsからリリースされ、その楽曲は甘酸っぱい1960年代のフレンチポップシネマをなぞったようで、かつdoo-wopインディーポップが気だるくしたような作品。このアルバムはMarieの前身バンドMonadeのメンバーからも協力を得て、ベルリンのSchneider TMで制作されました。 Describing themselves as “A little bit of sweetness in a world of brutes”, Iko Cherie is the latest project from low-key polaroid-pop musician Marie Merlet, formerly of the groups Lisbonne, Zooey and Monade (with Stereolab’s Laetitia Sadier). Iko Cherie’s debut album “Dreaming On” came out in 2015 on Elefant Records, drawing on a bittersweet seam of cinematic 1960s French pop and washed out indiepop doo-wop. The album features contributions from Merlet’s former Monade bandmates, and was mixed in Berlin with Schneider TM.
TOUR SCHEDULE: ① 10/22(土)阿佐ヶ谷天 / Asagaya Ten w/Prince Graves、Come To My Party DJs：Nagai (The Sound Of Rain)、wizzjones
After taking a break last year, Call And Response Records’ Koenji Pop Festival is back in 2016, trying to answer that question once more with another all-day explosion of musical colour from all across the musical spectrum.
The event also kicks off the celebrations for 20000V/二万電圧’s 5th anniversary in its new Higashi Koenji location, so come along and help us pay tribute to this legendary live spot.
The Call And Response Indie Disco slinks into its second edition with this postpunk party featuring synth-punk maniacs Jebiotto, the industrial minimalism of Second Apartment and the raucous art-punk poetry of Uruseeyo.
IAN: So, less than a year after making My
Electric Fantasy, which was a mix of metal, shoegaze and pop, you’re followed
it up with a punk record. RYOTARO: Yeah, or hardcore. IAN: What’s the difference? RYOTARO: Basically it’s just faster. My favourite punk band is The Germs, so
that’s where a lot of it comes from. IAN: You’re not fan of The Sex Pistols? RYOTARO: They’re better than The Ramones — The Ramones were too happy. With The
Pistols it all seems like they’re just having a big joke. IAN: British punk was often like that I think. There’s a lot of cynicism and
irony in it. RYOTARO: What you got with The Germs was really all at face value — there was
nothing tongue-in-cheek about it. It feels more… real isn’t the word. IAN: It approaches you with more of an open heart maybe. RYOTARO: Anyway, Darby Crash killed himself to make the band famous, but
unfortunately at the same time John Lennon died, so no one gave a fuck. And
they just couldn’t play music. IAN: Isn’t that sort of how punk should be? RYOTARO: Up to a point. IAN: So when you were making this album, did you feel the need to sort of
unlearn a lot of what you know in terms of technique and songwriting? RYOTARO: We set lots of rules. We had to write the album and record it at the
same time — don’t think about what you’re doing, and do everything in no more
than three takes. We had to play fast and play loud, and (drummer) Sean
couldn’t play any dancey rhythms. IAN: As soon as you start bringing in dance rhythm, it’s postpunk. RYOTARO: We recorded it while we were still working on My Electric Fantasy. It was taking so long, and I was getting
frustrated, so I wanted to do something really quick. And of course I then
ended up tweaking it for a year! IAN: [Looking at The Germs’ album’s track list]Lexicon Devil — nice title! RYOTARO: If you listen to the later version of the song, you can really hear
that this is where Black Flag came from. IAN: I can hear a bit of Wire in there too. A bit of 12XU. RYOTARO: Wire are more sophisticated though. IAN: Yeah, listening to them back to back you can hear the restraint. Wire are
very aware of what they’re doing. RYOTARO: So The Germs is much more simple and direct. That’s what we wanted to
do, but we had to sort of reverse-engineer that. IAN: You’re doomed to failure then! RYOTARO: Yeah! But at the same time, this music is fundamental part of my
musical roots. When I was first getting into music, the popular music was that
pop-punk stuff and the issue of authenticity was a big conversation, it seemed
to me. Kids with Anarchy patches saying, “That’s
not punk: this is punk.” Sometimes we talk about how maybe there’s no real
difference between indie and pop these days — indie just as bad. So I started
thinking about authenticity: I wanted to be real, I didn’t want to be called a
poser, because that’s the worst thing you can be called as a punk. Anyway,
there was a kid in my neighbourhood who had these CD books full of loads of Bad
Religion, Dead Kennedys, that sort of thing, and he burned me everything.
That’s how I got into “real punk”. IAN: I had a phase of being into punk, but I sometimes think you should only be
really into punk for about six months. After that, if you still like it, sure,
that’s OK, but you need to get into something else: you need to take it
somewhere. RYOTARO: At the same time though, a lot of the seeds were planted at that time.
This album is a way of recapturing that. IAN: In a way, My Electric Fantasy
was a very meta album: it was almost wilfully inauthentic, adopting different
positions, stances and characters in relation to the music scene. After that,
this feels a bit like a sort of cleansing experience, just focusing in on one
thing and going all-in on that. RYOTARO: I’m actually worried people will just think I’m taking the piss. IAN: There’s definitely a precedent for punk not taking itself seriously — that
brings us back to The Sex Pistols again, I guess. RYOTARO: Also since I was starting from a metal-influenced background, there’s
the whole thing of punk and metal not getting on. Although I guess grunge made
that OK. IAN: We’ve talked before about Bitch Magnet — they combined influences from
punk and metal. RYOTARO: And they were recorded by Albini, and you can hear that in a lot of
his stuff. Here, let’s listen to Minor Threat. [We start listening to Minor Threat] RYOTARO: This represents what the music scene should be — at least, what people
say it was like. I don’t know if it ever lived up to the legend. The whole DIY
ethos we have going here (in Koenji) is similar I think. People with no real
career ambition, making tapes, sending them to each other, making zines,
organising shows. Ian McKaye made this label, probably sending everything out
by hand. It was a small community, which is what I imagined being in a band
would be like when I was a kid. They were really young, these guys: maybe not
even twenty.
IAN: In Tokyo we kind of have this, but there are so many scenes to choose from
that it’s still capitalist in a way: you select a lifestyle and the market
decides which is attractive. It’s a marketplace of lifestyle images. It feels
like the challenge is more to break down the barriers between scenes. RYOTARO: Yeah totally. It sounds cheesy, but if people collaborated more, it
might change it. IAN: Punk tends to be like that: it can be very introverted. The sense of
community comes in large part from the strict policing of its borders. RYOTARO: Punk’s supposed to be a place for the rejects though, but Tokyo seems
to rejects the rejects. IAN: So there are all these scenes that catch the rejects from mainstream, but
beneath them there need to be even more scenes to catch the rejects of the
rejects — like catching falling pachinko balls. RYOTARO: There are bands who’ve been working the live circuit for years, and
you’d think they’d share some space with each other, but they never meet.
They’re just trapped in the same circle of people to gradually diminishing
returns because they never step outside. [We start listening to Ascension, and
opening track N.E.C.O.] RYOTARO: We’ve been talking about punk, but the first track’s actually noise.
I’d been wanting to do stuff like this for a long time but never wanted to be
in the situation where this was the only thing I do. IAN: This is what Hell sounds like. RYOTARO: Can I put that on the obi strip? “This is what Hell sounds like…” IAN: “…Ian Martin , Call And Response Records” RYOTARO: Sachiko from Umez is on this track. Doing this and the last album, I
was definitely inspired by Umez a lot. IAN: That’s what was so amazing about Umez really: you had to make two albums
to cover the ground they’d cover in one song. I’m sad they’re gone, because no
one does that combination of elements now. Until your 4th album at least. [Fantômas comes on] IAN: What’s this song about, then? RYOTARO: None of them are about anything. IAN: I want to start asking young punk bands this. I think indiepop is losing
its momentum and there seem to be more young people making loud, aggressive
music now, so I want to ask them, “OK,
what are you angry about?” and see how they answer. That’s typical of me
maybe: finally people are doing what I like and instantly I’m suspicious of
their motives for doing so! “This shit
has been uncool for so long: I don’t believe you mean it!” RYOTARO: Considering how little time we took, I’m surprised at how good it sounds.
IAN: There’s metal in there for sure. It goes back to what we were saying
earlier about how metal and punk converged a bit in the late ‘80s. RYOTARO: You can hear the metal comes in more with each successive track, and
you can hear how, as the album goes along, we’re thinking more about it. I
noticed it as it was happening and I had to cut it off because we were breaking
the rule: thinking too much. IAN: So you had to make a conscious decision to stop thinking. That’s ironic! RYOTARO: You can hear the songs getting longer now. The title track really is
kind of a metal song, eh? I never thought of it like that.
IAN: It’s punk evolving into metal before your eyes over the course of twenty
minutes. [Closing track 667 comes on — seven minutes of harsh noise] RYOTARO: And then it turns back into noise again at the end. It’s interesting
the way we had to think about not thinking. IAN: It’s like I said earlier about unlearning what you know and how that’s
doomed to failure. But even if it’s doomed, the way you fail is what leads you to
where you end up. RYOTARO: It’s the process — right! You called it “cleansing”, but it’s also an
important part of my music life that I had to get out. None of the bands I was
in before would have let me do My
Electric Fantasy and Ascension in
a row like this. IAN: Will this one keep letting you? RYOTARO: They’re already signed up to do the next one! They’re like movie
stars: I have to sign them up for each new release! IAN: One day you’ll deliver them an acid skiffle album and they’ll be like, “No way: you crossed the line Aoki!” RYOTARO: It was only me, Sean and Sachiko on this album, and only me on 667. IAN: Yeah, there’s clearly no Sean here, unless you’re cutting his spine with a
chainsaw. RYOTARO: I made a noise album when I was eighteen: it was really bad. IAN: You just heard Merzbow and thought, “I’ll
do that!”?
RYOTARO: Kind of. It’s a common criticism that “Noise is easy: I could do that!” so I tried and I couldn’t.
Merzbow layers a lot and probably does lots of mixing and mastering too, so
when I was eighteen it was a jokey, “Oh,
I’ll make a noise music thing,” but by the time I’d finished it was like, “Oh, it’s really hard to make it sound…
like Merzbow”. So that’s when I stopped making fun of noise musicians. IAN: After your show with Sachiko last night (as a noise improv duo) you said
it was more difficult than you’d expected. Is the challenge different between
recorded and live noise? RYOTARO: With recordings, you can tweak and edit until it’s just how want it.
When you’re in the moment, it’s much harder to take it where you want it to go. IAN: Like trying to wrangle uncontrollable beast. RYOTARO: It took a lot more focus than I thought it would. IAN: I guess you have to listen in very subtle ways to pick up on the direction
the sound is going. RYOTARO: And you really have to know what you’re doing, despite fact it might
seem like you’re just making it up as you go along. With Ascension, though, I didn’t want to come over po-faced but I was
also worried it wouldn’t be cool enough. I think this is a cool album — maybe
not The Wire cool, but still cool. I wanted to be fun though — I mean, the
first track is a woman screaming “Neko”
for five minutes: that’s at least silly. IAN: Punk should be fun. I mean, it is basically pop music, at least in terms
of the effect it works on the audience. [We start listening to Struggle For
Pride’s You Bark We Bite with its
intro by Kahimi Karie] RYOTARO: I wishi Kahimi Karie would be on my album.
IAN: It can’t be that hard to get a woman to talk like this. I always felt
Struggle for Pride sounds like a fascist band name though. Are they fascists? RYOTARO: I don’t think so. There’s nothing about it on their web site! IAN: So at least if they are fascists, they’re ashamed of it. I guess that’s
something. RYOTARO: I heard this shortly after entering university. A guy I was friends
with because first time we met he was wearing a Germs t-shirt recommended it to
me. I’d never heard anything like this before. IAN: I remember seeing them at Daikanyama Unit. You could hear it three floors
up, and by the time you got inside the hall, it was just a wall of sounds all
smooshed together and three hundred people going completely insane in front of
the stage. There’s something very pure about it, but I think that’s partly what
makes me think it feels fascist: that fetishisation of purity is quite a
fascist thing. RYOTARO: For me, the important question is about authenticity. Ascension is in a weird place in that it
expresses my roots, but I had to reverse engineer myself into achieving it.
It’s supposed to be a stream of consciousness thing, but can it ever really be
that if you’re forcing yourself to? Punk was a reaction against the excesses of
‘70s rock, but think about it: it’s bands saying, “We’re not going to play our instruments properly on purpose.” If
it was a conscious reaction to something that already existed, how pure could
it ever have really been? IAN: So what you’re doing to yourself, reverse-engineering your musical
consciousness, is what the music scene did as a neurotic whole in punk. Like
when The Clash sang, “No Elvis, Beatles
or The Rolling Stones” — it’s a conscious manifesto to make yourself
unlearn music history.
RYOTARO: So it comes back to this idea of cleansing. IAN: Julian Cope writes in his autobiography about how Richard Hell described
his song Blank Generation as being
about “fill in the blank” but then
when he named his band The Voidoids, Cope felt he’d sold out to this cult of
meaninglessness. Cope was a postpunk musician and he felt this cleansing
process of wiping the slate clean was in order to build something new. If you
stay punk, you’re being wilfully dumb. RYOTARO: The title Ascension is kind
of about that. It’s about building to the next level — the album art also based
on that same idea. IAN: It’s an interesting image: like a depiction of the human ego dissolving. RYOTARO: Yeah, but at the same time, the artist Nasutakeo, she said that’s how
she draws when she doesn’t think and just draws.
The first ten years of Call And Response Records are over, and we’re now ready to kick off the next ten in earnest with a flurry of activity.
The Call And Response Indie Disco is our new party, showcasing our favourite art-punk, synthpop, alt-rock and Other from Japan’s musical underground. Help us open this new chapter at Koenji DOM Studio on July 9th.
※この映像は、照明やストロボなどによる光の変化の激しい部分があります。ごくまれに光が原因で体に異常を感じる体質の方がおられます。過去に光が原因で体に異常を感じた経験のある方は、ご考慮のうえご鑑賞ください。 WARNING: This video contains intense flashing images due to lighting and strobes that may potentially trigger seizures for people with photosensitive epilepsy. If you have experienced any symptoms of nausea, headache or dizziness due to lights in the past, do not watch this video. Viewer discretion is advised.
昨年の8月に発表された前作の「My Electric Fantasy」から約9ヶ月。前作のヘヴィーなシューゲイザーサウンドからは一転し、ハードコアや実験性を追求した9曲入りの今作はノイジーかつ狂気的なサウンドに仕上がっている。 「My Electric Fantasy」のミックス時にレコーディングされた今作は、Minor Threat、Bad Brains等のアメリカ80年代DCハードコアや、IncapacitantsやMerzbow、Melt-Bananaなどの国産ノイズ・ノイズロックを一つのルーツとするバンドのもう一つの素顔を表現している。アルバムのベーシックトラックは半日の即興セッションで制作・レコーディングされ、その後1年半の間、活動の合間で音の追加・調整がされた。 今作はhenrytennisなどに携わっているアメリカ出身のドラマーSean McGeeや、ロンドン結成のノイズポップデュオUmezからボーカリストのSachiko Fukudaが参加。アートワーク・デザインは前作と同様、初音ミクの総合イベント「マジカルミライ2014」のオフィシャルイラストを提供したイラストレーターのナスタケオが担当。
Date: 2016/5/7 (Sat) Place: 東高円寺二万電圧 Time: 18:00 open / 18:30 start Cost: ¥2000 adv / ¥2500 door (+ 1 drink) Live: - Looprider - Taffy - Lo-shi - Start of the Day DJ: - James Hadfield
This will be the last Fashion Crisis for a while, with the event taking its first break in seven years of unbroken monthly events while Ian goes travelling. To help sweeten the bitter pill of this absence, we are putting on an extra special noistravaganza with three terrific live acts.
Joining the event will be no wave noise-punk band Ms.Machine, one-man vocal noise act Kazehito Seko (from Omawarisan), and post-hardcore duo Bumbums.
Place: Koenji DOM Studio Date: February 5th (Fri) Time: 8:00pm-midnight Cost: ¥1000 (no drink charge / bring your own) LIVE: - Ms.Machine - Kazehito - BUMBUMS DJs: - James Hadfield - Ian Martin
最高に興奮する音楽にはいつも「緊張(Tension)」が付きものだ。緊張(Tension)は、押したり引いたりする力から生まれる。さらに言うと、緊張は(Tension)は、摩擦と不確実さを創造し、音をひねって歪め、驚きと喜びを吐き出し、エネルギーで音楽を満たし、時には爆発的な力で抑圧し、時には爆発的な力で解き放つ。 緊張(Tension)は演奏者と観客の間にも存在する。 双方で何かを与え合おうとするが、お互いのやり方で、お互いの欲望や情熱で、お互いが思い思いに音を感じる。ライブ中に存在するその緊張(Tension)は、恋人との間の緊張のようなものだ。喜ばせるための欲望と、自らが喜ぶための要求を織り交ぜ、独特なスリルが生まれる。 このイベントで鳴り響く音楽は、ずばり「緊張(Tension)づくし」だ―精密さ vs 無謀さ、構造 vs 無秩序、コンセプト vs 直感、精神 vs 身体。これらの2極がこのイベントを通じ、交わり輝かしく完璧な瞬間に変わっていくことだろう！ The most exciting music is always about tension. Tension can come from forces pulling apart or pushing together ― it creates friction and uncertainty, it twists and contorts music, it throws up surprises and delights, and it fills music with energy, sometimes repressed and sometimes released with explosive force.
Tension also exists between performer and audience, each giving something, but each also living the experience in their own particular way, with their own desires and passions. The tension that exists during a live performance is like the tension between lovers ― the desire to please and the need to please yourself intertwining to create a unique thrill.
The music at this event is all about tension ― precision versus recklessness, structure versus disorder, concept versus intuition, mind versus body ― and unifying those opposing forces into one glorious, twisted, perfect moment. Be ready to rock strangely! Future MusicをオーガナイズしてきたテッセンドリコのメンバーであるマユミとCall And Response Recordsのイアンはここ数年の間、同じような音楽性のライブイベントを別々に企画してきました。ある意味、今回チームを組んだのは自然な流れで、日本中にいる大好きなバンドを集め、何か大きなことが起こることを願ってます。このイベントはアーティーなパーティーですが、無理にはしゃがなくても、無理にカッコつけなくてもよいのです！ご来場お待ちしてます！ Through the Future Music events and Call And Response Records, Mayumi and Ian have been for years independently promoting similar kinds of events. In a way, it was natural to team up for this show, bringing together bands we love from all over Japan in the hope of making something bigger and better. We want to show that you don't have to be funny to be fun, you don't have to be hip to be cool, and you can still be arty and party! Date: 1/23 (Sat) Place: Shibuya Milkyway Time: 15:30 open / 16:00 start Cost: ¥2000 (+ 1 drink order) LIVE: - Melt Banana (Tokyo) - 百蚊 (Fukuoka) - Jailbird Y (Hiroshima/Yamaguchi) - マクマナマン (Fukuoka) - BLONDnewHALF (Kobe) - Waikiki Champions (Sendai) - o'summer vacation (Kyoto) - FALSETTOS (Tokyo) - PINPLE(Tokyo) DJs: - Bang The Noise - chiLLaLone (a.k.a PLUSNUG) - Daizo Hirano
Having said farewell to our original home of Koenji One last month, we're back without missing a beat to see in 2016 at nearby Amp Café. Come join us for an evening of eclectic musical idiocy and enjoyment.
Also Happy New Year!
Place: Koenji Amp Café Date: January 8th (Fri) Time: 8:00pm-midnight Cost: ¥500+1 drink DJs: - DJP - Bass Adventure CoBro - Konatsu - James Hadfield - Ian Martin
Call And Response is a Tokyo-based independent record label and event organiser, specialising in post-punk, new wave and assorted experimental pop trash.
