Experimental Cocktails

To celebrate the release of the Velvet Ants’ debut album Entomological Souvenirs I, I took a trip to Nagoya the other weekend for the release party at Spazio Rita. Rita is a really nice venue — just a simple, open space with no raised area for the stage, so you can move around freely, without feeling cramped in the way you can in a place like the differently lovely Bar Ripple, where Call And Response’s last event in Nagoya was held in 2017.

The lineup Joe from Velvet Ants put together was superb as well, with the Sonic Youth-esque Free City Noise kicking the party off ferociously. Osaka-based experimental electronic duo Nehan were an interesting follow-up, while the always entertaining new wave/postpunk band Compact Club were visiting from Tokyo and the excellent Noiseconcrete x 3chi5 held things up from the Nagoya end.

Hiroshima noise-rock maniacs Jailbird Y were also visiting, although they brought most of their band from Tokyo, including guitarist Mayumi from punk/no wave band P-iPLE, playing what I think might have been her first gig since having a baby in the summer. Mayumi is also my main collaborator on the Tension! events that we’ve been running on and off for the past couple of years, and the first thing she said to me after not seeing her in three months was, “Let’s do Tension! in Taiwan!”

I’ve written on here before about how, maybe even more than the music, the thing that determines what artists I work with is whether they’re someone who is going to be a good experience to work with. With 95% of the people I know, when you suggest something to them, the first thing they start thinking of is reasons why they can’t do it, but with people like Mayumi, and Anndoe from Jailbird Y is like this as well, if you suggest something to them, the first thing they start thinking of is ways they can make it happen. I’m probably a bit more cautious than either of them, and I’m certainly very selective in who I choose to be enthusiastic with, but at least with people who are feeding me good energy, I try to respond positively in return. “OK, let’s go to Taiwan!”

Also joining me on the trip to Nagoya was Julien from Lo-shi, who I coaxed into coming by telling him, “It’s not a gig: it’s an adventure!” The day after the show, we went to Hamamatsu in Shizuoka prefecture to visit Sone Records — a really nice little record shop that’s been supportive of Call And Response in the past. I was pretty hung over and generally feeling icky, but Julien went straight for the chu-hi at the first convenience store we passed in the morning. We arrived in Hamamatsu only to find Sone Records wouldn’t be open for another four hours, and we quickly realised that Japanese cities with populations of less than one million people are wastelands on a Monday afternoon. The only place we could find that was open was Saizeriya, a cheap family restaurant mostly frequented by schoolkids, so we parked ourselves in there for a couple of hours and made experimental cocktails with the drink bar and the disgusting wine they serve.

The record store was a productive experience in the end though, and with the Velvet Ants heading to Hamamatsu the following weekend, it was good to get their CD in stock. Meanwhile, I came away with a trio of releases from excellent local Shizuoka bands Towel, Half Kill and Qujaku.

The other useful thing I was able to take away from this trip was a lot of video footage of the Velvet Ants live, which I’ll soon hopefully be able to cut together into a music video. I’m also working on an music video for Sea Level, whose album came out on CD in July and who have recently made it available via various online and streaming outlets. While the Velvet Ants video should come together fairly quickly once I start, the Sea Level video is all being done with animation, which is inevitably a slow, tedious process. At the same time, though, there’s something calming about all the mechanical repetition it involves, and it gives me an opportunity to listen to a lot of music in the background, which is something I don’t usually feel like doing when I’m at home.

We’re also working on a couple of new releases, both of which are trapped in a spiral of interminable delays, but which I’ll hopefully be able to talk more about soon. 

Insects

After a hectic weekend, it’s been a quiet few days here at Call And Response, with me mostly focusing on writing some articles and making preparations for the new album by Nagoya-based noise-rock band Velvet Ants.

I’ve started using the term “noise-rock” more these days because all the other words people use to describe the kinds of music Call And Response deals in are such a jumble of overlapping terms and hardly anyone really knows what any of them mean. How is postpunk different from no wave? How much overlap is there between post-rock, math rock and post-hardcore? We end up piling on new terms to the point where it becomes incomprehensible. Noise-rock, on the other hand, is at least pretty simple in comparison: it recognisably contains some of the features of rock music, but it has a noisier, more dissonant take on them. All I need to do now is get the rest of the world, or at least Japan, to join me in making all our lives a bit easier and less complicated.

Anyway, the Velvet Ants album is called Entomological Souvenirs I, named after the series of insect studies by French naturalist Jean Henri Fabre. The band developed the six tracks through a series of jam sessions, but as the album came together decided that each track could be seen as expressing the feeling of a different kind of bug. Perhaps feeding into this is the fact that the band have two guitarists but no bassist, which gives their music a spindly edge, tilted towards treble and mid (although plenty heavy when they want to be). I posted a sample track from it on Soundcloud a couple of weeks ago, initially mis-labelling it Centipede before the band noticed that the track was actually Wasp. It covers a good range of the band’s sound anyway, so I think it’s a pretty solid introduction to them.



Since they don’t have a music video yet, I decided to make a short preview or trailer of the album to give people a sense of what’s going on in it and to give the band something to share. Initially, what I thought of doing was downloading clips of the relevant insects and using them to represent the tracks. I did a quick search of “centipede” and just glancing at the first page of results made it pretty clear that anyone even slightly squeamish about terrifying, many-limbed insects, arachnoids and whatevers was going to have a hard time with a fully bug-focused video.

Instead, I decided to take a more oblique approach, digging out clips of machines that to me evoked in some way each track’s patron insect. The final track, Cicada, was the most difficult one for me, because I suspect a lot of people (at least in the UK, where I’m from, don’t really have a clear image of what a cicada looks like. They’re just sort of oval shaped and their main defining feature is the constant, screeching noise they make, so I went with something that looks like it sounds like a cicada, if that makes sense. Anyway, here’s the video:



The current stage of the process with the album is the most depressing one though. With the release next week, I’m currently at the final stage of hassling uninterested record/CD shops to stock my stuff and feeling every unreturned email and rejection as a personal rejection of Call And Response’s whole project. Anyway, that whole process is an ongoing battle and one I don’t have the option of opting out of, being basically the only staff of the label. If I ever quit music, it’ll be record stores who drive me to it though.

On the positive side, the Velvet Ants release party at Nagoya Spazio Rita looks like being an excellent event. I’m planning on taking an overnight trip there to celebrate with them. The fantastic and brutal Jailbird Y are coming from Hiroshima, spindly new wave oddballs Compact Club are heading over from Tokyo, fantastic local Nagoya bands Free City Noise and Noiseconcrete x 3chi5 are also playing, along with Osaka-based Nehan, who are the only band I don’t know in the lineup and am thus very interested in seeing. Meanwhile, the Tokyo show they’re playing in December is shaping up to be epic.

What I talk about when I talk about new wave / New Waveについて語るとき に僕の語ること

In advance of my event on 4/4, I’ve written a short essay on what I’m trying to do and what new wave means to me.

4/4(土)のイベントの前に、このイベントの事や、New Waveが自分にとってどれだけ大切なのかを書いてみました。

I’ve always been a fan of new wave and postpunk, with bands like XTC, Devo, Wire, The Monochrome Set and others having made some of the most important music for me. Japanese new wave too has been central to my experience of the music scene for me since I’ve been living in Tokyo and involved in the music scene here.

僕は昔からニュー・ウェーヴとポストパンクが大好きで、特にXTC、Devo、Wire、The Monochrome Setなどはとても大事なバンドだ。 日本のニュー・ウェーヴも僕が東京に暮らし、音楽シーンに参加しはじめた頃から自分にとってはとても中心核的な存在だ。

The Tokyo New Wave of New Wave ’98 compilation is a core text for me, introducing me to Motocompo, Skyfisher, Audipop, Chicago Bass and Spoozys — and I’ve worked with members of all these bands over the years. These bands in turn introduced me to the Plastics, Phew, P-Model, Chakra,

Hikashu, Jun Togawa and more. Japanese new wave is as distinctive, imaginative and exciting as anything in the music world.

コンピレーションアルバム「TOKYO NEWWAVE OF NEWWAVE ‘98」は僕にとってはコアテキストで、僕がMotocompo、Skyfisher、Audipop、Chicago Bass、Spoozysなどのアーティストを知るきっかけでもある。その後それぞれのバンドのメンバーと関わることになり、彼らを通してPlastics、Phew、P-Model、チャクラ、ヒカシュー、戸川純などを知る様になった。日本のニュー・ウェーヴは世界のあらゆる音楽と並ぶ、独特かつ独創的、そしてとてもエキサイティングな音楽だ。

The meanings of genre tags change over time — sometimes subtly and sometimes less so. New wave in the UK became linked with Britpop and was absorbed into indie rock in the 90s and early 2000s. Postpunk in Japan sometimes refers to very gentle, post-Shibuya-kei, neo-acoustic style music that’s as far away from the ferocious, uncompromising anti-rock of Wire as you could imagine.

ジャンル名の意味は時と共に連れて変化して行く。その変化は時には劇的で、時には微妙なものだ。イギリスではニュー・ウェーヴはブリットポップとリンクし、その後90年代と00年代の初頭でインディーロックに吸収された。日本でポストパンクと言うと、優しい、ポスト渋谷系・ネオアコ的な音楽が連想される時がある。Wireの激しい、断固たるあのアンチロックからは程遠いものだ。

New wave is a musical style associated with the past, and it’s almost impossible to see it without colouring it with nostalgia. Sometimes it can seem like an exhibit in a museum, observed respectfully but no longer understood in its original context and function. Sometimes it can seem like a fetish object — a kind of theatrical cabaret performance in a retro style or a set of subcultural cosplay fashion elements for idols.

ニュー・ウェーヴは今では過ぎ去った時代を呼び覚ますジャンルになってしまい、ノスタルジックな気持ちにならずに聴く事は不可能であろう。それはまるで博物館にある、敬意を払われて眺められるが、もともとのコンテキストと機能が理解されていない展示物の様だ。レトロスタイルのキャバレーパフォーマンスや、サブカルを取り入れたコスプレファッションをするアイドルの様なフェティシズムにすぎない。

New wave always had elements of theatre and pop (that’s what made it so much fun) but we shouldn’t forget that new wave came from punk. There was something anarchic and violent about it — not just a performance of violence like an idol group pretending to be punk rockers to capture a market niche, but an actual, burning creative desire to throw away the established rules and be different.

ニュー・ウェーヴは当時から演劇やポップの要素もあったが（それらがあったからこそ面白かったのも事実）ルーツはパンクだと言う事は決して忘れてはいけない。どこかで必ずアナキーやヴァイオレンスに満ち溢れていた。それはニッチな客層を掴むためにパンクロッカーの真似をしたアイドルグループの様ではなく、定着したルールを焼き払い、他人と違うことをやろうとする燃え上がる本物の独創的な欲望だ。

I love new wave. I love the sounds, and I revel in the nostalgia, even though it’s for a time I was too young to remember. I also love the fierce edge that it had. Call And Response Records’ Telephone Club events have always been informed by my love of post punk and new wave music, and with this coming event, I wanted to take the synth-based sounds of the early 80s and bring them back a little closer to their anarchic punk roots.

僕はニュー・ウェーヴを愛している。音が大好きで、ノスタルジーを享楽する。それがたとえ自分にとってはリアルタイムでなかったにも関わらず。あの猛烈なエッジがたまらない。Call And Response RecordsのTelephone Clubは常に僕のポストパンクとニュー・ウェーヴへの愛に満ちあふれているイベントで、今回は80年代初頭のシンセサウンドをルーツであるパンクとの距離を再び近づけたいという想いを込めている。

It is taking place in the punkest of punk venues Tokyo has to offer, and it’s going to be louder than bombs. It’s also going to give you five bands who make the best pop music you’ll hear all year.

開場は東京のパンクなハコの中でも最もパンクな東高円寺二万電圧。爆弾よりも爆音で行われるはずだ。君が今年中に聴く、一番良いポップミュージックを作る5組が登場する。

Read about the event and bands here.

イベントと出演するバンドについてはコチラ。

Place: 東高円寺二万電圧 / Higashi-Koenji 20000V
Date: ４月４日(土) / April 4th (Sat)
Time: 18:00-22:30
Cost: ¥2000+drink (adv) / ¥2300+drink (door)
Live:
・無呼吸過呼吸深呼吸 / Mukokyu Kakokyu Shinkokyu
・Compact Club
・ノイエサンスーシ（長崎） / Neue Sanssouci (from Nagasaki)
・JEBIOTTO
・ネオンズ
DJ:
・wizzjones

Telephone Club (April 4th, 2014)

ニューウェイヴをパンクルーツへ原点回帰: 爆弾より轟音でコカ・コーラよりもポップなシンセティック・ライオット・パーティー。

Bringing new wave back to its punk roots: A synthetic riot party that’s louder than bombs and more pop than Coca Cola.

Place: 東高円寺二万電圧 / Higashi-Koenji 20000V
Date: ４月４日(土) / April 4th (Sat)
Time: 18:00-22:30
Cost: ¥2000+drink (adv) / ¥2300+drink (door)

LIVE:

・無呼吸過呼吸深呼吸 / Mukokyu Kakokyu Shinkokyu
元Skyfisherの中山貴史が結成。猛烈なエネルギーでカオスと精密さを融合した、ブログレ的なアートパンクを放つギターレスのシンセ・ジャンク・オーケストラ。
Formed by Takashi Nakayama of Skyfisher, this guitarless synth-junk orchestra bring a kind of frantic, progressive rock-influenced art-punk that combines chaos and precision with furious energy.


・JEBIOTTO
DAFに頭突きをされたボンジョビ。
DAF head-butting Bon Jovi.


・ノイエサンスーシ / Neue Sanssouci（長崎 / Nagasaki）
長崎で最も高品質かつカオティックなシンセ／バイオリン中心のチップチューンとジャンキーニューウェイヴを奏でる。
Nagasaki’s finest purveyors of chaotic, synth-and-violin-led chiptune new wave junk.


・Compact Club
PlasticsやP-Model、そしてエッジのあるノー・ウェイヴ的なギターサウンドを見事に融合させた絶妙なバランス。
Obviously heavily influenced by the Plastics and P-Model, Compact Club balance that with a sharp, no-wave-influenced guitar edge.


・ネオンズ / Neons
京都出身。推進力のあるエネルギッシュなポップを放つ完全シンセバンド。
Originally from Kyoto, an entirely synth-led band, who make propulsive, energetic pop.



DJ:
- wizzjones

Tententen: Satan (December 21st, 2014)

Tententen celebrates the Longest Night with a Christmastime audio-visual exorcism. Pile all the year's greed, hate and evil onto our pyre and burn it away in a raucous celebration of beauty and joy!


Place: Koenji Art Bar 天/Ten
Date: 12/21 (Sun)
Time: 8:00pm
Cost: ¥500+1 drink
Live:
- Compact Club
- Tropical Death Metal
DJs:
- Ralouf (Lo-shi)
- Gotal (Lo-shi)
- Ian Martin
Expo:
- The Holy Hole