Tension!

Call And Response business went on hold for a week over the end of November and beginning of December, as I was away at the fantastic Madeiradig experimental music festival in Madeira, Portugal, which mostly involved drinking beer with Germans, with the addition of a small amount of actual music.

I hit the ground running upon my return, though, heading straight from the airport to a meeting with the guys from Tropical Death and a journalist from an inflight magazine who’s writing a feature on the Japanese underground music scene. I’m not sure what the crossover between underground music fans and inflight magazine readers is, but I guess there must be some. Writing about something as diverse and fragmented as Japanese underground music is an impossible task and I don’t envy him, but at least it’s a good excuse to see some cool shows and get drunk with some cool music people (and us).

The next day, on December 8th, was the latest Tension! event that I organise with Mayumi from P-iPLE. The ideal balance with an event is always a difficult one to pull off, and I’ll take different approaches with different events.

An interesting comparison for me is a show I went to couple of weeks previously at Koiwa Bushbash, where another organiser was holding a release party for a compilation cassette that she’d just released. Her event was broken up into two separate shows, the first opening in the morning and finishing in the afternoon, and the second opening around 6pm and finishing about 9:30pm. Each band at this Koiwa show played around 40 minutes, and they all had the chance to do a proper soundcheck, with the result being that a total of seven bands appeared, spread over about 10 hours, including a long break in the middle. I had to miss the evening show due to another engagement, but was able to catch Nagoya’s excellent Free City Noise in the afternoon show. In any case, this approach of seven acts with longer sets and full soundchecks was a very band-friendly scheduling environment (I’m not sure if the audience were expected to pay individually for both the afternoon and evening shows).

At Tension!, we had 14 live acts and three DJs over the course of eight hours. No one really had time to do a proper soundcheck except the first bands on each of the two stages we’d set up, the sets were all 25-30 minutes in length, and the whole event had a much more intense pace to it, with something going on somewhere nearly all the time. It’s obviously a less artist-friendly setup, although I think it also made for a more explosive (maybe a bit overwhelming for some) experience for the audience as a whole, which brings its own benefits for artists who rarely get to play to a packed crowd of such energised fans.

One of the ways I sometimes describe Tension! is as a space where music of that postpunk/noise-rock type that I like can have its own scene rather than existing as an adjunct to either the punk, noise, indie or experimental scene — the overlapping area of a Venn diagram covering several different scenes. When I was in Madeira talking to people involved in experimental music in Europe, I also realised that what I was trying to do was promote music that has something experimental about it but treat it (and encourage the audience to treat it) as if it was just regular rock music.

While bands are usually excited to be playing outside their usual scenes, one problem with mixing things up in this way is that audiences don’t always follow, wither by avoiding the event or by sticking rigidly to only the bands they’re familiar with. The old alt-rock/underground crowd from places like Akihabara Club Goodman and Shinjuku Motion mostly steer clear of Tension!, although the event seems to be growing to the extent that increasingly we can ignore them without suffering for it. More serious is when people with different backgrounds fall into conflict. Noise and industrial fans are used to freaking out intensely in their own private and personal space, while hardcore fans treat their music as a more communal and aggressive experience, so throwing both these kinds of people together on the same floor without any established common etiquette can sometimes create friction. As a result, during Jailbird Y’s set there was a bit of aggro on the dance floor that fortunately didn’t flare up into anything too serious.

There was also a brief power outage in the main stage area that interrupted Tropical Death’s set, although the excellent Moonstep staff sorted it out swiftly (despite punters needing to pee in the dark for a while). Melt-Banana brought the event to an ecstatic finale, and once again I can’t emphasise enough what fantastic performers they are and what thoroughly nice people.

All in all, the night was a big success, so thanks to Naoki and the rest of the Moonstep staff, big thanks to Melt-Banana for being such fantastic headliners as always, and special thanks to all the bands who travelled so far to take part -- Adrena Adrena from the UK, Lumi from France, Jailbird Y from Hiroshima and Velvet Ants from Nagoya. Also thanks to Soloist Anti Pop Totalization, who played two shows in one day, as well as the "Yokoscum" event in Kanagawa who kindly co-ordinated the schedules of Soloist and some other musicians who were playing at both shows with us despite our two events being rivals of a sort. That sort of intra-scene support and good will always leaves a warm feeling.

Events this packed and intense are difficult to organise and really exhausting, so it’ll be a long time before we do something like this again, but our regular programme of smaller, accessible parties will be back in full swing in the new year. Also, since there aren’t any new Call And Response releases for a while, we’re bringing a few of our friends’ albums into the online store soon, and there are some big discounts planned on CAR releases over the year-end period — more to be announced on that soon.

People are the weather

While I tend to describe the range of activities I do with Call And Response collectively as “doing music”, obviously I’m not personally making music most of the time. Most of the work with this label is dealing with people, and the extent to which I’m ever able to get anything done is really down to my ability to coax other people in a foreign language into doing things, usually for no money.

After nearly 15 years of putting on events in Tokyo and around Japan, the process is smoother and better-organised than it used to be, but it’s not always like that. These days, most of the vents I’m involved with run on a more or less regular timetable, with the Fashion Crisis DJ parties in Koenji happening on the first Friday of every odd-numbered month when possible, and the Call And Response Indie Disco nights happening in Shimokitazawa Three on the first Monday of every month. The advantage of a regular schedule is that you always know when you’ve got something coming up and you can fall into a rhythm, but the downside is that it’s a fixed deadline constantly bearing down on you.

One of the things I really appreciate about organising music events in Japan is that when someone says they’ll do something, they nearly always will. I remember trying to book some shows for a Japanese band in the UK and one London venue cancelling the event a few days before simply because someone else had offered more money — that would never happen in Japan. Bands, too, are usually pretty reliable about following through on commitments and if a band cancels, it’s usually because of extreme sickness or a family death.

The next Call And Response Indie Disco, which is happening on October 1st at Shimokitazawa Three, wasn’t a smooth process. Partly this is because I got overwhelmed by dealing with new releases and plans for a big event in December. Partly it’s because two of the bands I invited were people I knew would take ages to get back to me with what would probably be a negative answer. Partly it’s because one of the bands I did confirm managed to cancel, then sort of un-cancel, and then cancel again, leaving me desperately floundering around for a replacement with the clock rapidly running out.

In situations like these, you have to be zen about the situation. Bands being unreliable or flaky isn’t something you as an organiser can control, so you have to sort of take a deep breath and repeat to yourself, “People are the weather.” You can recognise the signs and dress appropriately, but you can’t prevent it from raining if that’s what it wants to do. Part of the problem I had with this event is that I didn’t dress appropriately and thus got caught in the downpour.

Another part of the problem is that musicians will usually give you the most polite excuse (work, schedule conflicts, etc.) and never tell you if the real underlying reason is simply, “We’ve judged that your party isn’t high enough status for where we think we should be at this time,” or just, “We can’t be bothered.” I was talking with another event organiser the other week and I remarked to her that if the same artist turns me down three times in a row, I basically won’t invite them a fourth time (at least not for a very long time) and she responded enthusiastically, “Yes, exactly that. I know exactly how you feel.” Another organiser I spoke to last weekend said something similar. On any given day, there might be very good reasons why someone can’t play your show, and second time might be bad luck, but if it’s three times, an artist probably just isn’t serious about the kind of thing you’re offering. If you’re a musician, you should probably know that this is how a lot of organisers think.

On the other hand, if someone is easy and smooth to work with, and treats organisers with respect and without bringing a lot of ego to the table, they’ll get a good reputation that will spread (organisers talk to each other, and we absolutely talk shit on bands who dick us about). After the cancellation for the October 1st show, I was rescued by the fantastic Transkam, who make this kind of groove-centred post-rock with psychedelic layers of delay loops. Joining them will be postpunk duo Demon Altar, who have recently emerged from the ashes of the excellent You Got A Radio, and minimal synth/EBM/industrial artist Soloist Anti Pop Totalization. DJs m87 aka Everywhereman and Yuko Araki from tribal psychedelic trio Kuunatic are joining me spinning tunes, so finally, after all the hassle, it’s shaped up very satisfyingly for me. I’m glad the process isn’t always like this though.

In other label news, the Velvet Ants album Entomological Souvenirs I is now up on the Call And Response online store after a short delay, and we’ll ship it anywhere in the world. The band are playing a release party in Nagoya on October 14th and they’ll be in Tokyo on December 8th for that big show I mentioned earlier, so mark that in your diaries if you’re in the area.

We’ve also got all the tracks in for a very cool new EP that should be out before the end of the year, but I’ll keep that under my hat for a while and make an announcement soon.