Koenji Pop Festival 2010

This year is the sixth annual edition of the somewhat ambitiously named Koenji Pop Festival and the third at Koenji's venerable and, erm, "intimate" Penguin House. As usual, there will be a cornucopia of musical fucked-uppery, with the messed-up all-girl garage punk of Kagoshima's Zibanchinka, the explosive post-punk of The Mornings, the delicately-formed new wave pop of Yamaco, the quirky alt-rock of Owllights, and various happenings inbetween.

As usual I'll be doing that thing with the horrible wine.

To accommodate all the bands, the event starts pretty early (4:00PM), with my never knowingly over-rehearsed band Natasha Forrest kicking things off, so if you don't want us to be lonely, come by for the start.

Place: Koenji Penguin House
Date: 9/18 (Sat)
Time: 4:00PM
Price: 2000yen (adv) / 2300yen (door)

Bands:
- Zibanchinka (from Kagoshima)
- The Mornings
- Creepy Pop
- The Students
- Praha Depart
- Quick Explosion Scratch Hurricanes (Ex. Andersens)
- Yamaco
- Issei Kuramoto
- Owllights
- Natasha Forrest

Fashion Crisis (August 2010)

With this year's Summer Sonic plumbing comically abysmal new depths of sickening atrociousness, August's Fashion Crisis is here to rescue great music with a selection of offbeat electronic and technopop live sounds plus the usual mix of new wave, post-punk, dub, electro, indiepop, krautrock, 60s pop, 'pataphysic rock and more from behind the decks.

Place: Koenji Bar One
Date: 8/7 (Sat)
Time: 7:00 P.M. - 11:00 P.M.
Price: FREE

LIVE:
-cottonioo
Fashion Crisis' favourite all-girl bass-guitar-rhythm machine duo are back, with more musical confectionery from their lo-fi new wave sweet shop.

-Living Astro
This electronic duo specialise in sending short, sharp, intense blasts of musical information directly into your brain. Mysterious combinations of unexpected sounds, like a smaller, more intimate Der Plan.

DJs:
-Chihiro (Twee Grrrls Club/Full Circle)
-James Hadfield (Metropolis, Ecchi Shoushin)
-Ian Martin (Call And Response Records)

Telephone Club (July 17th 2010)

Live music and pre-recorded sounds transmitted via the medium of compact disc to your ears, courtesy of some of the finest musical brains in the metropolis of Tokyo, this Saturday in Koenji.

Place: Koenji Penguin House
Date: 7/17 (Sat)
Open/Start: 6:30/7:00 P.M.
Tickets: 1,800 adv/2,000 door

Live:

tacobonds - Explosive post-punk band, who have been tearing up live spaces in Tokyo and beyond for years. The sound of rock & roll being broken on the wheel.

Puffyshoes - Dirty garage punk poison delivered in the form of honey-sweet 60s girl group melodies. The best tunes, played on instruments wielded like weapons of mass destruction.

Steiner - Sharp-edged, 80s-influenced post-punk, recalling Gang of Four, Einsturzende Neubauten, and The Pop Group, like a disco under the shadow of nuclear war.

Uruseeyo - Losing themselves, like a punk rock Dylan, Uruseeyo are raw power, spat out in a machine gun rattle of sprawling, poetic fury.

DJs:

Fresh from Koenji's regular Fashion Crisis events, James Hadfield of Metropolis fame and Ian Martin of Call And Response Records will spin tunes from the darkest recesses of their record collections, but better than that sounds.

Track list from last Saturday's Fashion Crisis

Since this was one of those rare events where I basically remember what I played, I'm taking the step of posting up the playlist from my DJ set at Bar One last Saturday. Guest DJ Sumire has already posted her sets on the Twee Grrrls Club blog.

It was also a rare set for me in that I dusted off some of my vinyl (mostly for the first set when I could count on being sober enough to deal with it). I don't really like the fiddlyness of playing vinyl, but there are some songs that I only have in that format. If anyone ever wondered (God knows why you would, mind) why I play so many songs off XTC's second album and hardly anything off the rather better first and third albums, it's because the second is the only one of their early releases I have on CD.

I also managed to squeeze in a couple of tracks that bands have sent me over the past few months that I've really liked. The first is the track "Harmony" by Bristol punk/power pop band The Stingrays, who are planning to visit Japan in November; the second is the track "Gesa" by Berlin post-punks Krysmopompas.

Anyway, here it is, to the best of my recollection.

1st set:
Puyo Puyo - Hikashu
Spinning Top - XTC
One After 909 - Laibach
Trouble - The Music Machine
Tout Ce Qu' On Dit - Francoise Hardy
Oo Chang a Lang - The Blue Orchids (60s girl group)
Work - The Blue Orchids (80s post-punks)

2nd set:
Spring Rain - The Go-Betweens
Living a Lie - The DBs
Keep an Open Mind (Or Else) - McCarthy
Original Love - The Feelies
Heads Watch - Josef K
The Lighter Side of Dating - The Monochrome Set
Motorbike Girl - The Would Be Goods
You've Got My Number (Why Don't You Use It?) - The Undertones
Harmony - The Stingrays
Mannequin - Wire
Brave Boys Keep Their Promises - The Teardrop Explodes
Your Turn to Run - Malaria
Thirty Frames a Second - Simple Minds
The Baby Screams - The Cure
Gesa - Krysmopompas

As a bonus, here's Francoise Hardy freezing her arse off in front of Tower Bridge in 1965:



And here's the The Go-Betweens camping it up shamelessly:

Fashion Crisis (July 2010)

Fashion Crisis is in indiepop mode this weekend, with a trip through our magic time travelling mirror to a dirty, fuzz-drenched 1986 populated by whisper-voiced post-punk musical scientists and their unwitting experimental subjects.

Place: Koenji Bar One
Date: 7/3 (Sat)
Time: 7:00 P.M. - 11:00 P.M.
Price: FREE

LIVE:
- She Talks Silence
Stripped-down musical heartache in the mould of Josef K or The Vaselines; like getting stood up for a date with the class sweetheart, only to stumble, drunken, into the bar that all the cool kids hang out at, where you meet the girl of your dreams.

- Yamaco
Fashion Crisis' melodic indie princess Yamaco returns for the second successive month, with her increasingly fearsome arsenal of leftfield pop harmonics set to grow only more insidious the more access to your brain your ears allow her.

DJs:
- Sumire (Twee Grrrls Club/Violet & Claire)
A deceptively small package, within which beats a giant brain full of every lost classic 7-inch ever made by humans, plus many made by the Scottish.

-James Hadfield (Metropolis, Ecchi Shoushin)
Taking a break from last month's saxophone-bothering live excesses, Mr. James returns to his lair behind the decks -- the place he does the most damage.

-Ian Martin (Call And Response Records)
As usual, just happy to be there.

Kyushu Pop Festival (June 12th 2010)

Special Call And Response event with the focus on bands from Kyushu, in a wild parade of Mentai-Rock, Kabosu-Pop, and Kurobuta-Punk.

Most of the bands on the lineup for this show are either travelling from Kyushu to take part or musicians with roots in the area, with able assistance from some of the hottest sounds from the Tokyo underground scene.

Place: Shinjuku Motion
Date: Saturday June 12th
Time: 4:00 p.m.
Cost: 2000 adv / 2300 door (+ 1 drink)

-Hyacca (百蚊): Gloriously fucked up yet undeniably accessible post-punk band from Fukuoka, with great songs, a wicked sense of humour, and fearsome energy to spare.

-Zibanchinka (地盤沈下): Eccentric garage punk quartet from Kagoshima, with one of the fiercest all-girl front lines in music.

-Bo-Peep: Originally from Fukuoka, Bo-Peep have carved a place for themselves as Tokyo's leading exponents of heavy garage punk, with successful tours all over the US and Europe to back them up.

-Me I Sashimi (ミー愛さしみ): Sharp edged Fukuoka instrumental post-rock trio.

-ruruxu/sinn: Pronounced "lulue-shin", experimental indie popsters ruruxu/sinn are one of the hottest young bands out of Fukuoka now, with last year's excellent album "Picnic" one of the finest Japanese indie debuts in recent memory.

-Puffy Shoes: Representing the Tokyo area, and formed only last year, Puffy Shoes are the perfect collision of chaotic lo-fi scuzz-punk discord and sweeter than honey 1960s girl group melodies.

-FUN☆ANA: Featuring guitarist Yoshida Hajime from Fukuoka/Tokyo experimental Beefheart-punk legends Panicsmile, FUN☆ANA are a psychedelic kaleidoscope of post-punk guitar, vintage 70s Japanese hairy alt-rock, and pure, unreconstructed hard rock.

-Chewz: At the forefront of Tokyo's current new wave of no wave, Chewz are angular post-punk sex at its fizziest, fuzziest and funkiest.

-DJ Hiropo: Originally from Oita Prefecture, formerly of new wave "Nintendo-Punk" outfit Binary Kidd, and currently of new project Dotama Kachi World, DJ Hiropo promises "Humour and pathos comedy DJ". Be afraid...

Fashion Crisis (June 2010)

To get us in the mood for the summer, Fashion Crisis takes a dark electronic twist this month, with the dystopian industrial factory sounds of Koenji's own Darklaw, and regular DJ James Hadfield's newly spawned Ecchi Shoushin battling it out against the sweetness and light of Yamaco and DJ Noriko.

Place: Koenji Bar One
Date: Saturday June 5th
Time: 7:00 p.m.
Cost: FREE

Live:
Darklaw
Ecchi Shoushin
Yamaco (ex. Her)

DJs:
Noriko
Ian Martin
James Hadfield