Tententen is making a brief but spectacular comeback this June, exactly six months after its last outing. With the more spacious venue of Kichijoji’s wonderful GOK Sound, the event is a release party for Lo-shi’s new limited-edition vinyl release of 『貘』("Baku”) through Call And Response Records.
Joining Lo-shi (who will perform on this occasion with dancer Misako Kikuchi) in this nightmare-devouring revolutionary dance spectacular are junk noise EBM whirlwind Halbach, progressive-Kraut-disco sound system Transkam, and Osaka’s finest minimal postpunk-industrial duo Yolz in the Sky. DJs Evil Penguin, James Hadfield and Tententen regular Ian Martin complete the bill.
Place: Kichijoji GOK Sound Date: 6/21 (Sun) Time: 5:00pm Cost: ¥2000 (no drink order) Live: - Lo-shi (with Misako Kikuchi) - Yolz in the Sky - Transkam - Halbach DJs: - Evil Penguin - James Hadfield - Ian Martin
Golden Week is upon us, and while our own golden god James Hadfield will be away on travels, we will have plenty of precious musical nuggets from our glittering array of guest DJs. In addition, we are proud to welcome special live guest Mogura ka Maigo. Is he a man or a mole? Find out on May 1st at Koenji One!
Place: Koenji One Date: May 1st (Fri) Time: 8:00pm-midnight Cost: ¥500+1 drink (FREE before 9:00pm) LIVE: - もぐらか迷子 DJs: - M:Bröckel (from Berlin) - DJP - Snack Manami - Ian Martin
Call And Response is in Kyushu for some action this Golden Week, including two short tours by bands from the Tokyo and Yokohama area and a rich roster of the finest bands Kyushu has to offer. Of particular note, joining Sayuu for two dates are Hakuchi (白痴) from Saga, who are currently preparing a debut album to be released from Call And Response in June. Meanwhile, Neue Sanssouci (ノイエサンスーシ), who dazzled and confused Tokyo audiences at the last Call And Response event in Tokyo, are hosting the final show of the tour with Umez on May 10th.
As Call And Response Records prepares for
its first releases of its tenth year since it was founded in 2005, I’ve been
looking back on what I was trying to achieve with it and the extent to which
I’ve had any success with that. It’s not a big label, and I never wanted it to
be, but what it has done is help foster a small community around its base in
the Koenji area of western Tokyo.
The idea of the role community plays in the
indie music scene is something that comes back again and again in my thinking,
and one of the biggest successes I’ve had with Call And Response is in how a
small crowd of musicians and other creative types has grown around the label
and my monthly Fashion Crisis party. In particular, there’s a core of musicians
who, like a musical equivalent of Marvel’s Avengers or DC’s Justice League,
regularly team up and cross over into each other’s projects, helping each other
get their creative ideas off the ground.
With the label’s ten year anniversary
coming up at the end of the year, Call And Response is helping the members of
this musical superhero team as best it can too, by putting out a string of new
releases from some or hopefully all of them.
First up is this cassette EP from Sharkk,
a.k.a. Sean McGee. I met Sean through his role as drummer in instrumental
post-rock band Henrytennis, although he shares his talents widely, playing in
(future Call And Response releases) Looprider and Tropical Death Metal, as well.
Sean spent his youth ricocheting between the US, United Arab Emirates,
Venezuela and Vietnam. It was at middle school in Venezuela where he started
playing in bands – something he continued through high school in Vietnam (one of his early performances drew the dubious praise of a
fugitive Gary Glitter), before settling in Japan in 2006.
Sharkk’s self-titled debut EP is available
as a cassette from Call And Response or as a download directly from the band’s
Bandcamp. In the lull between the completion of the recording & mastering
and the delivery of the finished tapes, Sean and I sat down to listen to music
and talk about the EP.
SHARKK (CAR-72) (Cassette) 1. Stick Around
2. Cinnamon
3. If I Could Be Giant
4. Changing For The Weather (Feat. Jordan Kyle Sirven)
Interview between Ian Martin (IM) of Call And
Response Records and Sean McGee (SM) of SHARKK:
We’re
already a couple of beers in by the time I start taking notes, and I’ve just
pointed out that the title of the song Changing for
the Weather is misprinted as “Dressing for
the Weather” on the tape jacket. We’re having a geeky discussion about the
origins of emo and realising that the age and geographical gap between us has
left us with quite different formative memories of some kinds of music. In
On The Kill Taker by Fugazi is playing in
the background.
IM: Listening to this now I realise I just
wouldn’t have understood this growing up in Britain in the 90s. It’s only after
moving to Japan and getting into the music scene here that American music
really started making sense to me.
SM: Me too, I think. Not hanging around in Bartlesville,
Oklahoma I wouldn’t, but living in Vietnam I kind of got what was cool about
it. I think if I’d stayed in the US, I’d have ended up listening to completely
different stuff.
IM: Does this count as emo?
SM: Haha... no. Emo kids will like it
though – you can pump your fist in the air, let it all go. Fugazi were still
political though; they were fighting against something. Emo doesn’t really have
anything to say: it’s privileged white kids being sad about what’s going on in
their little space and not paying attention to other people – it’s easy to make
fun of emo! With this EP I really don’t take that approach. It doesn’t take the
political route either though. I want people to relate but I don’t want to be
so obvious and on-the-nose about it. I want to give people a bit of space to
take it how they want. I was joking with this friend of mine who did the cover
art for the tape, Mike Taylor, about making an experimental album and he
described the idea as, “The sounds are not exactly intelligible, but they
signify great meaning to the poor bastard trying to make sense of it all.”
IM: That’s basically all music! Just think
about REM – totally unintelligible lyrics and Michael Stipe is hailed as a
genius.
SM: I’m just thinking now about how I’m
going to tell Jordan (Jordan Kyle Sirven,
co-writer and contributor on Changing for the Weather) I got his title wrong. He wrote the lyrics except for the chorus,
which I wrote. I said, “You don’t mind that it’s got this kind of anti-cop
message?” and he said, “No, that’s perfect.” I still don’t know what it’s about
though. I asked if I can call it Changing
for the Weather and now they all have the wrong title. I wonder if I did it
unconsciously because I like misprints so much. Better that one rather than one
of the others, so at least me and Jordan can joke about it.
IM: Rather than just you stewing in your
own shame.
SM: Yeah, “Sorry man. Fuckit.”
IM: So you wrote the melody, yeah?
SM: Yeah. I made the track and said,
“Scream here. Say what you like.” Then I added my vocals. He sent a demo and
the lyrics and then I wrote based on the vibe I got.
IM: Why cops?
SM: It’s not really about cops – they’re
just the easiest ones to direct the most extreme problem I have with authority
at. Teachers always told me at school that I had issues with authority, but as
you get older, you meet assholes and that just reinforces it. Living in Japan,
cops are an easy target because they’re sort of weak and they hassle you for
petty reasons. A worse example was when the US Navy came to Saigon and the
sailors were all swaggering around, asking, “Where’s the whorehouse?” Living in
the international community at that time, you’d often get this attitude along
the lines of, “9/11 was something you guys kind of asked for,”and that kind of bums you out, but then
the US Navy comes to town and it reinforces everything they say – people you
are supposed to respect are acting like jerks. I have a similar issue with the
whole sempai-kohai thing (institutional hierarchy based on seniority) – I
respect people if it’s deserved.
IM: The thing that gets me in Japan is how
they try to make it seem so fluffy and cute, like with the police mascot
Pipo-kun. Those guys carry guns – they represent the implied violence of the
state in its power to enforce behavioural rules on you – and it’s presented as
something fluffy and cute, treating you like a child, looking up to authority
and being happy and grateful for it.
SM: The leader of the second serious band I
was in in Japan was really big on that sort of “sempai” thing. “You don’t need
to be told when you’re good: you only need to be told when you suck.” Well
actually, quite the opposite! He had this approach of beat you down and then
build you up. No, I’m just going to stop playing for you. It broke up the band
and broke up our friendship – that’s partly what Cinnamon is about, or at least something I had in mind. I think a
mentor is someone who has more experience and uses that to help, teach, build
you up. They have faith in you, know your weaknesses and help you grow.
Authority is just saying, “You should be this, you suck.” It’s morale-breaking
and toxic. And it’s against the spirit of what indie music is about.
IM: Is that one of the differences between
your music and emo then? That you can’t deal with that sort of “you suck”
negativity?
SM: Is emo negative? I think fans would say
that it’s not negative: it’s romantic. My lyrics are sometimes negative or
angry, but emo is negative in a depressive sort of way, not a fuck-you sort of
way.
IM: It’s too self-obsessed to be angry at
others?
SM: I think I do both, but then that’s just
rock music, isn’t it? Sentimental rock. When I think of my music in terms of
emo, I think it comes down a lot to the influences. I like the idea of “word
painting”. At it’s simplest level, that’s when you sing the word “high” and the
melody goes up, or when you’re singing about something dark, you sing it in a dark
way. I don’t actually do that, but where there’s a particular sentiment I want
to express, I’ll sing it in a way that highlights a particular word or phrase –
which is something al lot of my influences do.
IM: But what music doesn’t do that in some way?
SM: Yeah, but my influences really rely on
that approach. In hip hop, the MCs I like do that. They’re not singing, of
course, but they deliver the lines in a way that brings out the meaning. There
are great MCs who are really rhythmic, or have great words, great tracks, but
there are also MCs who are more emotive, not purely rhythmic.
IM: I guess it can go to far in that
direction as well, though, right? I wrote a song once called My Boring Feelings that was a sort of
satire of confessional, emotionally-wrought songwriting.
SM: Yeah, you don’t want to alienate people
completely by banging them too hard over the head with it. Stick Around is a good example of that, I think. No one’s going to
really know what that’s about because it’s made of two parts that aren’t
directly related, but parts of the lyrics are still something people can relate
to. It also has enough ambiguity that it keeps things mysterious. The only
really literal song is Doe: Doe’s a love song – standard shit! I
don’t like boring emotions, so I hope to take away the boring part by adding
ambiguity, imagery, something that enables people to visualise something.
IM: So Stick
Around was originally made from two different songs?
SM: Well, one of them is really talking
about music. It’s angry, saying, “No, I don’t want to wait around: I want to do
it!” and say, “fuck ‘em” to everyone holding me back. But then there’s something
about death in it as well, so it gets vague. It’s saying everything dies but
it’s OK because you keep going – “Get outta my way!” I don’t want people to
think I’m telling death to get out of the way here, but it’s the line “I don’t
need no one to tell me / That it all just trails away,” and in that it all gets
wrapped up together, because that relates to people who are involved in music
as well.
IM: What you were saying about delivery is
interesting too. I guess there are a lot of ways of singing that don’t directly
relate to the content but that are distinctive in other ways because of the
particular vocalist. SM: Recently I’ve been listening a lot to the Sleaford Mods and thinking, “This is so cool, but do I just like this because of the accent?” I mean, could an American possibly do this?
IM: I think there’s a bit of an American
parallel in something like Jonathan Richman’s delivery in The Modern Lovers,
but it depends on the individual vocalist’s characteristics. I mean, could
another British guy do what the Sleaford Mods do? There’s Mark E Smith, but
that’s a bit different, and there’s Shaun Ryder, but that’s different again. Pavement?
SM: They’re back now. Sort of.
IM: The ‘90s is back, man. New Blur album,
Happy Mondays and Ride at Fuji Rock. There’s a lot of the sound of the ‘90s in
the Sharkk album too, I think.
SM: Superchunk are back too. They’re one of
my favourite bands.
IM: Guided By Voices came back, released
six albums, and split up in the space of two and a half years.
SM: Without them, I don’t think I’d have
ever had the motivation to keep trying after I first started writing songs in
high school.I came across them in
2003 and I’d already given up on writing songs. I listened to all their early,
really shitty-sounding stuff, and it encouraged me. They did what they wanted
to do, put it out, got it done, and people loved it. The Cloud Nothings’ early
seven-inches more recently also inspired me a lot. I drew a lot musically
there.
IM: Your EP’s much more nicely recorded
than anything Guided By Voices would have been able to do.
SM: It was a kind of messy experience.
After I got the vocals down, I didn’t really know what to do with it because it
was my shit. Julian likes loud vocals but I didn’t want it to be right in your
face, so we kind of met in the middle there.
IM: That’s Julian Peters, the engineer.
SM: Yeah. I knew Julian from the “foreign
rock scene”, with Jimmy Binks & The Shakehorns, and he’d mixed this
compilation I was on. I was looking for someone to mix and master the album, so
I thought I should kind of “use the scene”, support the people around me.
IM: That’s quite Japanese in a way. The
idea that you should know and have a relationship with the people you do
business with.
SM: It’s also very indie – having a
collective, a community, is important. Julian understood my influences, so first
we recorded at his place. That was where we got to know each other really. The
way we took breaks was that we’d destroy the tracks with this Cher-style
autotune. Then him and Yoyo (Ryotaro Aoki of Looprider) helped recording guitar
and drums. At first I wanted to do it as lo-fi as possible, so I borrowed
Yoyo’s four-track, but then the concept changed and I started wanting to make
it better, but you can’t really do that once you’ve started from that lo-fi
point. We ended up meeting in the middle and Julian made it sound good, but
he’ll work right from the start next time.
IM: The idea of a community seems quite
important. When no one really makes any money, and the music industry itself
doesn’t really look after the music scene, the music that gets made is only
ever as good as the community it grows out from.
SM: Yeah, the music scene is very
important. That scene around these foreign musicians, like Jimmy Binks, The
Mootekkis, The Watanabes and others are always really supportive of everyone, and then here
in Koenji with the Call And Response crowd. I used to live in Koenji and I
never even know there was something like that happening. I think if scenes
overlapped more, it would be great, especially now that I’ve been part of a
couple of different ones, but, y’know, some bands want to make it big, they
want to get organised, but if you’re making music with people you like –
there’s nothing bigger than that!
IM: You play with quite a lot of different
musicians on this EP. The list of contributors makes a pretty extensive musical
community in its own right.
SM: Right. I should mention as well Esther
Thirimu. She’s actually a proper singer, who sings professionally and she was
in the Arashi movie (Pikanchi Half, 2014), but I was in a band with her
for a while and thought she had an amazing voice, so I wanted to use her as the
sort of “voice of encouragement” in Cinnamon.
There’s a lot of my past self that I wanted to get out in this album, but also
lots of people, lots of recent friends, who really influenced it. I think my
old self comes through, but it’s very much a snapshot of what’s happening
around me now. Julian, Ryotaro and Esther are all people I’ve got to know in
the past couple of years or so, while Jordan and Mike are old partners in
crime. Jordan was in my first band together, so he knows what it means to me to
be releasing something. I wanted them involved, but I also wanted to celebrate
where I am currently. It’s a kind of chapter closer for me – in fact, that’s
what If I Could be Giant is about:
people are going to think it’s about a girl, but it’s really saying, “Goodbye,
my sixteen year-old self!”
[Crickets: The Best of the Fading Captain
Series 1999-2007, a compilation of side
projects by Robert Pollard from Guided By Voices is playing in the background
now. The song Death of the Party by
the Keene Brothers comes on.]
SM: It’s funny, because listening to GBV I
suddenly feel completely OK with having the wrong title on that song.
IM: This song has an amazing opening line:
“She used to be an American airline...” I’m a big fan of a strong opening line.
What are the opening lines like on Sharkk?
SM: Let’s see, the first is, “I don’t need no one to tell me / That it
all just trails away.” OK, that’s stupid! Then on Cinnamon it’s, “When you mark
us / You never get the coding right”. If
I Could be Giant is, “We were just
like aeroplanes / Vast skies where we collide and fade away.” The fourth
one, Jordan wrote that, so I don’t know what it’s about: “I’ve been getting used to the whole dressing for the weather thing”
– oh, so he does say “dressing for the weather”! Then the last one is, “Secret nights, doesn't make any sense to me
/ Wrong in us, all we needed was us.” So I guess Cinnamon is the coolest one. I was thinking that anyone who buys a
cassette, I’ll hand-write certain lines from one of the songs on the blank side
of the tape. All the ones I was planning to write are pretty lame though, now
that I think back on them.
IM: I think if you’re going to do something
as lame as writing lyrics on a cassette, then you kind of have to write the
lyrics that you poured your heart into, right?
SM: Yeah, exactly! “Hey, I made you a tape!” IM: “And
you broke my heart!”
Guest DJ Daizo Hirano joins us for the first time, while Prince Graves has been here before as part of She Talks Silence but performs solo for the first time. Place: Koenji One Date: April 3rd (Fri) Time: 8:00pm-midnight Cost: ¥500+1 drink (FREE before 9:00pm) LIVE: - Prince Graves DJs: - Daizo (The Sound of Rain) - James Hadfield - Ian Martin
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.
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.
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.
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.
・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.
・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.
Call And Response is a Tokyo-based independent record label and event organiser, specialising in post-punk, new wave and assorted experimental pop trash.
