September's Fashion Crisis sees the year enter its exciting final quarter by welcoming back the 3TE1 party girls and first-time guest Mayumi from postpunk bands Tessendorico and Pinple, and lo-fi shoegazers Luveless.
This will also be Ian's last Crisis for a while, so before he hands over his precious Can MP3s to James, come celebrate his impending absence in style.
Place: Koenji One Date: September 4th (Fri) Time: 8:00pm-midnight Cost: ¥500+1 drink (FREE before 9:00pm) DJs: - 3TE1 - mayumi (テッセンドリコ/Pinple/Luveless) - James Hadfield - Ian Martin
To coincide with the release of Looprider's debut mini-album My Electric Fantasy, I sat down with the band's leader and creative driving force Ryotaro Aoki to listen to music, talk about his work with Looprider, and explore some of the process and context behind the music.
As the interview begins, we’re listening to the new EP by Nagasaki alternative/art-punk band Mechaniphone.
RYOTARO: This makes me feel nostalgic somehow.
IAN: There’s something of Afrirampo to it. It’s amazing to think of it but their album Urusa In Japan was ten years ago now.
RYOTARO: Yeah.
IAN: I remember at the time thinking, “I wonder when a Tokyo version of this will happen...” but whenever a Tokyo band tried to do something with that combination of artistry and wild abandon, it always felt kind of posed.
RYOTARO: I guess Nisennenmondai was the Tokyo equivalent at that time.
IAN: In terms of the scene, yeah, maybe, but they never had the humour. When Tokyo bands try to be funny it feels wrong. Unnatural.
RYOTARO: But this isn’t really funny music either.
IAN: No. I guess Tacobonds, Worst Taste, all those “Panicsmile’s children” bands – they were Tokyo’s answer to the Kansai scene. They’re all closer to this. It’s interesting in a way how a lot of the best stuff at Fuji Rock this year was kind of leftovers from the mid-2000s Kansai scene. Oshiripenpenz, and then Moon Mama, which is Pika from Afrirampo’s new stuff.
RYOTARO: All this is very nostalgic for me. I saw Afrirampo in 2005 and thought they were hot as shit. Then I saw them near the time they broke up and it felt dead. The show was good, but something was done. My formative experience of going to live houses was in that period when Afrirampo was hot as shit, and then it kind of died. Something really happened in those years.
IAN: And since then, you’ve been raging against the lack of that “something”!
RYOTARO: That’s a big part of it, right? The beauty of Afrirampo was that they were kind of innocent about what they did. They put out a nude photobook and people got mad, like, “What are you doing?” It was just another outlet for what they were doing with their creativity, but people didn’t get it.
IAN: Nowadays, I think something like that would mean something different. It would just be this reductive, blandly accepted thing now, like, “Oh, they did a gravure nude thing. Of course they would: they’re hot girls.” They did it before the idol thing came and ruined that for everyone.
RYOTARO: I think all those bands from the early 2000s painted a kind of idealised version of what Japanese alternative music is for me.
IAN: I wonder how much of that was the context. Like, it would be difficult to make that work now.
RYOTARO: Yeah. It’s not just the sound. Bands like Melt Banana, Boris, all these bands I found in high school in the States, I had no context, just that people were talking about them on message boards. I pictured this diverse scene where all these bands existed, but then actually being here and seeing them, and talking to them, I understood that they left here because they didn’t fit in. Afrirampo maybe had a bigger following, but Melt Banana certainly didn’t.
IAN: So all these bands in a way had one foot overseas. Your entry into the Japanese music scene was kind of a foreigner’s entry point.
RYOTARO: Totally. We joke about it. When The Mornings were at South By Southwest, everyone was like, “Oh, you’re from Japan? Do you know Envy?” to them apparently – I’d totally have been one of those people! After playing here a while, you realise no one really likes those bands.
IAN: On the surface, though, Looprider wouldn’t seem to have much to do with this stuff.
RYOTARO: Yeah, there’s no influence from Afrirampo or Nissennenmondai on surface. It was the range – metal, shoegaze, tribal stuff – and naively I thought it was all connected in this wide, openminded scene, but actually it’s all very compartmentalised.
IAN: There's a bit of an attitude of "Why throw together so many influences on one record?"
RYOTARO: It’s my idealised version of music. I would get people who’d listen to two songs and they’d be like, “Is this the same band?” and to me that seems very strange.
IAN: So when you organise your own events, you have to sort of construct a context in which your music makes sense.
RYOTARO: I don’t like to do events that are just all the same kinds of bands. In Tokyo there’s a lot of that, and it’s natural and logical in that context. I just don’t think music should be logical all the time. I like it to be fucked up.
IAN: You seem to seek out bands that represent elements of things that you try to synthesise in Looprider though. Something pop, something heavy, something distorted and ethereal.
RYOTARO: Part of me always wants to take two different things and show they’re not that different actually. Shoegaze and metal aren’t that different texturally, but they just have these aesthetic sides that make them seem different.
IAN: When I DJ it ‘s like that sometimes. It’s like a game, to take you from here to here by the shortest route. I like to take people on a journey that seems like a natural progression at the time but by the end of it, you can’t remember how you got there.
RYOTARO: I think bands should take you on a journey – not just on record but over their career. My favourite bands do that – Smashing Pumpkins for example – and a lot of the bands I’m kind of railing against with this album don’t do that. Every band will have a narrative ultimately, but how interesting it is depends partly on how aware they are about what they’re doing.
IAN: So whether the band chooses to take you somewhere.
RYOTARO: Yeah, whether they’re aware of what they’re doing and the context of what they’re doing this stuff in. I think it’s a waste for a band to just say, “Hey, let’s just play some music and have fun!”
IAN: That’s what most bands would say.
RYOTARO: And it’s not a bad thing. It should be the ideal way it happens, but at the same time, that’s not the reality. Bands don’t exist in a vacuum, and if you’re not careful, it starts to seem like a pose, “Oh, we don’t care about what everyone else does.” I think bands should care.
IAN: If you take that pose, you’re missing all the ways you’re being unconsciously influenced by the stuff around you and not taking control of it.
RYOTARO: To me, a lot of it’s about aesthetics and context. Two bands may seem different, but when you look into it, the only thing that’s different is how they dress, how they stand on stage, the bands they associate with. And the context thing: playing hardcore at a hardcore venue in front of hardcore fans isn’t very hardcore. I saw Boris when All Tomorrow’s Parties came to Japan for I’ll Be Your Mirror at Studio Coast. They’d just put out an album on Avex, and they played on the main stage with a bill that was like, Haino Keiji, Melt Banana, Godspeed You Black Emperor. Their Avex album was their “J-pop” album though, so they played stuff from that album, and the people who were there hated it, because they were noise/experimental fans and they were expecting Boris to do their noise thing. Haino was in the small tent at the same time, and everyone went out to see him. I’m sure Boris played that set to piss everyone off, because the point of noise and punk is to push people’s buttons. So you get into this argument about what’s more challenging: Haino playing experimental music to experimental music fans, or Boris who played all this visual-kei music to all these people who hang out at Ochiai Soup?
IAN: But that can be an excuse too. This contrarian, “Isn’t pop music the real punk?” position that just ends up reinforcing pop’s hegemony?
RYOTARO: Yeah. But Boris aren’t really that kind of band. The next thing they did was an ambient shoegaze thing after that, then a 70s style rock album, then like three noise albums. Context again.
IAN: So Boris does doom metal, J-pop, then shoegaze, and then you call your band Looprider, which is a Boris song. You like Boris?
RYOTARO: I like Boris a lot.
IAN: But Looprider is part of the music scene in Tokyo right now, not floating in this international space. How does it relate to the current scene?
RYOTARO: It’s everything that’s not popular right now. Right now it’s all about city pop and tote bags and being happy and having the time of your life. Everything’s like, “the best thing ever”. And it’s weird because it changed really quickly from the shows I was going to just 5 years ago.
IAN: The earthquake. People wanted to be happy after the disaster.
RYOTARO: That may be something to do with it. Ten years ago was all this post-Number Girl/Supercar/Quruli stuff, and the remnants seeped into the Tokyo live house scene. Back then you could start seeing the Number Girl children coming together, like in the Tokyo New Wave 2010 compilation, and then, Boom! It was gone. But this is completely subjective – it’s how I’ve experienced it.
IAN: What you hear now has been stripped of what made it feel radical.
RYOTARO: It doesn’t mean anything now, and that happens all the time.
IAN: Like 60s revival in early 80s. We’d had punk since then so when stuff like The Rain Parade came out, it all sounded twee rather than raw and dangerous.
RYOTARO: Yeah. I feel like there’s a way you’re supposed to operate as an indie/alternative band that was established in the Number Girl/Quruli days, around and just after 2000. You play at venues, pay noruma, go to uchiage, get to know bands. Very formulaic. I do all that stuff and I’m ok with it, but I have a lot of problems with it too.
IAN: The whole hierarchy thing.
RYOTARO: Yeah, the hierarchy and just the sucking people’s dicks. Not just sucking dicks, but the Japanese way of sucking someone’s dick.
IAN: What, like you apologise first?
RYOTARO: Yeah, “Sumimasen...!” – these mainstream Japanese social values that you’d have thought the underground scene wouldn’t need or care about. You’d think people would be more openminded and could get past that, but actually it might be stronger in certain areas of the scene. My issue with the openmindedness goes back to “Why do you have a pop song and a metal song on the same album?” It’s like, “Why not?” I mean, “Why are you asking? Does it make you feel uncomfortable?”
[We put on the Looprider album at this point]
IAN: Tokyo has a particular way of doing stuff. It’s full of great music but always filtered in the same way and that makes even new things feel familiar somehow. When I was going round Kyushu managing the Umez tour, I wrote ten songs and when I looked back, I realised they were all about wanting to escape Tokyo.
RYOTARO: On my album too, looking back, a lot of it’s about leaving or something ending: this element of killing my old self. Killing off the person who played in that scene that I didn’t feel comfortable in.
IAN: Washing the taste of all the dicks out of your mouth?
RYOTARO: Haha! Yeah. I tried really hard to fit into that scene but I couldn’t do it. I wasn’t good enough at sucking dicks.
IAN: Umez are on your album too, right?
RYOTARO: Oh yeah. They were super-important for me. The way this band started was that my old band [Sweet Vespa Sweet] dissolved and I was like, “Fuck, what do I do?” so I started doing things by myself, but it was half-assed and didn’t sound good to me, and by that point I was like, “This isn’t happening,” and I was thinking about not doing it anymore. But then I saw Umez at Ebisu Batica. You guys were talking about them and saying how good they were, so I went to see them, and they played their regular set where they do their noise thing and then the “songs” and it was like a smack in the face – they were doing the music I wanted to make, but they were also doing this other thing that was just noise, and they were doing it in the same set, and they didn’t look like they cared. They played Goodbye My Friend and I was like, “Wow, that’s a good song!” and so Farewell was like my reply to that song. It felt like they were saying to me “It’s OK to do noise and pop at the same time,” and then Niiyan was doing these epic guitar solos, and it all seemed so right, so perfect for me. The first moment I saw them, everything felt OK. I hadn’t felt like that since seeing Afrirampo in 2005. If it wasn’t for Umez, I wouldn’t have made this album, so it was super-important to me to have the both of them on it.
IAN: If I release something by Umez now, this’ll set it up nicely! It’s like Rockin’ On, setting bands up in the magazine, then putting them out and promoting them.
RYOTARO: No, man, it’s like Marvel! This is like when Black Widow appears in Iron Man 2! Actually comics are an important thing in understanding this album too. I’m a huge comic book fan, and comics are stupid and confusing.
IAN: So you made an album that’s stupid and confusing?
RYOTARO: It’s true though, right? I don’t agree with how you have to make things easy to understand for people. You know what I mean?
IAN: At the same time, you’re very aware of where your music sits in relation to people’s expectations.
RYOTARO: It’s confusing on purpose.
IAN: Right. You don’t just “make music that you like”: you’re thinking about what you want.
RYOTARO: But at the same time, I shouldn’t give myself too much credit. It is just a stupid rock album.
IAN: You think there’s some element of just you post-rationalising your stupid decisions by coming up with elaborate reasons after it’s too late?
RYOTARO: Yeah!
IAN: But it’s true though, yeah? You can do both. You can make music for yourself, but the side of yourself you make music for can be influenced by so many factors depending on context.
[End of Dronelove, Kill La comes on. Ryotaro bursts out laughing]
RYOTARO: And there’s Charlotte [from Merpeoples] in the background!
IAN: That’s Charlotte? When I first heard it, I remember thinking the most badass thing in this track is that, “What the fuck! Is that a trumpet?”
RYOTARO: Ha! And that’s Charlotte. Now I regret not putting in trumpets.
IAN: But then you wouldn’t have needed Charlotte. Merpeoples were another important band for you, right?
RYOTARO: Yeah. Merpeoples to me seemed like they were just being themselves and they didn’t care if what they were doing was cool in the scene or not.
IAN: And I think it’s sad, but I feel like they lost that and losing that naturalness feels to me like kind of what destroyed them.
RYOTARO: Definitely. They started to worry about exactly what I was worrying about before. It didn’t work out for me, and I don’t think it worked for them. A lot of this album has to do with reclaiming for myself that sense of not worrying. And what’s ironic about that is that this is probably the most commercial sounding thing I’ve ever done. Maybe Sweet Vespa Sweet, but then we only did one song.
[Satellite is playing now, and a distinctive sounding guitar solo comes on.]
IAN: OK, and this bit is Niiyan from Umez, right? His guitar solos are so recognisable.
RYOTARO: His guitar is so sweet.
IAN: Guitar solos are a rare art in the Japanese indie scene. They feel like the preserve of really cheesy rock bands.
RYOTARO: When I played your birthday party, Kazuma [from Bombs & Triggers/The French Kissingers] came up to me and said, “I like your guitar solos. They’re not cheesy!” At the same time, I was like, “Really?”
IAN: Yeah, your solos are really cheesy. When I was listening to Sharkk, you can always hear, “Oh, here comes Ryotaro.”
RYOTARO: Guitar solos are really fun though. I don’t understand. There is this sort of visceral thing about guitar solos.
[The solo in Thunderbolt comes on. We rock out for a bit]
RYOTARO: I mean Van Halen, Boston! Please mention how much I love Boston.
[The song finishes]
RYOTARO: Stupid fucking album!
[Farewell comes on]
RYOTARO: I don’t trust people who say they like this song on the album.
IAN: Like how I don’t trust people who say they like Hysteric Picnic on my label. They’re a great band, but if they’re the only band you like, then you like them for the wrong reason!
RYOTARO: Exactly! This song is me saying to everything that I hate, “Fuck you, here’s what you want. I’m leaving!” At least, in the context of the album. It’s a tribute to that Umez song, but at the same time, if this is the only song someone likes, I don’t think they get it.
IAN: I threw my back out playing air guitar to this track the other week.
RYOTARO: A lot of people don’t understand when I say things like that: “Do you like this song? I don’t trust you!” The guitar sound is the same – I don’t see this as being so different. Then it gets into “Are the other songs too metal, or you like it because it has more shoegaze in it?” and the question of what does metal mean to you, what does shoegaze mean to you?
IAN: They’re bringing baggage from the music scene to your party. They’re failing to recognise the fresh context you’re trying to build up around the album.
RYOTARO: It all comes back to “Do you really listen to music?” which might be a horrible thing to say. And then it also goes back to people who say, “Let’s just play music. Let’s do it!” I mean, are they really saying that? It sounds like such a pure statement, but is it really something else? Perhaps they’re not really attracted to the music but to these things that are attached to it.
IAN: I think when people say, often with a smug aura of pride, “I just do the kind of music that makes me feel good. I don’t really analyse my music in such an intellectual way”, they’re nearly always unconsciously absorbing and regurgitating all sorts of really boring elements from the scene around them that they just haven’t bothered to recognise or question.
RYOTARO: So we’ve covered Umez, dicks, guitar solos... what else is there?
[We start listening to Madame Edwarda – a Japanese goth band from 1986]
RYOTARO: So this is what I should sound like in two years.
IAN: Yeah, so you’ve already got your next few albums planned out – even written and recorded in some cases, right?
RYOTARO: Right. Next is hardcore and noise that I did with Sean [Sharkk], and Sachiko [Umez] will be on that for one track too. Then the one after that will be a long instrumental album, and then maybe after that will be a goth album I do by myself. And then there’ll be an accompanying album with a full band that’ll be heavy, cheesy rock. It’s like Marvel, man, planning up to phase 3!
IAN: So do you expect to have any fans left by this point?
RYOTARO: No, but by the end of it, I think it’ll be an interesting movie or book or whatever. I don’t want to be that band that makes the same album twice in a row!
IAN: What, Polysics?
RYOTARO: [Laughs] I don’t understand why more bands don’t do that. I guess because most bands are collective and the influences average each other out to something consistent. But movie directors do that, who’ll do loads of genres but there’ll be a thread that runs through it all.
IAN: Auteur theory.
RYOTARO: I’m a big fan of the auteur theory. It’s a bit of a cop out too though. Like, it doesn’t matter if it’s any good as long as it has an identity.
IAN: It’s almost better though – something that’s rubbish but has its own identity is better than something good that has nothing.
RYOTARO: I was talking to Eri from Chiina and she was saying if it was between having someone else writing their songs and being really famous and popular, and playing to small crowds and doing their own stuff, she’d choose the latter, because she’d know the songs were theirs.
IAN: It’s really about who music’s for. If it’s not rooted in something solid, it might as well just be a product serving a customer. It might as well just be owarai[comedy/entertainment industry].
RYOTARO: There’s two kinds of things going on in music here. A lot of it’s just, “Listen to my feelings,” and that’s OK as long as there’s some other element. Otherwise it’s just someone’s boring Facebook feed. You get lots of people with acoustic guitars around Shimokitazawa like that and it sounds horrible. At the same time, I really think rock music shouldn’t be entertainment. I don’t think rock bands need to “serve” their audience. It’s OK with pop music to be like that, but it’s counterintuitive to what rock music is supposed to be. It’s really weird when you go to Rock in Japan and you have these rock bands “serving” an audience and that mentality’s kind of trickled into the live house scene as well.
IAN: That’s what “Call And Response” really means. It’s the relationship between bands and audience: we’ll meet you halfway, but you’ve got to do some work as well.
RYOTARO: When you’re making music, the watchword so often is “wakariyasui”, “let’s make it easy to understand”. But when you make music “wakariyasui”, what does that mean?
IAN: I think it goes back to the “I just make music for me” bands. As soon as the chance comes up, they’ll sell out everything just like that – they don’t think about their music so they have nothing to ground them when the music industry comes calling. It’s like you say in your album jacket, “If you don’t stand for something…”
東京出身のロックバンド、 Looprider (ループライダー)。 Looprider is a rock band based in Tokyo, Japan. 2014年後半に制作されたファーストミニアルバム”My Electric Fantasy”が2015年8月19日(水)にリリース。「夢の 終わり」をテーマにした本作はブラック・サバス、マイ・ブラッディ・ヴァレンタイン、スマッシング・パンプキンズなどを日本のロッ クとポップスと融合をした、ストレートかつエッジーでヘビーなハイブリッドギターサウンド。 Recorded in late 2014, the band’s first album, “My Electric Fantasy,” will be released on August 19. The album combines the sounds of bands like Black Sabbath, My Bloody Valentine and Smashing Pumpkins, blending them together with a J-rock/pop sensibility.
今作の参加ミュージシャンはhenrytennisなどに携わっているアメリカ出身のドラマーSean McGeeや、シティーポップバンドYogee New Wavesなどでサポートベーシストとして活動しているYujiro Imada。他には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とギタリストのNiiyan、逃した魚の元ドラマーTakumi Bennett Aoki、そして元ガールズバンドMerpeoplesのボーカリストCharlotteが参加。 Collaborating musicians on the album include American drummer Sean McGee, who has been involved in a wide range of projects including indie band Henrytennis, and bassist Yujiro Imada, who has recently provided supporting duties for city pop band Yogee New Waves. Other guests include vocalist Sachiko Fukuda and guitarist Koichi “Niiyan” Niizato of London and Tokyo-based noise pop duo Umez, former drummer for Nogashita Sakana. Takumi Bennett Aoki, and Charlotte, former vocalist of indie outfit Merpeoples.
ミックス・マスタリングはシカゴを拠点とするElectrowerks RecordingのエンジニアCharles Macak。アートワーク・デザインは初音ミクの 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。 Engineer Charles Macak of Chicago based studio Electrowerks Recording handles mixing and mastering duties. Artwork and design is by illustrator Nasutakeo, who contributed official artwork to 2014’s Hatsune Miku expo, “Magical Mirai 2014.” 2015年7月からライブバンドにベーシストHideaki UsukiとドラマーSean McGeeを迎え、スリーピース編成としてライブ活動を再開。 ジャンルを越えた、多方面でのコラボレーションが今ここに実現。 Bassist Hideaki Usuki and drummer Sean McGee round out the live version of the band for a three-piece incarnation for a string of shows starting in July.
Whether it's "Summer Lovin'" or "Summertime Blues", come "Play in the Summer" with us at Koenji One and help us create this "Midsummer Night's Scene". And what better way to celebrate this season of fun and frolics than with an evening of dark psychedelic paranoia and icy Teutonic minimal wave? There is none and you know it.
Place: Koenji One Date: August 7th (Fri) Time: 8:00pm-midnight Cost: ¥500+1 drink (FREE before 9:00pm) DJs: - Romantic Harp and Flute with Dolphins - Sayaka Botanic (group A) - James Hadfield - Ian Martin
Hakuchi formed in autumn 2009 as the joyous enterprise of guitarist/vocalist Haraguchi and bassist Maru in Chiyoda-cho, Kanzaki City, Saga, with the current lineup completed in 2010 by the arrival of drummer An.
They play a kind of ferociously energetic postpunk junk, with their debut album Chindon DING DONG! ~ Minokurui March ~ featuring twelve songs in under 25 minutes -- short, unexpectedly pop songs from a band who have gained notoriety and acclaim on the live circuit for "finishing quickly so you don't get bored".
Joining them at this Tokyo release party is an eccentric, experimental, explosive lineup of acts — a sonic carnival from an alternate universe where pop music is an act of sacrificial tribute to the twin gods of Duchamp and Jarry.
Join us on the march towards madness — there is nothing here for you now.
(Please note, this event is NO SMOKING inside the venue.)
What’s up with kids nowadays? When did they forget how to rock? When did humour, fashion and emotional sensitivity become cooler than scissor kicks and sweat?
Well the good thing is that it’s never too late to learn, boys and girls! Come celebrate Ian’s 37th birthday and see up close that age is no barrier to behaving like a child, with five bands including a revolving cast of basically the same five people, all fired by the same devotion to the redemptive power of pure rock action.
Hosted by (west Tokyo’s finest Guided By Voices tribute band) Voided By Geysers, Hot Freaks offers you these 5 guarantees:
Minimal chatter between songs
No dress sense
Only two emotions: rock out, and rock out harder
Beer is for sale
Beer is for sale
Leave your good clothes, your inhibitions, and your musical musical taste at home and come out to the Penguin House on July 11th.
Place: Koenji Penguin House Date: July 11th (Sat) Time: 6:30pm Cost: ¥1800+1 drink LIVE: - Voided By Geysers
Another new release today, with the vinyl edition of instrumental kraut'n'bass duo Lo-shi's Baku finally available to buy. The band released the album online last year, and after a long and arduous process, a physical edition in black plastic is finally out. It will be available at the band's release party at Kichijoji GOK Sound today (June 21st) and will appear in shops gradually.
貘 / Baku (CAR-73) Side A 1. Me wa Sai 2. Karada wa Kuma Side B Ashi wa Tora Hana wa Zo O wa Ushi The album is a terrifying and beautiful exploration of cathartic darkness, ambient noise and Twin Peaks-esque reverb-soaked soundscapery, and in advance of its release, I met up with Eric "Gotal" Fournier and Julien "Ralouf" Bielka to talk about music, philosophy and dick jokes. Interview between Ian Martin of Call And Response Records and Lo-shi: We’re
sitting in an Iranian restaurant in the Tokyo suburb of Asagaya. Ralouf and Gotal haven’t slept for two days and are
already two or three beers ahead of me. We’re talking about the concept of
YOLO, which has briefly taken over part of our circle of friends in a way that
may be either ironic, philosophical or just plain stupid.
GOTAL: Julien often says “YOLO”.
IAN: You seem like the least YOLO band I
know. Is your music YOLO?
GOTAL: Mine? Yes, sure. I mean, what is
YOLO though? “You Only Live Once”, right? For me, that just means I don’t want
waste time doing bollocks.
IAN: I think it’s really a word for stupid
kids being dumb on holiday.
RALOUF: It’s a fake, postmodern carpe diem.
GOTAL: It’s what all the zombies say, [Adopts moaning zombie voice]
“Yoloooooo!” That’s a travesty of the meaning.
IAN: It feels to me like something that
comes from advertising and marketing. They constantly push the positive and
that becomes a sort of propaganda in society. I think the difference is that we
place genuine value on the negative.
RALOUF: We’re not trying to be negative
though. There’s a sort of negativity that becomes a sort of obligatory sarcasm,
a kind of narcissistic negativity. We think it’s important to be critical, like
in the video projections we use at shows. They’re critical but they also show
hot, naked women.
GOTAL: He means we try to show beauty.
RALOUF: In France it’s all about being
cool,ironic, sarcastic, but
historically irony was a weapon against power. Everyone’s ironic now, but then
they just go out and vote for fucking Sarkozy. They’re slaves.
IAN: They’re not using the irony for
anything.
RALOUF: No, it’s just a pose. I’m a slave
too, but I’m a king in my head... don’t print that!
IAN: But you also teach at a Christian
university.
RALOUF: No problem. It’s well paid and I
turn the cross upside down at the end of the day.
IAN: So how do you square this critical
attitude with playing at the Red Bull Music Academy stage at the Taico Club
music festival this year?
RALOUF: The point is that we were chosen to
play at that event. The message we take is that the music we do is valid.
IAN: But what does the validation of a
fizzy drinks company mean?
RALOUF: No... ah, sorry, fuck the English
language! Theothers aren’t valid,
just us!
GOTAL: I think he means it wasn’t luck when
we played at their event the first time. The first time, we were just drinking
with Damo Suzuki at 4AM and I don’t think he listened to our music even. He
just decided he liked our energy and said “Come on, do it!” So we played the
Red Bull Music Academy gig and people really liked it.
RALOUF: The guy came up to us after and
said, “That was fucking heavy, dude!” We’re a strange pair of guys, “Why are
those guys there?” But there we are!
IAN: So getting invited to play the Red
Bull event isn’t so much about the event itself as it is an opportunity to see
yourselves from the outside. To see what you’re doing in a same context as all
those other “real” musicians.
GOTAL: Right. We’re not musicians, we don’t
fit into any scenes, and we’re not interested in just being a couple of guys
cosplaying at being noise musicians. We liked doing the Tententen [A series of small monthly events in association with Call And Response Records that ran for a little over a year from 2013-2014] events
because they were breaking those boundaries and at the same time being
unpretentious and simple. Over time, we’ve come to see ourselves doing music.
RALOUF: So we are musicians! Actually, I’m
not comfortable calling us musicians, saying “I’m a musician,” which is
basically the same as calling yourself an asshole. But totally shit bands go
around calling themselves musicians, and hey I’m doing music too, so maybe I’m
a musician actually.
GOTAL: We’re doing it to have fun, which
sounds like some horrible YOLO thing, but we’re trying to save our lives. It’s
not a pose, we’re not wearing biker jackets, shades, doing that bullshit
cosplay. We’re not putting ugliness on top of ugliness, dressed up in a stupid
costume, screaming into the mic. We’re putting beauty on ugliness.
RALOUF: But beauty can be boring.
GOTAL: Yeah. Beauty should be fresh. These
days we’re very into the French philosopher Quentin Meillassoux, and he says
miracles are that which goes against the laws of nature.
RALOUF: Miracles happen because there is no
God. It’s speculative realism.
GOTAL: We talked about YOLO earlier, and if
you break it down, the words actually mean the opposite of what that phrase
represents. It’s like when you see an “event” on Facebook and that’s pretty
much the definition of a non-event.
RALOUF: Like when James Joyce said when he
hears the word “love” he wants to puke.
IAN: So there’s a tension and dualism to
what you do?
GOTAL: Really we’re just trying to make
things happen. We’re trying to save our lives.
RALOUF: We don’t want to be on the cover of
the NME, because our faces are so ugly.
[At
around this point, Gotal is starting to cast “Shut up, you’re fucking up the
interview!” type glances Ralouf’s way.]
GOTAL: Fighting boredom is a very difficult
struggle.
RALOUF: With our small penises!
GOTAL: Our microdicks, yeah! But
criticising fake things doesn’t make us happy. What we really want to do is
find the moments that make sense.
IAN: As I get older, I find more and more
that tolerating stuff I think is shit just isn’t worth it. I get given a lot of
CDs as a music journalist, and there was this album by a band called Passepied.
I was listening to it, doing what I usually do and trying to find what was good
with it, and then my wife came home from work and just said, “What’s this? It’s
shit.” – And I thought, “Oh yeah, it is. It’s just shit.” Later on, I started
seeing articles written by people I knew appearing over the web saying what an
amazing band they were, and it was like seeing a vision of the kind of bullshit
I’d just narrowly avoided doing.
[Around
this time, Gotal goes outside for a cigarette break and Ralouf goes over a list
of things he’s said and begs me not to print them (they’re all in here).]
IAN: So let’s pretend for a moment that
this is a proper interview, and you tell me about how the band formed.
RALOUF: We started out in a metal band. The
other guys were like, “We’re two musicians and you’re two wankers!” They wanted
to live off music and make money.
GOTAL: They didn’t ever say that, but it
felt a bit patronising sometimes. One of them had done a “maybe debut” – he’d
made music for anime – and the other guy was in the backline for a bunch of
bands as a session musician. They were good guys, kind, but thanks to them, we
wanted to do the opposite.
RALOUF: Playing music is a game. If you get
too serious, the game stops, but if you’re not serious enough, the game can’t
even start. It’s hard to find a balance.
GOTAL: “Lo-shi: The Game” – live action
roleplaying.
RALOUF: I like that scene in Pinnochio,
where they go to the island where everyone is playing all the time. It’s
presented as a warning for children, but that’s paradise for me. I’m a situationist:
everyone should enjoy the role they play. In real life, rules are boring, but
in a game I’m happy to accept rules. The rules of a game are a cool parody of
legislation.
IAN: So how about the album itself?
RALOUF: So the title, Baku, is named after a kind of mythological chimera that eats bad
dreams – that makes you live again. It’s like the story of Orpheus, who makes
music and poetry, goes into the Inferno, and with those two things is able to
live again. The Baku isn’t so far away from that idea: it eats nightmares and
lets your dreams live again. Our first dream as a band was to be in a bath with
Haruna Kojima from AKB48, but we have bigger dreams now!
GOTAL: Our other dreams are actually
fulfilled. That one was ridiculous.
RALOUF: I’m into dancing, but no one dances
these days. Why? Because they’re full of bad dreams.
GOTAL: Before we hooked up with Call And
Response, we never even knew there was something like that out there.
RALOUF: All we could find at live venues
was these wannabe scenes. Finding Call And Response gave us a lot of
confidence.
GOTAL: It’s rare to find a place like that
where people leave their egos at the cloakroom. That’s what was good about Tententen,
and the new event we’re doing at Studio 35 Minutes. That place is amazing: just
two minutes from my home, but we just went in there and meet everyone. It was
very unpretentious, friendly, not just people listening to themselves. The
owner is this amazing photographer. He tries to capture the gazes of animals at
zoos. It’s disturbing. You feel this sense of longing for something else. The
magazine Studio Voice wanted to do an article about his place, so he made sure
they came on a night we played, just to get us in the magazine.
IAN: It’s like with Taico Club. There’s
such a thin line between recognition and obscurity.
GOTAL: It’s like Meillassoux again:
impossible things happen! Being an artist isn’t just a business. If you’re
going to do it, it shouldn’t just be to turn it into consumer goods. It should
be because you want to create something.
RALOUF: If you think about it in terms of
supply and demand, supply should come first.
GOTAL: I don’t want to make music to
satisfy a demand.
IAN: That’s why you don’t get paid. The
money in the music scene is all demand-side, not supply-side. Some say artists
should refuse to play if they don’t get paid, but I’m not sure how that would
work. Where’s the money going to come from?
GOTAL: What, that the artist has some kind
of right to be paid? I don’t think so. Apart from anything else, 99% of artists
are shit.
RALOUF: In ancient Greece, artists were
superstars, but now we’re gathering in ghettos. That’s not normal, surely! But
it’s best not to think about money. It’s best to be a bit naive.
GOTAL: Japan is a terrible place in terms
of turningmusic into money.
RALOUF: In France, you just earn it from
the state. Is that good? Being subsidised by the state? I don’t know.
GOTAL: “Official art” – the shittiest of
the shit! If you pay artists, often the quality comes down.
RALOUF: I blame the French Revolution.
Before the Revolution, artists were protected by the king, but by the time of
the Industrial Revolution, people like Baudelaire were living in poverty. They
were miserable, but they were better. They called them the “artistes maudits – the miserable artists – but this was an idea that only came after
the Revolution.
GOTAL: It’s terrible, but the most revered
poets and painters came from that.
RALOUF: It’s a condition of total freedom,
but... [Makes a sad face.] It might
have been possible in the 1970s or something to be authentic and popular, but
now? Ha!
GOTAL: In indie culture now, you might be
able to make money if you had a miracle, but why mimic something to chase after
that ghost? So much indie culture now tries to be subversive, but all it’s
doing is mimicking capitalism on a smaller scale. We could be doing better
things. Revolution! IAN: So what do you think it is that you’re
trying to do? What is that better thing you’re reaching for?
GOTAL: Sorry, I have a headache and a
hangover after last night! On Wednesdays I work 9:30AM to 9:30PM, and then Julien
and I go out, drink, talk philosophy and ideas. In the end, I don’t know who
comes up with what. We just find our way forward gradually. RALOUF: The cover of Baku features a join-the-dots image that you can draw on. You
connect the numbers, but it’s impossible to know what the image is until you
draw it. Music for us is like that.
Call And Response is a Tokyo-based independent record label and event organiser, specialising in post-punk, new wave and assorted experimental pop trash.
