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Japanese Pop

39 articles

Yoko Ono: Rocking Chair: Oh! Yoko

Column by Michael Lydon, Fusion, April 1972

YOKO ONO smiles from her recent album cover (fly) with great compassion. Her face is heavy, peasant-like. She is looking out through a sheet of ...

Sadistic Mika Band: Sadist Faction

Interview by Jonh Ingham, Let It Rock, June 1975

TWO YEARS AGO I attended an out of town Roxy gig. Along for the ride was Kazuhiko and Mika Katoh, husband and wife leaders of ...

Sadistic Mika Band: Let Pink Floyd Fans Beware

Profile and Interview by Michael Gross, Circus Raves, July 1975

EARLY IN THE SUMMER of 1974, Mika Katoh, a small, beautiful, Japanese woman, walked out of her room in London's Portobello Hotel, and crossed the ...

Yellow Magic Orchestra: Yellow Magic Orchestra (A&M)

Review by Rosalind Russell, Record Mirror, 30 June 1979

THE ONLY REAL SURPRISE about Yellow Magic's emergence into Western pop music is that they took such a long time coming. ...

Yellow Magic Orchestra: Live in Tokyo

Live Review by Betty Page, Sounds, 30 January 1982

THE PROSPECT of The Orch being pruned down to its three component parts was initially somewhat alarming for the quivering foreign journalists, who sat in ...

Frank Chickens: Ain't No One Here But Frank Chickens

Profile and Interview by uncredited writer, New Musical Express, 5 February 1983

Kasuko, Kasumi and Noriko cabaret's Japanese Mafia. ...

Frank Chickens: First Bites: Frank Chickens

Interview by Mick Sinclair, Sounds, 12 February 1983

ONE OF the most unusual and likeable entertainments currently intruding upon the gig circuit are Frank Chickens. As the name inscrutably doesn't indicate, they are ...

Frank Chickens: Enter The Ninja

Interview by David Quantick, New Musical Express, 31 March 1984

"HAVE YOU read Winnie The Pooh?", asks Kazuko Hohki. I admit I have. "And Mary Poppins? And The Borrowers?." Kazuko, one half of Frank Chickens, ...

Frank Chickens: Why did the chickens cross the globe

Interview by Cath Carroll, New Musical Express, 26 January 1985

To get to Milton Keynes! Cath Carroll finds out that fact is stranger than fiction and how canaries relate to chickens. ...

Frank Chickens: Educating Frank

Interview by Penny Kiley, Melody Maker, 6 September 1986

Mixing kimonos with pink socks, FRANK CHICKENS are the ultimate culture shock. Now they sometimes forget they're not English and are firmly intent on changing ...

Ryuichi Sakamoto: The Noise From Nippon

Report and Interview by Mark Dery, Elle, September 1988

"I DON'T KNOW what I am," says Ryuichi Sakamoto. "I was born in Japan but I don't think I'm Japanese. To be a stranger — ...

Youssou N'Dour, Ryuichi Sakamoto: Ryuichi Sakamoto: Dominion, London

Live Review by David Toop, The Times, 27 March 1990

Dissolving the borders ...

Shonen Knife: Shonen Knife

Review by Chuck Eddy, Rolling Stone, 6 September 1990

SHONEN KNIFE consists of three young Japanese women who play some of the happiest, snappiest rock & roll ever to bounce off a satellite dish. ...

Shonen Knife: Pretty Little Baka Guy & Live in Japan (Rockville)

Review by Chuck Eddy, Spin, June 1991

WHAT REALLY puts the pop-rockettes in Japan's legendary Shonen Knife light-years ahead of such inconsequential Western frauds as "Lush" (how Shonen Knife would pronounce Rush) ...

Shonen Knife: Shonen is a Punk Locker!

Interview by David Quantick, New Musical Express, 11 January 1992

LAST YEAR in America a tribute album devoted to SHONEN KNIFE came out, with all the usual suspects like Sonic Youth on it. ...

Shonen Knife: Naughty But Knife

Interview by Nick Coleman, Time Out, 18 November 1992

Their songs have titles like 'Flying Jelly Attack' but Shonen Knife claim it's all serious stuff. As London succumbs to a Japanese arts invasion, Nick ...

Shonen Knife: Dagger Dagger Hey!

Profile and Interview by Steven Wells, New Musical Express, 21 November 1992

Do SHONEN KNIFE have some sinister masterplan to conquer Planet Pop or are they just a happy freakshow? STEVEN WELLS pulls on his combat fatigues ...

Shonen Knife: ULU, London

Live Review by Caroline Sullivan, The Guardian, 2 December 1992

TOKYO APPARENTLY has a flourishing indie scene, and female trio Shonen Knife are its stars. Their popularity certainly emphasises the cultural gap between East and ...

Shonen Knife: Let's Knife (Virgin)

Review by Eric Weisbard, Spin, March 1993

ALMOST TEN YEARS since its recordings first invaded the U.S. as a Japanese import in late 1983, Osaka, Japan's punkiest Barbie doll fans are finally ...

The Boredoms: Yip-Yip-Yip-Yip-Yip-Yip-Yip-Yip-YEEEOOOOWWW!!! for the Boredoms

Report and Interview by Ian Christe, Alternative Press, March 1993

IT’S THE FRESHEST sound around, if you ever get the chance to hear it. The Boredoms play the space jazz rap music of the ...

Boredoms: Metro, Chicago

Live Review by Everett True, Melody Maker, 10 July 1993

NEXT TO ME stands Corey (Touch & Go), mouth agape. Next to him is Ian MacKaye (Fugazi), bobble hat bobbing deliriously. A few kids scatter-dance, ...

Shonen Knife: Rock Animals (Virgin)

Review by Pat Blashill, Details, February 1994

SHONEN KNIFE are insanely cute; it's both their blessing and their curse. ...

The 5.6.7.8's: Japanese Rockers in Australia

Profile and Interview by Clinton Walker, Juice, June 1994

UPSTAIRS AT the Lansdowne Hotel in Sydney, Japanese all-girl psychobilly band the 5.6.7.8's are geeing up in anticipation of a performance. They change into matching ...

The Beach Boys, Vladimir Cosma , Miles Davis, Peter Gabriel, Lip Cream, Melon, Youssou N'Dour, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Tangerine Dream, Vangelis, Caetano Veloso, John Zorn: Ryuichi Sakamoto: invisible jukebox

Interview by Mark Sinker, The Wire, October 1994

Every month we play a musician a series of records which they're asked to identify and comment on — with no prior knowledge of what ...

H Jungle With T: Jungle Hits Japan

Report and Interview by Kodwo Eshun, i-D, September 1995

Tetsuya Komuro is a Japanese dance producer who's just made the world's first ever million selling jungle hit. Like the rest of his records, we'll ...

Pizzicato Five: Caught In A Von Trapp! Pizzicato Five

Interview by Stephen Dalton, New Musical Express, March 1997

PIZZICATO FIVE look like the coolest band on Earth, a stylish visual remix of every trash cultural icon from the past four decades. They are ...

Cornelius: Beck to the Future

Profile and Interview by Stephen Dalton, Uncut, June 1999

CORNELIUS is a pick 'n' mix match retro-futurist whizz-kid. Stephen Dalton meets the boy they're calling the Japanese Beck ...

Susumu Yokota: Ambient Confessions of a Japanese Technohead

Profile and Interview by Ben Thompson, The Independent, 1 March 2000

THE IDEA OF an ambient recording that stops you in your tracks might seem to be a contradiction in terms, but Susumu Yokota's Image 1983-1998 ...

Pizzicato Five

Book Excerpt by Phil Hardy, Dave Laing, The Faber Companion to 20th-Century Popular Music, 2001

Yashuaru Konishi; Keitaro Takanami; Maki Nomiya ...

Acid Mothers Temple: The Spitz, London

Live Review by Mark Paytress, MOJO, December 2001

Japan's self-styled "freak-out group for the 21 st century" prompt synaptic meltdown in east London. ...

Boredoms: Never a Dull Moment

Report and Interview by Chris Campion, New Musical Express, 13 July 2002

EYE YAMANTAKA, founder and creative visionary of Japan's Boredoms, is one of rock's great eccentrics. His band churn out a cosmic slop for kids with ...

Maher Shalal Hash Baz: 93 Feet East, London

Live Review by Tim Footman, Careless Talk Costs Lives, August 2002

PROFANE: Someone has lipsticked "cunt slut" on the wall of the disabled toilet. ...

The Boredoms: Drilled to Infinity

Retrospective and Interview by Edwin Pouncey, The Wire, September 2002

Over 15 years, Osaka's Boredoms have mutated from a splatterpunk avant noise group to the streamlined ferocity of their current mantric percussion barrage. In London, ...

OOIOO: Be Sure To Loop

Profile and Interview by Frances Morgan, Plan B, June 2004

FOUR JAPANESE women are running through the Camber Sands car park, wrapped in dresses and blankets and ponchos, straight hair blowing in the east wind. ...

The 5.6.7.8's: 5.6.7.8: Who do we appreciate?

Profile and Interview by Tim Cooper, The Independent, 11 August 2004

The 5.6.7.8's are coming to Britain and are drawing sell-out crowds. Tim Cooper meets the idiosyncratic Japanese all-girl rock trio with the Kill Bill connection. ...

Vodka Collins: Glam Rock, Japanese Style

Retrospective and Interview by Dave Thompson, Goldmine, November 2004

THINK OF '70s Glam Rock and you will inevitably find yourself transported to the United Kingdom and the brief, but brilliant couple of years during ...

Electric Eel Shock: Mercury Lounge, New York City

Live Review by Carol Cooper, The L Magazine, November 2005

BEFORE TAKING the Mercury Lounge stage on Easter Sunday, Aki Morimoto – guitar-wielding front man for Tokyo's punk power-trio Electric Eel Shock – toyed with ...

Julian Cope: Stone me!

Interview by Jon Savage, Observer Music Monthly, 10 August 2008

Julian Cope believes in music made by outsiders for outsiders. Now 50, and still incandescent with his passions for Krautrock and stone circles, he tells ...

Pacific Breeze

Column by Wayne Robins, Copper, 15 June 2020

IT MIGHT BE hard to imagine, but there was a time when there was not a Japanese restaurant in every city neighborhood and suburban strip ...

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