Blog - January 2020 Archives

January 2020 Archives

Index

.27 Weekly revue: 2020 week #3 (January 18 to 24)
.20 Weekly revue: 2020 week #2 (January 11 to 17)
.13 Weekly revue: 2020 week #1 (January 4 to 10)
.03 Weekly revue: 2019 week #53 (December 28 to January 3)

January 27, 2020

Weekly revue: 2020 week #3 (January 18 to 24)

Food: - Lunch at Spice Lab Tokyo, Ginza
- Beef & chicken tikka masala curries at Triangle Curry, Shibuya

Music event: On Friday was event "Love Shack" at Club Malcolm in Shibuya, featuring Childish Tones, Kaji Hideki, Francis, and DJs Chabe (Cubismo Grafico, Learners, Neil and Iraiza) and Usakura Beni (Avandoned)! It was my first time at Club Malcolm, which turned out to be a nice and cozy place. I wanted to see everything so I got there right at opening time, as Beni-chan was DJing (Les 5-4-3-2-1's "Un garçon et une fille" as I entered). Both her and Chabe played quite a lot of Shibuya-kei, with Pizzicato Five, Kahimi Karie, etc.

Childish Tones played first, and it was my first time seeing them. Their concept is to play rocking tunes using nothing but toy instruments. The band of 6 were joined for a few songs by Beni-chan, who appeared on their two recent singles "Cruel To Be Kind / There She Goes" and "Make Her Mine"), and also by Izumo Nikki (also a member of Avandoned) for spoken word in another. Their whole set was a lot of fun!

After a DJ set of Chabe, it was Kaji Hideki's turn to perform. This time he was accompanied by two of Koncos (Furukawa Taichi on drums and Satō Hiroshi on guitar), with Kaji-kun himself on bass! They did a very energetic set, with even Kaji-kun's hat flying off his head as soon as the 2nd song. Being a very small venue it was also a great opportunity to watch from up close. His set included a brand new song that he wrote this year.

Kaji Hideki set list: French Cinema! / My Baby Lemonade / Sweet Swedish Winter / Suddenly, Sibylla / New song / Sunday Baby / Semi-Tropical Girl / Tu-Tu Boom Boom / Tropical Girl

Then was another DJ set of Beni-chan, followed by Francis' solo show. Francis is Ori Makoto (who used to be bassist in Original Love and The Collectors). He played tracks from his computer and did his song and dance performance. For the song chōhatsu, from his album "Burning Bear!" (1994), he was joined by Lily (of band Oldtimer) for chorus. He ended his show with "Copacabana" (Barry Manilow cover) which had the whole audience dancing, and also all other artists back on stage to dance too. You can watch that last song here (I'm in it, kind of)! Francis is working on a new album which should be released sometime this year (26 years since his previous!). I can't wait!

Francis set list: S'il vous plaît, Ha! / Alexandre / Dandy Warhol / Zero Gravity Love / chōhatsu / ? / kawaii omocha / Delaware / Copacabana

Then DJ Chabe played some more until the end. That was a very fun event from start til end, organized by Childish Tones and Francis.

Radio: A new episode of my radio program was aired on La Face B (Montréal-based Internet radio). This time I played songs that I selected around a "synth" theme. Please have a listen. :)

- "Tokyo's Coolest Sound" vol.2 (January 22, 2020): Listen on Mixcloud and read more here

Music release news: Pico Pico Revolution, Maika Loubté, xiangyu

This week's video: xiangyu "Hiji No Biribiri"

January 20, 2020

Weekly revue: 2020 week #2 (January 11 to 17)

Music event: My first show of the year was an event titled "WAVES vol.1" at Ebisu Batica, where I went to see Manon! Whenever I go to events she's part of I rarely know of any of the other artists beforehand, but I always end up finding out about some other really good ones too.

This time I enjoyed sets by kim taehoon, a Korea-born (though living in Japan since 4) shoegazer artist who uses several loopers and also plays guitar very well for a great result, and also band Klang Ruler, normally a 5-piece but this time they performed as a trio, who had a cool new generation city pop-ish sound with very good synths and twin vocals. I was also surprised by singer-songwriter/trackmaker ASA who has a powerful voice. I'll definitely look out for seeing them again somewhere. And MANON did a great set too of course, although being a little bit short with 5 songs, but still with several of my favorites.

Manon will be in Tokyo again on February 11 for event Tokyo Pico Pico Fes with Nakata Yasutaka, banvox, Dé Dé Mouse, Ram Rider, Toriena, Yackle and many more.

Manon set list: Swipe / Gomenne Girl / 2 Live In A Real World / Air Kissing / Coco Boi Romance

In order: kim taehoon, Klang Ruler, ASA and MANON

Music release news: Mira Parameter, Major Force Productions, Kai

This week's video: ASA Wu "Driving the morning."

Klang Ruler "The Way You Are"

kim taehoon "Don't Let Me Down"

MANON "Coco Boi Romance feat. Ryan Hemsworth"

January 13, 2020

Weekly revue: 2020 week #1 (January 4 to 10)

Outings: - Visited Hitachi station and the surroundings. The station's building has a café on the 2nd floor facing the coast. There's a street off the coast that reminded of Mumbai Sea Link (in smaller scale). :)

- Chilled out at Moff Animal Café in Mito. There are about 20 cats, and a separate room with other small animals like baby chicks, a porcupine, but also a large turtle and even a snake.

Food: - Galette des Rois, de Maison Weniko, Mito
- Wagyu burger at Hitachino Brewery Mito

Exhibition: - I went to see friend Macoto Tanaka's exhibition in the entrance of Aoyama Spiral. Macoto is a master of paper cutting, or in Japanese kirie. She cuts freehand without any sketching or tracing, just using her imagination and scissors. This time she used pages of a dictionary and other books, and got inspired of what to cut from words on the pages! I wish I could have spent more time looking and reading through everything, but each that caught my attention was amazing and with so much detail.

Music release news: Portable Rock, Kimura Takuya, Haruko Tajima

This week's video: Haruko Tajima "Happy Duty"

January 3, 2020

Weekly revue: 2019 week #53 (December 28 to January 3)

Happy New Year 2020!!

Hatsumode

Food: The last food of the year was year-end soba :)

Music event: My last show of 2019 was one titled "After Christmas Party" and organized by The Pen Friend Club! It was held at Yamaha Ginza Studio, where I went for the first time. Located downstairs from the classy Yamaha flagship store, it's a full-featured live venue furnished with audio equipment by the musical instrument maker, so of course the sound was great! The event featured avandoned, RYUTist, Tweedees and The Pen Friend Club. Each of the bands had stage time of abourt 45 minnutes, so the event was a good opportunity to see a lot by all of them.

As the title says the event was held after Christmas, on December 28, and it did have a Christmas theme with a few Christmas songs through the show. It started with avandoned, an idol group led by Usakura Beni (who is also active as a DJ and often makes mixtapes or zines). Their songs are a mix of idol songs, some just cute and great pop songs, and then some indie rock too, making for a fun variety. I had seen avandoned as a duo (when single "Lemon Peels" was released) but it was my first time seeing them as a formation of four. They sang "Lemon Peels", "shohōsen" and "chanto koko ni Sign shite" among many others. Their show was fun and dreamy.

Up next was RYUTist, an idol group from Niigata who I had previously seen once in a show with SOLEIL last June. With songs contributed by various artists (including Tweedees, Microstar and many more), not only their music is great but also they sing very well. Their set included "Christmas Delights", "watashi no komichi" (both written by The Pen Friernd Club's Hirakawa Yūichi), "aozora Signal" (written by Tweedees) and "tasogare no Diary" (co-written by Tweedees and Kitagawa Katsutoshi (Round Table)).

Next on stage was Tweedees, who I had also seen recently with SOLEIL, and even more recently just the week before at an acoustic in-store event at CA4LA in Omotesando. This time they were accompanied by keyboardist Inoue Kaoru (of Blue Peppers), guitarist Qurosawa (of Pollyanna) and drummer Hara "Gen" Hideki (who I had recently seen with Dots+Borders and Neil and Iraiza). The other times I saw them bassist/leader Okii Reiji (ex-Cymbals) talked a lot, but this time the show was music almost non-stop. At the end of their show they invited RYUTist back on stage to sing "aozora Signal" together (a song that Tweedees wrote for them).

And last to play was The Pen Friend Club with all of its eight members (vocals, two guitars, bass, saxophone, keyboards, glockenspiel, drums). They played originals such as "hishō suru nichijo" and "hohoende" (watch it below), as well as many covers including ones of Roger Nichols, The Beach Boys, 5th Dimension, The Association, and a moving cover of "All I Want For Christmas Is You" (as heard on their "Merry Christmas From The Pen Friend Club" album). It has been announced that their excellent vocalist Fujimoto Yuka will be quitting the band in February, and she has only two more shows to go (on January 18 at Kichijoji Ichibee and on February 22 at Star Pine's Cafe).

Music release news: Yapoos, YMC, Q.A.S.B., George Cates, Reina Nosa, Way Wave, Do Nothing Productions, Blue Peppers, Pearl Brothers TWO, Venus Peter, Urbangarde, Katori Shingo, Kaede