Musicwhore.org Archive The original

On the surface, neuma’s debut album Mado is all about the genteel.

The opening chords of “Ato Sukoshi” sound like almost every bossa nova recording made in Japan. (Bossa nova is pretty big there.)

And for the first half of the song, singer Shiba Rie and guitarist Yugawa Torahiko pretty much go unadorned. Then the rest of the band jumps in, with accordion player Satoo Yoshiaki making the biggest sound.

An accordion!

In fact, Satoo is responsible for most of album’s tense moments. Thereafter, the genteel surface of Mado gives way to reveal a tug-of-war between strong melodicism and even stronger dissonance.

Sometimes, Satoo stays out of the way, as on such pretty tracks as “Itsu Ka” and “Wa ~Arukinagara~”. On other tracks, he literally crashes in with wild harmonies, as he does half way through “Kujira King”. On “Zauberei”, the dissonance is front and center throughout.

Most of the time, the focus is squarely on Shiba’s languid delivery, with little more than piano or guitar backing her. “Nemuri Hana” calls to mind Talitha Mackenzie’s a capella interpretation of old Scottish folk songs.

“Mabataki” feels like a lullaby until a cello scrapes its way through an eerie solo. “Aoi Shizuku”, meanwhile, sounds like it was recorded on an old foil cylindar.

neuma could have probably left the genteel aspects of Mado alone, and it would have made for a nice, if not unremarkable sound. Thankfully, that’s not the case here.

Mado is a captivating listening experience in the way its dissonance highlights its melodicism. The songs on the album eschew the common perception that quiet music is pretty music, let alone dissonance is ugly.

More surprising — the band achieves this tension without relying on very many electronics. Save for a splash of synthesizer on “Mabataki” and a pulse on “Itsu Ka”, neuma is entirely acoustic.

Drummer Suganuma Yuuta follows a less-is-more approach, oftentimes letting a quiet boom anchor the band’s songs, while even contrabassist Moriya Hiroshi manages to sound huge.

In short, neuma is an impressive ensemble, spare and minimal but fascinating and tense.

So. New Wave is back, and it’s called electroclash. Analog is, like, cool and so is playing on keyboards with fewer kilobytes of RAM than a hair dryer.

Never mind that archaic is as archaic does.

Nirgilis is not New Wave, and as such, is not even electroclash. And somehow, its combination of quirky chords, heavy programming and shoegazer guitar keys into the punk-meets-disco aesthetic New Wave attempted to forge.

In other words, Nirgilis sounds fun.

The brainchild of keyboardist Moyo Satake, the band formed in 1993 but didn’t release a single recording till seven years later.

When it did, it unleashed a distinctive sound both familiar and new. Listening to the opening track “Thunder” feels like piecing together a puzzle.

A bit of My Bloody Valentine in the guitars? A bit of house and electronica in the drums? A bit of Luminous Orange and Claude Debussy in the harmonies? Maybe all or maybe none.

Whatever the case, Nirgilis can accomodate quite a number of plug-ins.

Hip-hop? The reprise of “Thunder II” with rapper Moyunijumo of Illrime shows Nirgilis is good as any breakbeat record. Big guitars? “Young Halo” finds the band channeling its inner Cure and Sonic Youth. Ethereal slow songs? Gotcha covered on “Juju” and “Kiss”.

Nirgilis sounds best when its combining whimsical melodies with canned beats. It’s all right to make funny contortions while listening to “Koke Tissue” or “Oh, Do Re Mi”.

Singer Iwata Acchu possesses a compelling, airy voice, and while Moyo’s programming is the biggest presence in the band’s sound, the contributions by bassist Kurihara Noboru, drummer Inadera Yuki and guitarist Ito Ko-ki are no less important.

Inadera’s drumming on “Akari” and “Young Halo” is especially crucial, while “Kiss” finds Moyo taking a back seat to his bandmates.

Tennis is a remarkable, confident debut, familiar without employing anachronisms, new without feeling too alien.

If I were to write a subtitle to Buffalo Daughter’s Pshychic in the style of Neil Gaiman, it would sound like so:

In which Buffalo Daughter enters a studio, emerges as Stereolab, believes itself to be Cornelius, and hides its faces accordingly.

Hey, I didn’t say it would be a good Neil Gaiman parody.

But on a simplistic level, that’s what pretty much happens on Buffalo Daughter’s third or fourth — hard to keep count with all those remix EPs — album.

The whole shtick with hiding faces behind circle shapes is taken straight out of the artwork for Cornelius’ 2001 album Point. (Cornelius used a paint blob; Buffalo Daughter, points of light.)

And while Cornelius and Buffalo Daughter have had a prior working relationship, the former’s creative stamp has no bearing on the long-winded approach BD takes on Pshychic.

The album clocks in at 51 minutes and contains only five tracks. That’s an average of 10 minutes per track.

The wanker alarms usually ring at this point, and yeah, there’s seldom ever any point for rock music to exceed five minutes in length. In some circles, three is pushing it.

But Buffalo Daughter makes that long-windedness sound organic where Stereolab — to which Pshychic will inevitably be compared — makes it sound tedious.

The 10-minute first single, “Cyclic”, is little more than a single muted guitar pulse and one rhythmic pattern on the organ. And somehow, Buffalo Daughter manage to squeeze in a chorus in there. They also manage to justify its length.

“Cyclic” pretty much sets the template for the rest of the album. “Pshychic a Go-Go” follows the same criteria — one or two musical ideas set on repeat, but woven to sound organic.

“S.O.I.D.” comes closest to a conventional song, with complete verses and chorus throughout the track’s seven minutes. Everything else on the album is a string of phrases and one-liners.

“Chihuahua Punk” is something of a throw-away track, an instrumental featuring some interesting timbres but little in a sense of structure.

The big challenge of the album, however, is the 20-minute concluding track, “303 Live”. No one should ever have to sit through a 20-minute rock song, and Buffalo Daughter face a daunting task stretching one source of musical material for that entire length.

But after taking it in completely once or twice, it becomes apparant the trio is justified in using that much space.

“303 Live” uses a lot momentum. It slowly builds to a pace, breaks down, builds back up again, then hurtles to a finish. Unlike the rest of the album, which takes a handful of musical ideas and pins them to a steady pulse, “303 Live” starts and stops.

Still, Pshychic may have a hard time convincing listeners its not a bloated, precocious album, because on some level, it is. Given the pitfalls into which the band could have fallen, it’s nice to know Buffalo Daughter has a steady handle on its own eccentricities.

bloodthirsty butchers were around before Number Girl was a twinkle in Mukai Shuutoku’s eye, and it’s around even after Number Girl ran its course.

And yet, no two bands seemed so suited for each other. Both groups laid catchy melodies over thick, dischordant harmonies and pushed their amplifiers to Spinal Tap-ian levels. The butchers still do.

So it was a welcome surprise when Number Girl’s master axegrinder, Tabuchi Hisako, became the butchers’ only new member in 15 years. Hisako-chan’s disregard for a tonal center fits nicely with bloodthirsty butchers’ liberal harmonies.

The chemistry between the band members impressed them so much, they decided to start taping their live performances. The results can be heard on the butchers’ first live album, green on red.

Tabuchi integrates herself incredibly well with the band. Whether she’s working with Shiina Ringo or Odani Misako, Hisako-chan stands out. But with bloodthirsty butchers, she sounds like she’s been with them for years.

When the full band kicks in on the opening “Faust”, Tabuchi stamps the track with her trademark fuzz. And when she noodles on the intro to “Soredake”, you’re glad guitarist/vocalist Yoshimura Hideki isn’t. (Yoshimura isn’t what anyone would call a shredder.)

But don’t think for a minute Tabuchi’s presence does anything to clean up the butchers’ sound. Unlike Number Girl, whose rhythmic precision called to mind early Helmet, bloodthirsty butchers haven’t quite channeled the concept of unison playing, which of course gives them their charm.

In fact, bassist Imoriya Takeshi and drummer Komatsu Masahiro seem intent on spreading themselves thin, Komatsu supplying the bass rhythm while Imoriya supplements the harmony. Throughout green on red, Komatsu is more likely to follow Yoshimura’s lead than to fortify Komatsu’s rhythms.

Unlike other live albums by Japanese artists, the butchers culled together green on red from a number of performances. Recent live albums by pop acts Do As Infinity and Bonnie Pink reveal the risk of capturing only one set of performances.

That said, the sound quality between tracks can vary widely. On “8gatsu”, the band sounds front and center, whereas on “Saraba Sekai Kunshu”, they sound like they’re playing in a fish bowl.

It’s still a better approach than committing to tape (or ones and zeroes) a performance that’s brilliant one moment, excruciating the next. The performances on green on red are consistently solid. (And consistently loud, but what else is new?)

Still, don’t expect green on red to resemble anything like Number Girl’s Sapporo Omoide in My Head Jootai or Kiroku Series. bloodthirsty butchers are long-winded while Number Girl was concise, and the 13 tracks on the album clock in at nearly 69 minutes.

After a while, green on red demands stamina from listeners, but with that level of intensity and passion, it’s a welcome request.