Book - "Japanese Independent Music"
There are not many books in English about the Japanese scene. This book is until now one of the only ones. It gives a bit a limited view about the scene, with a bit more attention to the weird aspects than necessary. Sometimes in the West we have a tendency to focus on the more extreme things we don't have in that form, rather than see a development in Japan which occured simultanuesly with the rest of the world. Japan had its own aspects too, but there are many more aspects than what is described in this book.-
Sonore Japanese Independent Music
-(a full picture from Japan's underground of the 80's and 90's)-
An interesting book, written in English with various introductions which give an overview from the underground and independent scene in Japan right now. It explains this scene from various viewpoints including a psychological, and social context. Maps of Japan situate the areas where this music scene is most vivid.
The interest of this book spans from noise to avant-rock, punk and progressive, electronic and free music. The book is a very comprehensive guide with an alphabetic list of all interesting groups from within this range. The descriptions are brief but seemingly accurate.
Included is also a list of interesting labels and magazines (with links to the internet). Not included is a historical musical perspective from the progressive scene from where this new scene originates. Old psychedelic bands (beat, rockabilly,..) are because of the books perspective and scope not intigrated. May be there was not much of an organized independent scene before the eighties. Describing such groups would have been interesting for us collectors too but are probably better covered in a different book and with a different title. However if you wish to have a full overview of the contemporary existing scene this book succeeds to be suitable for it (with biographies until 2000).
One of the groups in the book, Acid Mothers Temple have projects under various names. So these are randomly spread over the whole book. A general overview of all these names connected with their label would possibly have needed many other pages. Now with this huge amount of information being already there but still in the form of a handy pocket format it's a practical book to take with you on large trips (train, plane,..) and having the pleasure being able to browse.
The CD which came along with the book gives an idea of the more challenging areas the Japanese scene has. The first tracks are best be listened to with headphones or very loud descent equipment. An unusual (and quiet) artist is Wono Satoru who uses turn table sound conceptual art, as painfully experimental as Haino Keji's track. Personally my favourite track by Harpy is the most normal track on the album, nicely composed pop with complex fusing rhythm. Hoppy Kamiyama I like as well, a contemporary classic piece with RIO influence, more harsh rhythms combined with very structured violins. Further we have Furudate Tetsuo who brings a environmental industrial soundscape, reminding me somewhat of 80's. Then followed by a few noise and white noise tracks and unpleasant collages. A different, still dark but TV like, DJ collage is performed by Sawada Juyoi. Perfect(ionist) madness and tempo changes we hear in the Ruins track. But over-the-top psychedelic madness could only be from the group Acid Mothers Temple. The whole idea reminds me a bit of the contemporary classical music scene in the seventies, slightly followed up side by side with free music between the fifties and seventies in Germany and some other countries. Challenging ideas were tried out, but remained much too conceptual, too new, but not creating a new area good enough to be from a non-intellectual but human level. Only 10 years later some composers like Stockhausen for instance succeeded in performances with the same ideas so well worked out that it becomes a pleasant experience no matter how strange the ideas involved. In that way, the Japanese groups remain within the 'fluxus' of conceptual parts where challenging and ground breaking effects are still rebellious are not realising a full mature sound. Globaly, also the eighties did not bring much music we still care to listen too any more. I do like new sounds and ideas a lot, but without the achievement of integrating them (-it asks too much time to assimilate them, and time is something the Japanese don't seem to have too much-) it remains an unpleasant (fragmented) area to stay in, while for the mind it seems to be opening a new area of freedom, for the soul, it involves no challenge. The emotional freedom within this direct involvement is still with some distance away.
I continued this with a small outro about the psychological effects of a fast living, in Japan, leading sometimes to some of more extreme music forms :
There seems to be an intellectualisation-transformation of 1) an unspecified pain, an unconscious frustration, reflecting a need for a higher guiding structure within a chaos, 2) of aggression leading to unlistenable music genres (noise, extreme experimental..) or towards challenging but still unpleasant areas like avant garde, victimised through a filter of a social structure that creates through the years a perverted distance from the calmness of the soul. There's a stagnation in older Japanese traditional music reinvented in a raped version where freedom of expressing this reflected only the conscious state of mind. The admiration of mostly European progressive music might be caused by the remembrance of a lost pleasant area in which it is possible to share the freedom of mind and soul. The open structure of German Krautrock, the underground social structure of the avant garde part of the 'Rock In Opposition' (RIO) group, the psychedelic music as expression of a free mind, but also the experimental sadomasochistic exaggerations of the Nurse With Wound related groups are being adapted to give these influenced expressions an extra dimension.
Contemporary classical music and free jazz are being appreciated as areas only for their intellectual freedom. Many of such groups are in a first state of growing independency. Only a minority succeed in creating a new area which is theirs only, an area of freedom in music and mind. It evolves towards a certain pleasure of belonging just there, as in a drugged state of mind slowly awaking from former nightmares of a more dependent structured evolution.
