| #604 |
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2002 |
Perilous 604 Perilous In Japan Part 3 Maybe at the end of the last Perilous I gave you impression that Japan can be unfriendly at times. If that’s so then it’s a wrong impression. I think that for some people Japan can be quite a hostile unwelcoming place – the Japanese are quite reserved and the upfront, American way of doing business will certainly earn you no friends. Similarly if you bring your Western ideals with you then you’ll miss some of the best things about Japan. Musically it is a thriving world of micro-scenes supported by networks of intensely specialist record stores and disturbingly knowledgeable punters. Disturbing because not only do they know artists and tracks by name they know the catalogue numbers. Obsessive about detail this extends far beyond just music. Visual art flourishes and there were some incredible gallery spaces in some equally amazingly designed buildings. In a gallery in suburban Osaka I was fortunate enough to catch a major exhibition, I Don’t Mind If You Forget Me, by the Berlin-based Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara. Maybe you caught some of his work at the Neo Tokyo exhibiton at the MCA in Sydney earlier in the year – this exhibiton in Osaka was enormous covering his most recent works since 2000. Nara’s work reminds me in a strange way of Boards Of Canada – except he is far more into The Ramones. Sinister children, damaged children, lost childhoods are themes that run through Nara’s sketches and his sculpture works. The two standout works of this exhibition were the extremely mournful Fountain of Life – child-like heads piled in larger than life cup and saucer continuously weeping; and the title work with each letter of the title filled with dolls of his most famous characters and sketches brought ot life by fans who had been asked to make cloth replicas and send them to Nara. You can check out some Nara’s work on the web at http://www.happyhour.jp/ Returning to Sydney with a bag full of goodies, everything felt so quiet and small-scale in comparison. Nevertheless I’m back into the swing of things again with some exciting new projects including a new magazine – the relaunched Cyclic Defrost – coming soon. Musically there’s some great releases out at the moment and many that I’ve failed to cover in the last two self-indulgent travel columns. Firstly, the Hefty label in Chicago has put out a stunning double CD compilation called Immediate Action which is partly a label retrospective and partly a collection of a special series of vinyl releases featuring remixes and work by some of their key artists. Savath & Savalas aka Prefuse 73 aka Delarosa & Asora features prominently as does Telefon Tel Aviv ad the hip hop cut ups of Beneath Autumn Sky and others with sounds on a jazzy/glitchy/postrock/IDM tip. Also from Hefty is the superb set of Phil Ranelin remixes. This is a collection of remixes of Phil Ranelin’s jazz/funk work in the mid 70s by El-P, Prefuse 73, Jan Jelinek, Morgan Geist, Kirk Degorgio. The variety of sound is astonishing and this has to be one of the best remix collection in a long time. Although not one of the best remixes on the album, Morgan Geist surprised me by delivering a very jazz remix complete with ‘real’ drums rather than the techno-house you would expect. Also highly recommended as a compilation is the Rough Trade Electronic collection. Two CDs covering all bases and several decades beautifully. John Cage rubs up agains late 70s noisemaker Non; Human League and New Orders grimey 586; Aphex Twin in spastic mode; new electropop from Fischerspooner, Matmos, Kraftwerk, Aux88, Kraitrockers Faust and Can, and a fantasticly futuristic advertisement recording by Raymond Scott for a headache remedy from 1967. Frigid’s got Mark N and Adelaide’s icy cold Frost playing live on Sunday May 19 and then it’s the second Deepchild CD launch on May 26. Get on the email mailing list. Learn more. Find out sooner. www.snarl.org Yellow Peril  Goto
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