Fujirockers: The official Fuji Rock Festival blog

Wrap-up lists are always highly subjective, but I’ve never gone to Fuji Rock and tried to see everything anyway, because with all the running around, you’d completely miss the experience, i.e. the people. And scrolling through the photos on my camera, I got pretty drunk with a lot of people and mainly remember that they were super nice, having an awesome time, and one of them might have been called Otto. So from what I do remember, here are my picks:

MY TOP 5:

CSS at the White Stage (Fri): Its hard not to love Lovefoxxx, especially when she brings it that hard. And she’s not doing it alone. This was just awesome.
Manu Chao’s secret set in the Crystal Palace (Fri): Yup, he was the “special guest.” Later, his Japanese promoter told me the last time he played Fuji Rock, he ended up in the Palace of Wonder playing guitar outside for free anyway, so they just decided to put him on the schedule. As previously noted, the staff of this blog went a little nuts.
The Naked and Famous (Sat): I had a couple linger doubts about this band after seeing them at SXSW, and they all went out the window with one of the tightest sets I’ve seen in a while by a young band. They have one great album. Let’s hope they keep it up.
The Black Angels in the Crystal Palace (Sun): Looked like I picked the wrong day to stop drinking Jack Daniels, and omygod was that surf rock?!?! Double OMG!
Chemical Brothers (Sun): Sure, we joke that they are just up there playing a DVD and secretly checking Facebook, but even if they were, they still rank among the few acts in the world that can get 20,000+ people partying at the Green Stage. And I mean that people were partying all the way in the back!

BEST SHOWS I MISSED: Continue Reading…

1. Bend your elbows and keep your hands at roughly waist level and slightly in front of you

2. Keep your wrists loose

3. Twist your hips and hop or reel from one foot to the other

4. Keep your arms loose and let them flail around

5. Improvise with any movement that feels “free”

6. Now you’re doing the Hippy Shuffle

It feels that in the past few years Fuji Rock has gotten serious about rock ‘n roll history. John Fogerty and Roxy Music last year, Faces, Mick Jones (ex-Clash) and Don Letts (influential figure in British reggae, punk and ska) with Big Audio Dynamite and others. So it doesn’t seem out of place that a Grateful Dead tribute band should play, especially given that one of the festival’s biggest stages, The Field of Heaven, is essentially for hippies, jam bands and a smattering of world music. Thus came Dark Star Orchestra, the world’s best Grateful Dead tribute band, from Chicago, Illinois, and having played more than 1900 shows. Continue Reading…

We shouldn’t forget that Fuji Rock is after all as Japanese rock festival, and that hommage will be paid to its own musical tradition. Kato Tokiko is often called Japan’s Joan Baez. As a teenager, she marched in the student protests of Japan’s tumultuous 1960s, and from the early 1970s on she has been an environmental activist. Now 67 years old, she was a highlight of the Orange Court Sunday afternoon (7.31.2011), where a loyal following swayed – the attitude was somewhere between pleasant and reverent – to her time-honored songs. Though the Joan Baez parallel is now pretty much written in stone, to me she sounded more like a Japanese Edith Piaf. She may be famous for politically oriented “folk songs”, but they feel like the piano ballads of yesteryear, and have something of the lilting bittersweet quality of the French chanson tradition. In other words, they are hardly the stuff of US 60s-style acoustic guitar folk revival. Throughout the performance, Kato was extremely gracious, addressing the crowd warmly. The weather also seemed to cooperate. All told, it was a lovely moment presided over by a lovely woman – and a legend to boot.

Okay, so now I realize that the Red Marquee light display I previously referred to as “Glo-Henge” was not only for Digitalism (see the review), it was the venue’s theme for the entire evening of mad-cap dance acts, what they call the Tribal Circus. 80Kidz had the LED batons slightly rearranged, forming a smooth arc as opposed to the staggered setup Digitalism used. Right. Who cares. The show was pumpin’.

The thing to like about 80Kidz is that their stuff sounds like DJ tracks on their records, but they are a 4-piece band in performances and can crank out the electro-jams all the same. Though they’ve done a bunch of well known remixes (MGMT, Metric, Stellastarr, etc.) and even produced a new track featuring CSS’s Lovefoxxx (check out all that on their official site), this was what you might call their “originals,” i.e. the bangers on their albums (otherwise known as the music that will make them money if you buy it). They are not jarringly original, but they are definitely fun and can rock a big room. And that’s exactly what happened Saturday night (7.30.2011).

Photo: 中島たくみ
More photos: http://fujirockexpress.net/11/4769.html

To tell the truth, Sunday noon was a little early for tap dancing. Not that Conguero Tres Hoofers were bad. They were in fact quite good. Performing nu-jazz and soul tunes to an accompaniment of dance-club style beats that are tap danced is really quite phenomenal. This project has been going a couple years now and this was their second appearance at Fuji Rock – last year’s was on the Orange Stage (and there’s a pretty good review of it here), so this at Gypsy Avalon was a lot more intimate. I just wasn’t ready for all that pounding and motion.

Photo: 横山正人
More photos: http://fujirockexpress.net/11/5142.html

Get a taste with one of their music videos after the break: Continue Reading…

I was somehow drawn to see Cornershop out of a weird curiosity based mostly on a Fatboy Slim remix of their song “Brimful of Asha” from around a dozen years ago, and also Sean’s great de-interment of the band’s weird and somehow fantastic story. And where else was I gonna hear “Norwegian Wood” with actual sitar accompaniment and sung in Hindi? Then there was the hangover, as I’ve been sticking pretty strictly to my rock’n'roll diet, so mellow, poppy rock at 6pm on Sunday at the Field of Heaven sounded like a great way to nurse my way into the evening, and Kern showed up with a paper cup of Tokyo Ale just to take the edge off. The stars were aligned, and I was actually waiting for Cornershop to go on. And then they came out as a nine-peice band. A fucking nine-peice band! Continue Reading…

The Kills are probably destined forever to be the band that wasn’t as good as the White Stripes, and that was the band that showed up today at the Green Stage. But! When I saw Tokyo-based music writer Rob Schwarz after the show, he was ecstatic, saying it was the best rock ‘n roll show he’s seen in years. All that raw, grinding power. But I should also mention that as a festival blogger, deferring to others’ opinions is a good way to stay politic and polite, or as we are now calling it rock-and-rollickly correct. Fellow Fujirocker Shawn was more of my opinion: he thought they were on too big a stage. And they ended 5 minutes early. As for me, I thought it was a set with no air in the sails by a band that took rock a little too seriously. Alison Mosshart and Jamie Hince wore all black clothes, played all black guitars, and they did it against a plain black backdrop. Even their hair was black. The guitar riffs are powerful, but they are not instant anthems (like the White Stripes), and that’s what you need to play a stadium or festival main stage when all you’ve got is two people, one guitar, one bass and a drum machine. Their songs are good – they played a good mix of the back catalogue and new material, including “Satellite” from the new album Blood Pressure – but they are seldom White Stripes great or even Black Keys good. And like I said, they ended 5 minutes early. And then their Fuji Rock was over.

Photo: 前田博史
More photos: http://fujirockexpress.net/11/5184.html

Last night’s Nu-Mark set was pretty damn Nu-riffic, though we were actually hoping it was going to be Toy-riffic (as noted earlier). Nu Mark (ex-Jurassic 5) has lately been known for outrageous DJ sets that use at least a dozen kids toys, all cheap plastic musical instruments with primitive sampling or sound-making capabilities, including a battery-powered monkey that claps two cymbals. From this YouTube video (also pasted after the break), it looks like the kind of DJ jam you don’t know whether to watch or dance to. But, venue programmer James informed me that the toys were in for repairs, and at the end of his set, Nu Mark also offered his regrets: “I promise I’ll bring the toys next time, so be prepared!” What we got instead was his legendary cut-up and scratched-up dance set, a mix of everything from 70s funk and soul up to Snoop Dogg over a cumbia beat and Amy Winehouse (actually the first memorium I’ve heard this weekend, though Medi gave a shout out and I heard that one band – update coming – covered “Rehab”). The music all had that great old school block party vibe, and at one point I caught James rapping along to an old Run DMC tune. Sure he was toy-less, but nobody was complaining. Continue Reading…

You might have seen the flags at some of the bigger shows this weekend, especially the Green and White Stages. He was at Soul Flower Union, Manu Chao and I finally caught up with him at The Kills. And he was wearing an artist wristband. Continue Reading…

Earlier on FRF blogger Shawn gave a nod to the Kimonos, suspecting an interesting outcome from an experimental one-off project between half-Japanese singer Leo Imai and Zazen boys guitarist Shutoku Mukai. For their set at Fuji Rock this afternoon (Sat, 7.30.2011) however, it did sound a lot more like an experiment. They did things I liked – on one tune, “Mogura”, Imai belted out the lyrics about a mole-like salaryman with David Byrne-like antics and intonation. And their arty math rock often felt like it was going somewhere. But other songs like “Soundtrack to Murder” and “Sports Men” were just way too predictable. The choruses got old long before the songs ran out. So lets chalk this one up as an experiment. Hopefully what comes next will be more finished.

Photo: 古川喜隆
More photos: http://fujirockexpress.net/11/4102.html

Good news ravers! Glo-sticks are back! At least they were for Digitalism, the German electro duo of Jens Moelle and İsmail Tüfekçi, who this time also brought along a drummer (whom they didn’t introduce). Is this a good time to say that this show reminded me a ton of Justice’s Red Marquee set four years ago (2007). A continental European DJ team, a big logo-shaped light set-up (Justice had the inverted cross, Digitalism three square-edged heart shapes), and house pumping electro tunes. Back to the glo-ness: in addition to the heart-shaped lights, Digitalism also had an array of around a dozen LED light strips in a rough, unevenly staggered arc across the stage. It was like a shrine of glo-sticks, a Glo-Henge if you will. When a couple of girls ran past me with glowing bracelets and a cheap plastic flashing ring, I actually thought, “If only there were more glo-sticks! This place would be a like a temple, with all the little glo-sticks of the audience worshiping the big glo-sticks up there!” YEAH! THIS WAS GONNA BE COOL! Continue Reading…

A couple other Fujirock.com bloggers keep saying that The Naked and Famous are just ripping off MGMT, and that’s a total load of crap. Are the two bands similar? Sure. Derivative? No way. Does “Punching in a Dream” sound like “Kids”? Are you serious? Can you ask that question after actually listening to the songs? Or are you just saying shit because you like the sound of your own voice?

N+F does have some great, catchy synth hooks and a brilliant pop sensibility. They do sing about a more personal universe and a sense of unempowerment (”Passive Me, Agressive You”, “Punching in a Dream” and so on). And I fully expect that “Young Blood”, their big hit with which they ended the set, will some day end up in a Volkswagon commercial for its great carefree affirmative chorus of “Yay-yay-yay-yay”. But N+F are also not afraid to get genuinely noisy, as in “Frayed” which rocked so hard and furiously in a sort of post-rock mien of wailing guitars that I have a whole new appreciation for the tune after seeing it live. And if anything, “The Sun” reminds me of the great synth riffs of the French band Air from its album Moon Safari. Continue Reading…

Friday night, CSS frontwoman Lovefoxxx threw down for the most intense performance by a female singer at Fuji Rock since Karen O similarly destroyed the White Stage in 2006. We all know her band CSS (Cansei de Ser Sexy) is awesome, and that she doesn’t separate herself out from the rest in any way. But man, did she/they fuckin kill it!!!!

There were just so many awesome things about this show, not least of which is the awesome trashy, DIY approach to everything, from blogging about landing in Narita to how they’re handmaking linoleum print posters for their upcoming European tour. Continue Reading…

Amadou & Mariam’s set Friday afternoon at Field of Heaven was lush, full-bodied and backed up by a sizable band that kept the love flowing out in waves (check Phil’s great review). The blind Malian couple’s performance in the much more intimate Crystal Palace Tent at 11:45 last night was however very different. They completely shed the band and played as a duo, Mariam singing and clapping as Amadou sang and played the guitar. It was spare, soulful and – especially in comparison to the earlier gig – almost ethnographic. But even though the Crystal Palace is almost designed for explosions of hotfoot hoofin’ (and that would come later on when Amadou & Mariam’s producer Manu Chao appeared with his band, and then again with fellow Spaniard rockers Obrint Pas) the crowd was rapt and attentive. It was wonderful and tender presentation of West African blues, and even if its a bit different from the more standard and produced big sound of their records and standard festival set, it also felt very real and alive – like they were just sitting down to play some phenomenal music, and they could do this any time they wanted to.

Photo: 前田博史
More photos: http://fujirockexpress.net/11/3572.html

It didn’t take long. When Soul Flower Union took the stage on the festival’s first day just before 1pm, frontman Takashi Nakagawa was wearing a t-shirt that read “Nuclear Power? No Thanks!” with the words in the shape of a hippied up skull. He wasn’t preachy or prosletyzing, but the statement was there. Then about an hour later and just up the hill at Gypsy Avalon, Taiwanese folk singer Lin Sheng-xiang also took up the “no nuke” cry (more here).

SFU’s set, incidentally, was a blast. Their music is a strange and probably unchartable fusion of ska, ska-punk, Grateful Dead-style hippie music and various local Japanese strains, and their weird bent for Celtic rhythms, marches and fight songs leaves no wonder that they are often called The Pogues of Japan. But if all this music has one thing in common, it’s all happy. A devoted following was dancing and singing along with their hands in the air. It was a great way to start the festival.

A Taiwanese promoter has brought three Taiwanese bands to this year’s Fuji Rock under the theme “Rock Together”, and we’re viewing this as a good thing. It’s also a chance to get free towels and t-shirts! Look for them at upcoming gigs by Taiwanese bands.

Taiwanese bands @ FRF 2011:
Sugar Plum Ferry @ Gypsy Avalon 7/30 (Sat) 12:15
Silverbus @ Gypsy Avalon 7/31 (Sun) 18:00

Though Taiwan’s Lin Sheng-xiang has been playing with two Japanese musicians – bass player Toru Hayakawa and guitarist Ken Ohtake – for more than two years, this was his first ever gig in Japan. It came as part of a Taiwan initiative at this year’s Fuji Rock put together by a Taipei live house and promotional group, The Wall Music, which has Taiwanese bands playing on the Gypsy Avalon stage today, tomorrow and Sunday. During the shows, the Taiwanese promoters will be handing out towels, t-shirts and flyers under the banner “Rock Together,” which means more than just music – earlier this year Taiwan’s rock circles reacted to Japan’s earthquake and tsunami with a real degree of solidarity, holding concerts, raising money and using themes like “You are not alone.” Rock ‘n roll aside, Taiwan was one of the largest international sources of personal donations for Japanese disaster relief. For the current mission of musical exchange (which is bankrolled by Taiwan’s government), which is getting coverage from the Taiwan news station TVBS and one Japanese TV station, Lin Sheng-xiang could not have been a better ambassador. Continue Reading…

Are they pop punk or nu-metal? If you find yourself asking this question, the answer probably doesn’t even matter, because you’re already thinking that this is just music for dumb guys in high school to lift weights to. Or fix muscle cars. Or get trapped into an unwanted pregnancies with girls named Marylou. Continue Reading…

If you’ve never seen Manu Chao live, the thing to realize is that while you will get the same songs with some of the sweetest, golden-hearted melodies in global pop, songs that you’ve heard even if you’ve never procured any of his music because they infected the entire world around a decade ago with the album Próxima Estación: Esperanza (2001), but when he’s live Chao knows there’s an audience in front of him and, more than that, that every live show should be a party. Continue Reading…

Last year the cheapest beer at Fuji Rock cost 600 yen, a cocktail in a plastic cup was a little more, and a plate or bowl of food from a vendor was generally in the 500 to 800 yen range. Keep in mind, you’re not allowed to bring in outside food and beverages, and there are some cursory bag checks at the main entrance.

Next, what to bring? I’ve checked back through the Fujirockers archive, and here are our top recommendations: Continue Reading…

Japanese fans may have heard of Taiwan’s Sugar Plum Ferry for accompanying Mono on a tour through mainland China in 2009, and any associations with Japan’s top name in post-rock will surely not be mislaid. Both bands helped usher in the genre to their respective countries, both have become more or less the definitive post-rock groups for their national scene, and both started around the same time – Mono in 1999 and Sugar Plum Ferry in 1997. Being in Taiwan, SPF’s avenues for international exposure have been relatively limited, but their home scene in Taipei always knew they were something of a powerhouse waiting to happen. In the last couple years they’ve played New York’s CMJ festival and Canadian Music Week in Toronto, and now they’re making their Japan debut at Fuji Rock!

The lineup has shifted just slightly over the last dozen years, but Fujirockers was happy enough to do an email interview with two members. Xiao-bai, who goes by the stage name Insecteens, is a guitarist and founding member who is responsible in a big way for not just the sound of Sugar Plum Ferry, but also of Taiwanese post-rock, as his side projects have constantly been in the fore of Taipei’s instrumental music scene. Guitarist and synth player Su is a later addition to the band, but no less a key member of the current lineup. The ensemble is rounded out by bass player Leaf Lee and drummer John Wu. Here’s what they had to say about the history of post-rock in Taiwan and what Japanese fans can look forward to in late-July and early August.

Q: I heard your first CD, Lack of Something, sells for a lot of money in online auctions. I have a copy and it is signed by the drummer at that time, Yoz. How much do you think I can I sell it for? Continue Reading…

Fuji Rock has always been friendly to activists, but it has tended to shy from outright politics. The Fukushima nuclear meltdown however could provide a real rallying cause for Fujirockers, and if a movement is to be had, Taiwanese folk singer Lin Sheng-xiang will most certainly be lending his voice. Lin, who’ll play Gypsy Avalon as “Sheng Xiang & the Band,” is a multiple award-winning musician who has played folk festivals around the world, but he is also a pro-labor, anti-globalization activist who raises pigs in a farming community in southern Taiwan when he’s not off gigging somewhere. Long before Fukushima, he was protesting the construction of Taiwan’s fourth nuclear power plant (which is by some accounts scheduled to go online by the end of 2011), and he has recently been chanting down nuclear power with Japanese guitarist Ken Ohtake (大竹研), with whom he’s been playing since at least 2006 and will likely be part of “the band.”

Hopefully Ohtake will help interpret a bit. Though Lin speaks passable English, he mostly sings in Hakka, a Chinese dialect of a minority ethnic group of southern China. While the melodies are beautiful, the music unique and the songs often rousing, a few timely introductions will certainly make the tunes more poignant. Continue Reading…

A few days ago while eating a late night sandwich, I was assured by the guitarist in a Taiwanese post-rock band, Su, who was DJing at the time, that the “Taiwanese bands” at Fuji Rock would be announced on July 1. So I stayed up late, thinking “Taiwanese bands?” Is there really a plural there? There’s never been more than one Taiwanese group at Fuji Rock before, and now, on the freshly released web page of the Japanese site, there are three: Sheng Xiang & the Band, Sugar Plum Ferry and Silverbus. All are playing at Gypsy Avalon, where post-rock at noontime will definitely be an experiment.

The bigger news is that band lists for Fuji Rock’s seven smaller stages are now out and more or less finalized. These are the lineups for the little hippie field (Gypsy Avalon), the competition stage for young bands (Rookie-A-Go-Go), the little performance area in the middle of the woods on the boardwalk between the White Stage and Orange Court (Boardwalk Stage), the food court area stage (Naeba Shudoku), a daytime cabaret in a cleverly converted shed (Cabaret de Paris – last year it was called Cabaret Fiesta), and the Pyramid Garden (a rather mysterious stage that, like the evil fortress in Krull, disappears at sunset and appears in a new location each dawn). There are also a few additions to Daydreaming, which is a late morning/early afternoon DJ stage at the top of a mountain a 20-minute gondola ride from the rest of Fuji Rock (and there is definitely a pretty good reason for why it’s so far away).

Check the additions here: http://www.fujirockfestival.com/artist/

Last September, Keiran Hebden announced on the Four Tet blog: “I’m playing at Fabric in Room 1 on Friday and it’s a big lineup with Joe Goddard from Hot Chip, Jamie xx, SBTRKT and loads of other great acts.” Sounds suspiciously like Friday’s post-midnight lineup at the Red Marquee. Just throwing this out there: the night totally meshed and someone from Smash UK was present?

Now the next question is, how is it that a once abstract or “folktronic” musician like Four Tet – the DJ name of London native Keiran Hebden – is now playing London’s most famous dance club? Even if you’ve never been to London, you know the Fabric Live series of DJ mixes, a roster of full-on party pumpers: Goldie, LTJ Bukem, Diplo, Toddla T, A-Trak, etc, etc. But Four Tet started out in the early noughties as one of the first wave of laptop pop, a variant of indie pop or twee, which was basically electronic music for indie music geeks who are exactly the type of people who don’t go to clubs like Fabric. Hebden, who started out in a post-rock band and did his first remix for Aphex Twin, was making music in organic live mixes using non-timeline-based software. He attributed loose compositional structure and glitchy, erratic beats to “jazz influences”, which was probably a lot more acceptable than saying Karl-Heinz Stockhausen or John Cage. OK, that’s just a guess, but I think you get where the music was coming from. It was electronic music for people who listened to the Magnetic Fields or Velocity Girl or Lisa Loeb or sat on the floor at gigs of their favorite post-rock band (and also quite likely for a certain poofter named Kern). He was way more of a sound artist than a master of the decks. One really doubts he’s ever been called a “playa,” a “mack” or a one-man wrecking crew on the wheels of steel.

Continue Reading…

Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra (a.k.a. Ska Para or TSPO) has been playing Fuji Rock’s Green Stage since at least 1999, so the now 9-piece, ska-gone-mainstream, party-on-a-stage-in-matching-suits supergroup is no surprise as the second headliner on Saturday night. A much less familiar Green Stage selection is Dad Mom God, which will presumably be playing sometime Friday afternoon or maybe even late morning. The band is led by former TSPO saxophone player Tatsuyuki Hiyamuta, who two years ago teamed up with other J-rock scene veterans Junji Ikehata (Rock n Roll Gypsies), Masaki Mori (Ego-Wrappin’) and Dub Zombi (SOIL & “PIMP” SESSIONS – Sunday night in the Red Marquee). The result is a back-to-the-juke-joint sound and an infusion of at least scuzz rock with touches of oldschool ska-punk. Kemuri is not playing the festival this year, so for fans that are jonesing to get their skank on, these two bands will be pulling top honors.

A SHORT HISTORY OF JAPANESE SKA
(Well, at least as far as Fuji Rock is concerned)

Ska of course originated in Jamaica in the 1960s, and its legacy is long and winding. Japan’s ska wave dates to the 80s and 90s, with TSPO and another regular Fuji Rock act, Ska Flames, both founded in 1989 and laying a foundation of sorts for the scene. There’s a bit of a back story though, and more than a few tie-ins to this festival. Enter Gaz Mayall. Continue Reading…