Fujirockers: The official Fuji Rock Festival blog

Mallacan: if you’re from northeast Spain, the Aragón, you may not know this band. So think of them as the Aragonese version of Sublime, seven guys in black t-shirts cranking out hardcore guitar riffs, reggae backbeats and dancey horn parts, all while throwing an occasional devil horns hand symbol out to the crowd. As Aragón perceives itself as somewhat autonomous (not unlike neighboring Catalan), there was even someone in the crowd flying an Aragonese flag – red and yellow stripes with a red star in the center. Do they rock? Definitely. And apparently they’ve been proving this across Europe for 15 years. But this was a first landing in Japan, and they provided a Sunday afternoon with plenty of bounce. If you didn’t feel it, the MC was even screaming, “Jump! Jump! Jump! Jump!”

Not that many people showed up for Sandii Suzuki’s collaborative performance with the kalimba player Bun of Koh-Tao and the Te Hive Hui No Manumere Dancers, which I believe are from her hula dancing school. Sandii’s evolution from 1980s bilingual rock singer to world music maven to award-winning hula dancer provides her with plenty of outlets for her creativity, and the show at the Orange Court was publicized as being “Earth Conscious.” Continue Reading…

Despite garnering high praise internationally, Quasimode drew only a few hundred fans to Orange Court for their Sunday evening performance. Unfortunately, the gents were slotted at the exact same time as LCD Soundsystem (White Stage) and Hot Chip (Red Marquee) and a mere 50 minutes before the local debut of Atoms For Peace on the Green Stage. All of which likely deterred many from making the long hike to Orange Court.
Continue Reading…

Imagine the moonwalk, but sideways. That’s the dance of the guitarist from Moriarty. It looks like his legs are made of rubber, and he’s doing the OK Go video for Here It Goes Again without the treadmill. That’s the single greatest dance move I’ve ever seen, and gave me a kind of male crush.
The other stunning thing about Moriarty is the singer’s voice. It reminded me of Hope Sandoval of Mazzy Star. If there were trophies for Fuji Rock, she’d own the Best Singer cup. That’s an idea that Smash might like to consider. For the finale each Sunday night, they could present cups to the best guitarist (Vato Negro I suppose) and drummer (the bloke behind John Fogerty) and dancer (see above). And Mrs Moriarty for best singer. Haunting. That’s a cheesy, obvious word, but her voice was haunting.
The first tune I heard when i turned up late was a country tune about buffalo roaming. I love country music. Even songs about buffalo roaming. From French people. I wonder how you can grow up in France and end up singing songs about buffalo. They also sing a song called “I want a robot”, which wasn’t very country, but did have a chorus that involved the crowd yelling “roboto hoshi” back. I assume this wasn’t written in Japanese, but surely not every language has words that fit.
Moriarty made the most effort to speak in Japanese. They’d memorized a surprising amount, and had sheets with notes on for the rest. The crowd was loving it.
Musically, Moriarty go uptempo, with the guitarist rocking out, and they go super mellow, which suits the singer, but it’s the straight country stuff that tickled me.

Despite the heavy rain and mud underfoot, many at the Orange Court watching the Dirty Projectors were beaming, inspired by the three-part harmonies by the three female vocalists in the band. Compared to the other 4/4  rock-based music taking place on other stages throughout the day, this band packed some diversity completed with a line-up that you would think would play in a church rather than a rock stage.

And therein lie their beauty, a wonderful warm song led by by Dave Longstreth with Amber Coffman on vocals and guitar, Angel Deradoorian on keyboard and vocals, along with Brian McOmber on drums and Nat Baldwin (bass), and yes, another back-up singer in Haley Dekle.

The band when through their latest album including tracks from their EP with Bjork, Mt

Wittenburg Orca. In case you didn’t know it, the band has a fond affection for Orca’s, and some of the sounds or noises on this album is meant to imitate this wonderful album.

There  were other hits performed during this day, and when Longstreith took a breather and looked out over the audience, he commented that all of the colorful ponchos made the audience look like a “ de-sychronized rainbow, or like vomit, but only pretty.”

This analogy also applies to the band as well, and in the hands of lesser musicians, it may have been a mess, but today it was really quite wonderful.

It’s sparse but very groovin’ here at Orange Court right now. The rain has stopped and Haitian chanteuse Emeline Michel is serenading an appreciative audience in sultry French with a conga drum rhythm and a guy on like a 25 string bass.

She moves from ultra silky from the heart odes to up eat Haitian dance rhythms with ease. Long red dress and cornrows and hips all over the place. The crowd is making deep mud pits in the area in front of the stage from dancing and clapping. I’ve got a big smile on my face. I don’t think it’s as big as the beautiful Emeline’s right now.

The Fujirocker chief carefully plans a schedule for the bloggers, sending us all around the festival, making sure we cover most of the bands and see the acts we like. I was scheduled for La Ruda at the Orange Court, but accidentally went in the wrong direction and watched John Fogerty instead. When I got there, I found the rest of the team, presumably doing much the same. I’m posting this picture by way of grassing up all the beardy weirdies that I have to work with to show it wasn’t just me neglecting my duties.

If you want to know what Fogerty was like, look for Phil’s report later. But for me, this was the gig of the festival so far. Fogerty is that kind of legend that adds an extra dimension to a show just by standing there. His banter to the crowd, which amounted to saying “How y’all doing” three times, is perfectly OK here because we just want him to play. This is a man with SO many massive songs to his name that you’re not hanging out for that one big hit (see MGMT later) but knowing that every tune might be a monster. All of which only goes to prove how clever I am for telling fellow Fujirocker Jeff that Proud Mary was certain to be the set closer, which it was. I’m burning hot with predictions this weekend. It’s one of my favourite tunes ever, though that’s partly because Ike & Tina Turner an insanely good version of it, but hearing it from Fogerty was magical. The guy must be about 260 years old by now, but he doesn’t look it or sing like it, and he’s outdone every young punk I saw so far this weekend. This was one of those gigs I won’t forget.

La Ruda were probably great too. If you were there, post your review in the comments please.

Big tunes: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Hillbillies in plaid shirts: ★ ★
Dance in the mud ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Christian Vander has been doing this for a long time. The 62-year-old French drummer brought his legendary prog rock band Magma to the Orange Court Friday night for a set of compositional jams that were majestic, spacey and heavily atmospheric. This was music from an era when it was still cool to say you were channeling sounds from outer space, when the promised land lay somewhere beyond Pluto, and when aliens were supposed to be wise, magnanimous beings. Vander, who’s classically trained, has in fact gotten in to some of that, but he’s also gotten into a huge range of music from 20th century classical to all sorts of jazz and rock. This night he was as usual at his rock drum kit at center stage, and seven others surrounded him, including female backup singers, electric organs, one male singer and a very eerie xylophone. (I actually expecting them to pull out a theramin or a real space music instrument, but no one ever did.) The singers would occasionally come to the front of the stage when they had featured parts, and when they were done, they’d return to the wings. It was wonderfully democratic, and also very Age of Aquarius. Vander had a big smile on his face the whole time, and I have to say he seems like a man who knows how to enjoy life, and his music – notwithstanding the galactic overtones – surely reflects that.

…fucking, fucking, fucking in heaven

This set was so good and people were so primed to party, it didn’t matter that there was no Warren Fischer and it didn’t matter that we were all dancing in the mud. The rain had stopped and it was all good, and as you’ll read in Dom’s account of the rest of the evening, it didn’t slow down a step until God turned the lights on. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. For this set, it was just Casey Spooner and Detroit DJ Laura Flax rocking the tunes and pumping the fun. Spooner, in a spangly shirt, may not have even touched the musical equipment once – Flax was more than capable – but he sure did cheerlead up a storm. As “Infidels of the World Unite” was coming on, he was chirping like a gay canary: “I love this song!” Then, pointing to the crowd, “Hey! I can see you! I can see everyone of you! Work it out motherfuckers!” As “Emerge” was fading in, he ravished, “Do you know this song? I never know. It’s so old!” So if you a questions about whether or not they played their hits, that’s pretty much answered by now. And for those readers less versed in the art of subtlety: hell yeah they played their hits. It was awesome!

Here’s a photo of Casey Spooner.

I arrived at All Night Fuji just as Green Velvet was taking over the decks. Some in the crowd expressed their disappointment that he was not to be playing live, but I found no such disdain. As I predicted in my preview piuece, his style was tonight much more tripped out than the house that made him famous. Sandwiched between Ken Ishii and Denki Groover Takkyu Ishino, it’s no surprise that he saw fit to adjust his style to fit the moment. The sign of a good DJ is in my opinion the ability to read the crowd and adapt to what they want, whether that be a track by track decision, or a stylistic one before a beat has been played. Continue Reading…

I finally got to see the act that everybody’s been talking about. The Narasirato Pan Pipers of the Solomon Islands did their “formal” show at the Orange Court during lunchtime on Saturday under an overcast sky and in front of lively, good-sized crowd. By formal we mean they wore their native duds, which nevertheless looked improvised for modesty’s sake. Very happy to be here, they danced and piped and sang with enough energy to light the festival ground, though they still seem to have a way to go before they master stage protocol. Continue Reading…

As soon as the roadies started tuning up I knew this would be a great show. I’d never heard of the band(s) before, but you know how an odd name can grab your attention (and vice versa – it took me a very long time before I checked out Vampire Weekend simply because they sounded like a Rocky Horror tribute act).
Anyway Conguero Whatnot’s roadies were so enthusiastic about their job that I genuinely thought the main show had started. In fact, I’d noted that the band should learn to make more of an entrance, since the show just seemed to peter in. There was a guy dancing on what appeared to be a board of wood with mics, and half a dozen others, putting together a tight soul-jazz sound. Then they took off and I thought “cheeky bastards – that was only about 20 minutes”.
The Conguero Etc came on. I’m not sure if they knew it or not, but their first tune was Stairway to Heaven, only nu-jazz style, with Japanese lyrics.
The second tune was a soul-jazz groove that very nearly had me out of my chair.
The third began with some wah wah funk and I was up dancing.
The real band also had a guy jumping about on a plank. Possibly the same guy that the roadies had. He was dancing furiously, but each time his feet landed, he made a beat. To keep this going, even doing breakbeats by jumping, is mind-boggling and very cool to watch. It reminded me of those A-Seed guys near the entrance pedaling bicycles to power a speaker – only much better, obviously.

Roadies ★ ★ ★ ★
Band ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Seatability ★ ★ ★

Zappa is the other end of virtuosity from toe. Or maybe that’s Yes I’m thinking of. Or maybe they form a triangulation. I don’t know.

From afar Dweezil and his band can fool you into thinking they’re just laconically going through the motions. But step into the sweet spot and you can feel the giant shit-eating smirk in every note they play and sing. Ben Thomas sings Frank’s ridonkulous lyrics with total dedication. Give him a line like “guacamole green”, which he had to repeat twice, slowly and clearly, during a lull in the music, and he’ll point at a general location in the audience (takes too much commitment to pick out one person) and give a wink and a nod like, “Yeah, I just said that. I did.”

Even the way drummer Joe Travers was hitting his toms made me laugh. Dweezil is doing exactly the right thing with his life right now: the spirit of Frank is present wherever they go, even if they couldn’t project his image on a screen at this show.

Continue Reading…

Well the others have summed it up pretty succinctly, I think. Not much more to say, other than don’t listen to anyone on what you should like.

But we don’t go for the music. Nope. If it were the music we went to see, then we’d shell out like the rest of you do. Then we could actually relax and enjoy said music. I remember a few years beck, our esteemed leader commented that he was having a near perfect weekend, catching up with old friends, and if only the bands would shut the fuck up and give them some peace it would have been truly perfect! Continue Reading…

It goes without saying Fuji Rock presents some serious logistical challenges to those people that want to see all their favorite bands, but my first recommendation for folks is something like this: go zen. Continue Reading…

Whether it’s late night at the Orange Court or regular Red Marquee revelry, Fujirock has you covered for DJs. Headliners like Rusko, Z-Trip, Ken Ishii and Riva Star will deliver the goods like they always do, but dig a little deeper into the lineup and you’ll find even more choice selectors.

This year has quite a handful of DJs plucked from bands in the lineup: Alexis Taylor from Hot Chip and James Murphy from LCD Sound System play back-to-back sets at the Red Marquee Sunday night. Both should be stellar, but Murphy’s will be a must-see. Check out his label’s mix series for a primer.

Now dig even deeper and we arrive at the Palace of Wonder, where some of the best spinning takes place every year…

Continue Reading…

Admittedly, when deciding what “new” (for me, at least) local acts to check out I usually make my decision based solely on their name.  If I come across a Japanese band with a really cool or interesting moniker, I try to see what they are all about.  More often than not, this system yields pretty good results.  At FRF’ 09 it led me to Gypsy Avalon to watch the highly entertaining →Pia-no-jaC←.  The duo’s set turned out to be one of the best performances I caught all weekend long. Continue Reading…

Like a lot of house (and other dance music) producers, a lot more of you will know Green Velvet’s music more than those of you who will know his name. Alter ego of Curtis Jones, who has been DJing and producing tracks since the early 90s, Green Velvet’s earlier music had a definite 1980s flavour to it. Big on beats, but far from big beat, the sounds here hark back to Kraftwerk for me. These were tracks that had us on the dancefloor throughout the 90s, sloshing drinks around to the displeasure of all present. Continue Reading…

I’m pretty excited about Ozomatli and Beardyman X Tucker at the Crystal Palace, but there’s one band that would have fitted in brilliantly at the little spiegeltent: La Ruda. The French ska punks have the kind of swinging sound that seems to me would work better in a tight little venue with strangers banging into you, rather than the Orange Court, where there’s usually a little more decorum.
As Phil wrote, they’d also do well at a Cafe de Paris, were there to be a second coming of the little French mud tent. Let’s hope so.
For those that can’t get to Fuji Rock, La Ruda are also out on an unusual tour of Japan, skipping Osaka and Nagoya, and heading instead to Miyagi, Iwate and a second spot, to be announced, somewhere in Niigata on the Monday. Check their Myspace for more.

A few weeks ago, apropos of nothing at all, I got an email from my friend Sarah in Chicago: “I volunteered at Summer Camp Music Festival last weekend. Dweezil plays Frank was soooooooooooo good. Best show that I saw.”

Me and Sars have been discussing and sharing music for nigh unto two decades now, and neither of us has ever ventured much into Zappa territory. She’s a musician who’s always had a keen ear for performance and composition, so I asked her what she liked so much about it, both because I wanted some fresh insight into Zappa from a trusted source and because I thought I could trick her into writing a blog post for me. Boy, did I ever! This is what she said about the show:

“I had heard through my Frank Zappa aficionado friend that the music of Zappa Plays Zappa shows is Continue Reading…

Ito Fumio is no stranger to Fuji Rock. Formerly the frontman for Tokyo ska punks Kemuri, together he and the band performed at the festival six times (1998, 2000, 2001, 2003, 2004, 2007) before going their separate ways at the end of 2007.

Fumio issued his debut solo release, “Midage Riot,” last October.  Poking fun at his elder statesman stature in the Japanese punk scene with its title, the disc mixes elements of ska, swing, and pop.  A pretty laidback affair, Fumio’s new tunes should be well suited for the Sunday afternoon Orange Court crowd.

Continue Reading…

We like to think that the Orange Court was so named because of all the Fuji stages it complements the sunset to the best effect. Of course, you can’t always guarantee clear skies at Fuji, but when there are, dusk doesn’t get any nicer than at that end of Naeba. So we were quite pleased to see that Sandii Suzuki is in the penultimate slot at the Orange Court Sunday evening. In the 80s, after all, she was the leader of a rock band called Sandii and the Sunsetz.

With albums produced by YMO’s Haruomi Hosono, a cult following in Europe and even a top ten single in Australia, the Sunsetz were one of those rare Japanese bands that made it on their own terms outside of the archipelago, thanks mainly to Sandii’s cosmopolitanism. She spent her teen years in Hawaii, where she not only absorbed American rock but studied hula dancing. After she disbanded the Sunsetz in the early 90s she became Japan’s leading world music maven, recording reggae and Polynesian songs, an album of Malaysian music, and dabbled convincingly in dancehall, Singapore hip-hop, Indonesian pop and Japanese-style chanson. Continue Reading…

Their instruments are made of bamboo and tree bark. They save the teeth of their ancestors. They still use shells for money. The Narasirato Pan Pipers are not your typical Fujirock band, to be sure, and certainly the easiest act to spot in a crowd, but when they take to the stage at Orange Court next month, the promoters at Smash can proudly check off the “World Music” box from their to-do list. Dressed in traditional clothing and body paint, the Pipers will certainly draw a crowd, and when they play, feet will definitely start moving. But hopefully those in attendance will also be reminded of what the word “tribal” truly meant before it was co-opted by the club scene and tattoo parlors.

Continue Reading…

After the washout that turned Orange Court into a quagmire on the first day of Fuji Rock last year, All Night Fuji was unfortunately cancelled. Get in early this year to be sure you don’t miss out!

In the wake of that washout, which saw us miss out on Ken Ishii and Towa Tei amongst others, DJ Bryan Burton-Lewis (pictured) organised the smoking party “All Night Fuji Revenge” at ageHa the following September, seeing many of the original lineup and a bevvy more perform at the superclub. This year, they’re getting in early, you know, just in case, and have organised Road To Fuji Rock 10 All Night Fuji Pre Party for about a month before FRF10, June 26th to be exact. This pre party, again at ageHa, will feature a host of FRF performers past and present, both live performers and DJs, including the ever popular Dexpistols slated to play this year on the Saturday, De De Mouse (who was a popular choice on the White Stage for the staff here at Fujirock.com in 2009), Ryukyudisco, Germany’s Pitchtuner, organiser Bryan Burton-Lewis will play a set, and more. Continue Reading…

Though I admired the Dirty Projectors’ much-lauded latest album, Bitte Orca, more than I enjoyed it, I decided to check out their first-ever show in Tokyo last March at Club Quattro. I was surprised at the turnout. Despite the hefty amount of press the band had received overseas, the place was hardly sold out, but it was a healthier crowd than what I had been led to believe it would be from the promoter. Continue Reading…