Fujirockers: The official Fuji Rock Festival blog

MY SKETCH OF THE BROS SWIMMING UPSTREAM

Tom and Ed on Facebook have nearly a million friends. For 20 years the duo has been building a “Chemmunity” of trip-hopping, break beating, alternative house heads, taking listeners “Further” (2010) upstream electronically, like dancing Salmon. Visually, too, with a “light show that put U2 to shame,” the Brothers’ brother/sisterhood pulses strong, even with audience numbers in the tens of thousands at nearly back-to-back festival dates worldwide, all summer long.

Hopefully the duo can bring the same energy to Fuji Rock as they brought to their record-setting headlining appearance at Glastonbury last week. The lasers overhead, projections of neon pink elephants, freaky sad clowns, and a hundred blinking eyeballs assist audience members’ visual and spatial disorientation experience while dancing into oblivion. Don’t be ashamed to proclaim like their 2007 album says, “We Are the Night!” And remember your glow sticks.

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MY SKETCH OF SBTRKT AT THE HELM

UK-based Young Turks record label, also featuring Gil Scott-Heron and Jamie XX, is bringing bass wildfires, ethereal attitude lifestyle, some stars (to gaze at in your mind, don’t forget the Red Marquee is Fuji Rock’s only stage “inside”), and anonymity mystique to the Red Marquee’s Planet Groove session Friday night by way of London-based producer-on-the-rise, SBTRKT.

You might want to wear your mask, too, otherwise risking ostracizing awkwardness via the DJ booth as SBTRKT goes straight for your ears with laser sound knob-turning deliciousness and otherwise disorienting sound beatitudes.  (He always wears a mute-expression tribal mask with long threads of what look like woven dried rice stalks trailing down into his synth pads, Macbook, Kaossilator, and whatever other gadgets he may be playing with on any given Sunday, err, Friday.)

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Green Velvet aka Curtus Jones

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…

Alexander Ridha a.k.a. Boysnoize

After the trademark which was established by his remixes for Justice, Tiga, Bloc Party…etc and his debut album“Oi Oi Oi”, Boys Noize brought us a totally different atmosphere with the 2nd album “Power”. Somehow it’s just like a revolution that kicks all the mainstream Electro’asses. I’m not saying Boys Noize is a genius or what, but I’m saying he is always making his attitude. When you hear it, you’ll know that it is the Noize of da German Boy.
-Please also check BOYS NOIZE: Diplo gives a rare thumbs up by Dave.

憑藉先前的幾首混音與首張專輯Oi Oi Oi，07年Boys Noize迅速崛起。不過，或許就像牌桌上有新手運，玩久了才見真章一樣，09年第二張專輯在發行前就被視為是真正一窺其實力的作品。 Continue Reading…

Each year I add a day to my Japan visit to travel around Tokyo, usually visiting Roppongi’s Mori Art Museum where I’ve seen everything from retrospectives of contemporary Chinese artists like Ai Wei-Wei to a 30th Anniversary Hello Kitty exhibit featuring a contribution by Sonic Youth. It was during one of these visits that I first cam across Chris Cunningham who is one of the latest additions to Fuji line-up.

I stumbled upon Cunningham’s “Rubber Johnny” DVD in the Mori gift shop, a short horror themed flick filmed entirely with a DV camera’s night vision setting and a character seemingly composed of nylon hosiery stuffed with cotton wadding. And now, this little figure, along with 3 simultaneous projection screens and a live soundtrack will be gracing the Saturday’s Green Stage, and I’m guessing here, but probably right after Roxy Music.

Cunningham not only has art-world cred but quite a track record of producing videos for top artists like Portishead, Bjork, and even Madonna. He took a hiatus from this lucrative video work to learn music production fulltime in 2004 & 2005, emerging at the end with a 45 minute audio-visual piece performance at Electraglide in Tokyo. The show went over so well that he’s still doing it 5 years later. In my opinion, Cunningham deserves a cheer for this: we’ve already known how important a stunning stage show is for many artists, and now, we’ve finally got an audio visual extravaganza with the musicians truly in the background

More of The xx

Everytime I listen to The XX, I just can’t figure out what composes them. Soulful female vocal and casual male vocal? Crystal guitar riff and bassline? Old minimal drum beat? Technically, yes; emotionally, I will say it’s made by romance, simply. Perhaps it just because of the lonely summer in Tokyo, I will need The XX’s live to keep me alive.

隻身在日本，少不了的煩惱絕對是戀人間的距離這件事；而不少次的自我消化，都是搭配The XX服用來緩解一下。請不要看到這邊就幹譙，我現在真的要開始講The XX了。 Continue Reading…

Two days ago (May 24) the Boom Boom Satellites released their 7th album To The Loveless, and by the looks of the first video to come out of it, for the song “Drain” (to the left), they are still beating hard down the path of transe-rock, techno-rock or whatever variation they prefer these days. If watching the video makes you think that these guys watched the Matrix one day and then more or less decided they wanted to live there, it is not too long of a stretch from the time they formed the band (1997) to the date of the movie’s release (1999), and back then they were still caught up in their early explorations of fusion between spaced out jazz to spaced out rock. So in other words, the BBS sound had not yet given way to the crunching big beat sounds for which they’ve been known ever since their breakthrough album of 2005, Full of Elevating Pleasures, so conjecture on this point may be worthwhile. Continue Reading…

Jamaica

Paris Electro-Rock duo Jamaica have made us waiting their debut album for a long time since they were Poney Poney. And we’ve been told for a hundred times that Justice’s Xavier will be their producer. Now with the new Electro-Surfin’Rock track I Think I Like U 2 and a fresh new album edition of the single Cross The Fader coming, I believe that all we have to do in their Fujirock gig is dancing with them and feel like playing on a beach, in Paris, in 1975. Please make sure to check the music video which made by SO ME and you will see.

在日本雖然每天走大約一小時的路，卻都沒有運動。欸，等一下，我在講什麼。 Continue Reading…

Long before girls brought back off the shoulder t-shirts and neon color palettes, and just a few years before Frenchmen, Daft Punk and Justice, popularized the electro scene, there was one slightly overlooked Scottsman named Myles Mac Innes, otherwise known as Mylo. Continue Reading…

Miike Snow

And I know that you pronounce their name as “Mike Snow” because I heard them say it themselves in this brief interview clip here.

Go figure. They’re cool Swedish guys. Well, two thirds of them, at least. There is a cool American singer/songwriter involved, as well. And when you’re cool, you drop cool names like Japanese filmmaker Takashi Miike (the controversial director of Ichi the Killer), or at least you borrow cool romaji versions of Japanese names who you then say influenced your moniker.

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Riva Starr

This is the first post of the Taiwanese DJ Spykee, writing about the hottest House guy in 2010, Riva Starr. As you can hear as his debut album “If Life Gives You Lemons, Make Lemonade”, Riva Starr combines his early Tech-Funk elements into the sexy Gypsy percussive sounds, makes a brand new human-orient dance groove without twisting that cheesy pitch. If you really give him a lemon, maybe he can make a GUNDAM.

可能是對於Electro-House潮爆速度還來不及反應，而硬骨Techno總有一種眾人獨醉我獨醒的意味，加上就連之前唱片B面要是付了Remix可能就很難放的Dubstep現在都蔚為風尚，但見性感地要命的Tech-House / Gypsy-House始終被視為娘不可及；是以，在這次寫手工作確定的同時，第一時間就想要寫Riva Starr。 Continue Reading…

We’ll take James Murphy and LCD Soundsystem anyway we can get him when he appears on Sunday. Several years ago he played one of the airplane hangars at Summer Sonic and reportedly the place is still rattling–I know my teeth are. If it were up to us, we’d have him headlining the White Stage, though there’s always the possibility he’ll get stuck at the Red Marquee since he tends to classify himself as a rock act. Actually, it wouldn’t be too bad if he were mistaken for a dance act and scheduled for the the middle of the night at the RM, but the White Stage around 9 with a huge crowd and a starry sky to close out the weekend. What could be better? Continue Reading…

Every festival has certain acts whose popularity and acclaim are foregone conclusions, but here at Fujirock.com we enjoy forecasting the dark horses that go on to be fest highlights. It’s one of my favorite parts of the pre-fest prep: predicting the surprise hits, the acts that no one knows upon arrival but no one forgets after they blow off the roof in front of a throng of first-time viewers. So here, I’d like to start the predictions with one of my own: introducing British beatbox badass Beardyman.

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Grant "Daddy G" Marshall and Robert "3D" del Naja

They pressed buttons when everyone clanged guitars. They created an entire musical genre that they now distance themselves from. They claim musical ineptitude, yet recently were inducted into an elite fraternity of songwriters. It’s hard to judge where Massive Attack’s place will be in the history of pop music, but their influence on the genre cannot be overstated.

Now that original members Robert “3D” del Naja and Grant “Daddy G” Marshall are back on the road together with their best album in a decade, the duo have are making the rounds to the music press about the tour, the record and their band’s unique trajectory.

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The electro party is gonna be pumping hard at FRF2010, and Rusko will be smack dab in the middle of it. His new album, O.M.G. is being released right about the time of this post (May 4 on the US east coast), and you can hear the entire album streaming here!!!!

The album features ATL rapper Gucci Mane, the house vocals from Amber Coffman and a few more trix, so maybe call it a mix of upschool crunk and ghetto house with a massive electro twist. See ya’ll in the Red Marquee, yo!

This song and video first came to my attention when I got a text from my Serbian friend Sasa that said something like “Basement Jaxx! OMG U gotta hear this!”. I’m not as big a fan of dance music as Sasa, but he was right of course, just like he was about Royksopp. So what makes this tune so great?

Partly: Banjos. BANJOS MAN! Also, it’s a club song about wanting to get the hell out of the club and go someplace warm and cuddly. Being that clubs tend to just piss me off at about the 3 a.m. mark after the alcohol starts to wear off, I can relate.
And the cartoon Siberian Soviet Russia in this video is of course priceless.
Judging from these two blog posts, many of the hard core don’t quite get it, expressing surprise that this was the choice for a single. But that’s what makes Basement Jaxx the club group even for people who don’t like clubs (apparently there’s been more grumbling from the fans about their new single Raindrops; see Coglione’s previous post here). As in previous hits Red Alert and especially Romeo, they usually find a way to go outside the expectations of the endless chicky thump thump thump thump of an average night out.
(See also my post on The Greatest Man That Ever Lived

-Kern

So I was halfway through writing a post on Holy Fuck, but since Dom beat me to it, let me just recommend a great live session they did for Dublab last year.
jinki

Don’t be afraid! The Japanese Popstars are not a supergroup of egomaniacal AVEX and Johnny’s artists headed by Ayu, Koda Kumi, and the KinKi Kids doing some sort of perverse “We Are The World” benefit for starving nailists.

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Takkyu Ishino is all over the board in electronic music, from chirpy pop to minimalism to the sort of dirty repetitive trance you’re supposed to space out to on a beach in Thailand. But I first noticed him for his pop music, which is usual for me since I don’t like to space out on beaches in Thailand. This one, Stereo Nights, is great electronic pop like Four Tet filtered through some J-Pop light goofiness/kitsch.

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Juana Molina was a TV star in Buenos Aires. Then she dropped out and recorded music for years. Her backing band in Naeba this year includes at least 30 or 40 backing vocalists…all her.
I will be there.

Yes, Juana tried other musicians, but instead decided to work mostly with herself. Packing at least 2 sequencers, keys and percussion, the dizzying columns she builds simply by looping her voice and guitar. It’s easy to imagine a studio filled beyond fire standards on some of the tracks from “Una Dia.”

Yes, it’s all/mostly her, but as we heard last year , you can do a lot with one voice. Her lyrics (Spanish), come last, she says, mainly because the sound/song structures themselves are the goal. She’s not trying to tell a story in words, but you can certainly write your own over her soundtrack.
Get the song/watch the film on her SITE:
Fantastic intro/interview from the awesome RADIOLAB
Live on KCRW HERE (click “Watch”)

I’ve already said this before, but I will mention it again… I am psyched to see artists at Fuji Rock because back home in the US their shows are sold out! The latest commodity coming across the pond is Gang Gang Dance. My last try going to see this band was the opening party for the Nada Art Fair ( a young cousin of the bigger Art Basel Miami Beach event). I, along with 20 well dressed, pin stripe suited, big shots of the art world found ourselves locked out of this party. Nobody was getting in or out, and i had little choice but to console myselve with the indignity of sitting at a bar next door coiffing US$25 whisky drinks.

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Hipster mags such as The Fader have been championing Buraka Som Sistema and a handful of other African tinged music for the past couple of months. The music is punchy, high energy, booty shaking stuff, and unlike anything you’ve ever heard before.

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I knew Animal Collective was playing Fuji Rock about 2 months before the official announcement and had a pretty hard time holding my tongue and not blogging about this info. Tell you the truth, I couldn’t be more excited cuz this band is tearing it up on their North American tour, and it is darn hard getting a ticket to their show. As an example, their LA gig at the Fonda Theater was sold out weeks in advance with tix on Craig’s List going for US$150 apiece. Well, I considered paying the price, but unexpectedly ran into them somewhere else…

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Röyksopp aren’t the most prolific of European electronic groups; they happen to be releasing two albums this year, but they are only the third and fourth since their formation in 1998, and they don’t release a lot of rare and special edition EPs and singles in between like many of their peers. It’s been four years since their last album, The Understanding, and it was four years before that for their first, Melody A.M.

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