Well not really. Well not at all. But I’ve never known much about their background. They are very mysterious. But when I interviewed Thaddi from City Centre Offices recently, he mentioned in passing that Moritz von Oswald – half of Basic Channel, aka Maurizio, M, Burial Mix, Rhythm & Sound – used to play in Palais Schaumberg with Thomas Fehlmann and Holger Hiller. They were caught up in the New German Wave scene, with bands like Daf, Andreas Dorau and Nena, which Herrmann says was nothing political, just a bunch of bands doing cheaply produced, mostly electronic music with German lyrics.
MusicTechno

Fascinating investigative journalism, light-hearted short pieces and music features made Spinach 7 a real page turner of a magazine, and a breath of fresh air on Australian newsagent shelves. Needless to say it was hugely disappointing when the magazine went belly up late last year. The Australian magazine industry is serious business, huge amounts of money are invested by the big houses in getting their magazines into prime newsagent real estate and the content is the least important factor. Editor Eve Vincent explained the problems at Online Opinion.
Still, it’s been great to see the team band together to set up an online hub. They’ve split off into three cohesive units. Signature, which takes on the investigative mantle, reporting topical issues without jumping into the press scrum. This month they compare the experience of SBS journo John Martinkus, who was kidnapped in Iraq, with Douglas Wood. Soundplay, which as it says looks at music and arts. This time Dan Rule looks at lo-fi country kid and Melbourne expat Toby Burke. Mo:life, the last piece of the puzzle is an email list that looks at the impact of mobile media on media, technology and business.
Media

It’s been a while since I last posted, so here’s to another roundup of music and other things taking my fancy. The European sampler from Cyclic Defrost is unsurprisingly great. If you want to read more, check my review at Stylus. But the short version is: the track from Pivot is amazing and I’m dying to hear their new album, Francis Plagne, Inchtime and Saddleback are brilliant too. The rest is great, but those were the ones that surprised and thrilled me.
Everyone’s been waiting for Bugz to drop the first big broken beat crossover, but maybe Royskopp have beaten them to it. 49%, on their new album, The Understanding, pastes a huge garage vocal ala Robert Owens onto a Maddslinky-style rocking chair beat. Those Norwegians also worked on their countryperson Annie’s debut album. She’s been around for a while, releasing singles that everyone from electroclash and househeads through to indie kids get hyped about. Her new album reminds me of that moment, 1am, drunk, at some dodgy bar, and dancing to Madonna, when you start to think that the conically breasted New Yorker is alright. It’s kinda like St. Etienne and Madonna with a touch of Robbie Williams, doesn’t sound like my usual thing, but there you go. By the way, the new St. Etienne album’s quite listenable too. It’s no So Tough, but it’s not that forgettable last one either. Did Brett Anderson get back together with Bernard Butler? The first song on the Tear’s new album sounds like vintage Suede.
The new records from The Chap, Nudge, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, The Legends, 2400W and I’m Not A Gun (AKA John Tejada) are great too. I’ve been hunting for the new album, the first real one, from UK grime crew Roll Deep, but after turning Shibuya upside down, I’ve given up for the moment. Actually I’ve been making do with Radioclit‘s screwed down and chopped up version, thanks to Jace/Rupture.
I’ve been flying through books lately… Yukio Mishima’s oddly existential Patriotism had me up all night last night, thinking that is, after finishing the short 53 pager in no time. Insomnia isn’t cool. Another short one, Murakami’s Hear The Wind Sing. And I’m now reading The Elephant Vanishes, a collection of Murakami’s short stories, which seem to owe a debt to Raymond Carver.
Music

I’ve always been pretty flippant about earthquakes – only nine months ago I was working in the seismology group at Geoscience Australia in Canberra and had never felt a noticable tremor – but since being in Tokyo I’ve felt several. Having no control over things wobbling around you is not super comfortable.
There was a 3.9 in Tokyo Bay a few weeks and another smaller one last week, but last night just as I was about to put down my book (Haruki Murakami’s Hear The Wind Sing) the building started to shake. It went on for quite a while, a painting was swinging on the wall and the walls creaked a little as our house swayed. The USGS reports that it was a moderate, 5.7 magnitude, tremor at 50km depth near the coast of Honshu in Japan.
Opinion pages and online forums keep worrying about the big one, I’ve even heard about people leaving town because they expect it soon. Unsettling stuff.

Tokyo heads up. I’m playing music at Sundown next Sunday afternoon – 26/06 – It’s a afternoon type thing with laptop live beats, DJs, VJs and all that sorta thing. Cheap entry and a cool little bar in Shimokitizawa. Kicks off at five.

I hear text blogs are passe, so last year, there’s only so much you can say in 300 words, now MP3 blogs are the only way to really connect about music.
It’s probably all true. But I like trying to say it, in some ways I prefer reading people talk about the music they love too, rather than just providing a list of downloads with accompanying spiels.
Still those sites are invaluable ways to hear new sounds, especially here in Tokyo where the shops have an aversion to letting you listen to CDs. Levins lists a bunch of the best MP3 sites on his great blog, you should read the Manitoba interview he has up too.
If you’re after something a bit more electronic, check out De:Bug‘s podcast site. It’s one of the best local music mags in the world, based in Berlin, so the podcasts are on point. Madstyle’s Chillusion EP is great, Frank Bretschneider, Monohm, Nero, there is so much top new electronic music.

The Warp crew blew into Tokyo on Friday, the gig was about 20 minutes out of Tokyo at Club Citta in Kawasaki. I met up with a bunch of travelling Australian electro heads including Seb from Cyclic Defrost, Dan from Singularity and his partner – who were all en route to Sonar, Barcelona – as well as Andrew (Little Nobody) who’s in Tokyo at the moment. First was a cheap, delicious dinner at Ootoya. Then off to La Cittadella, which is kinda like Italiantown Disneyland style, complete with a lit-up transparent Tower of Pisa.
They asked if we had cameras on entry, I said yes, so they asked me to drop it in a box. I looked at the pile of cameras and said actually I don’t have a camera, so she said go through. I could see why they banned cameras when the lights went out later on, for a pitch black Autechre set.
It’s a huge club… like the Hordern Pavillion, but with killer sound, especially considering that the bar was solidly packed from the front to the back. We could barely squeeze in.
Rob Hall from Skam was DJing complex electronics leaning more to the melodic rather than abrasive end of the spectrum. It’s funny seeing people spinning glowsticks to abstract IDM. Out in the foyer, the merchandise stall had every Warp CD and LP you could want, well not everything, but loads of great stuff, even the Boards of Canada promo kaleidoscope. Crowds of Japanese indie kids milled about the foyer sporting cool t-shirts – my favourite one said ‘Redrum’.
LFO had plenty of flashing lights. Starting with repetitive breaks grinding into harsh industrial, he sounded like Front 242 at times, all foreboding synth sounds, freaky laugh samples and noisy clatter. The set moved into ravey sirens and plenty of bleeps. Just about the end of the set came the bleep anthem and LFO calling card, with its stripped back bleep happy beats and BBC-intoned sample, L. F. O.
The lights went out. We had to hold hands to stay together as we attempted to squeeze into the back right-hand corner of the room. Autechre were spinning a fabric of twisted electronic shapes, shards of noise, but most of all deep bassy grooves. Sure they were often wobbly, syncopated or even off kilter, but they were far from arrhythmic. They have loads of imitators on record, but noone can touch them live. Even Funkstorung, who I saw in Paris a few years ago, had to resort to bootleg pop to make it work.
Autechre’s sound is uncompromisingly abstract, but the thousands of Japanese hands in the air during a particularly brutal section of the set can attest to its impact. At other times you can hear influences poking through the mix. One messy Machine Drum/Merck-esque section gradually shows up a lineage from Detroit techno, the sparkling high hats and melody breaking out over a hip hop beat.
Loads of people were asleep in the corridor, I felt as though we should be quiet as we walked out, because the trains don’t start up until 4:45 am so people nap until the first train. We sat about the foyer too, chatting about Pierre Bourdieu and his theories on taste as distinction and cultural capital and its relevance to ideas of authenticity in music, especially with Detroit vs British techno (black vs white, middle class vs working class) and the extension to hip hop in Australia. Fascinating, but at 4:45 we were back on the train to Jiyugaoka.

Any word on an All Tomorrow’s Parties in Australia? Lee Ranaldo from Sonic Youth mentioned it when I interviewed him last year. He said at the time that Jim and Warren from The Dirty Three were lined up to curate.
Which would be awesome. But it hasn’t eventuated yet. I was thinking another premo choice for curator would be Oren Ambarchi, the wild musician who’s equally revered by indie kids, avant garde sound artists and electronic heads. However, maybe it is the lessons of his What is Music? festival that cautioned against going with ATP Australia.
What is Music got into bed with Lees & West (promoters of the Big Day Out) this year. The lineup was awesome: The Residents, Chicks On Speed, Pan Sonic, Sunn O))), Black Dice, 00|00, Dead C, Scott Horscroft Ensemble and loads of others. But tickets were pricey ($80) and there just wasn’t the audience.

Something about Jens Lekman’s tongue-in-cheek take on folky pop – music that’s often dominated by over-earnest songwriters too traumatised to cut it in public – suggested he could be a good live performer.
A couple of cute girls wandered out onto the Mudd Club stage. One was a mod, in sharp bob, playing bass. The other one was a rocker, on percussion and backup vocals. They glowed their way through the gig, while a couple of guys sat in behind on drums and guitar, serving up a fun fruit salad of acoustic indie pop, calypso rhythms and odd little cabaret moments.
Dressed in a red t-shirt, his short curly hair poking out from under an old cloth hat, Lekman looked like Superman’s copy-boy sidekick Jimmy Olsen. His warm voice reminds me of Morrissey, though where the coiffed one tends towards bleak, suicidally black humour, Lekman is closer to cheeky irony. I’ve always thought a little too loaded up on irony. But live it makes sense. His cheeky grin, and the big white corsage on his guitar instantly charmed the crowd.
The 100 or so pilsener-clutching Berliners were hooked by the indie cabaret. But a handful of American tourists kept talking. So Lekman unplugged his microphone, put down his guitar and played the final few tracks (a couple of his own, and a cover of early ‘80s mutant disco producer Arthur Russell) unplugged with a ukelele. It was twee of course, it was a ukelele! But despite the fact that nobody could hear a thing, it was wonderful.

Tell me how any sane person could resist lines like “If I’m your psychologist / then who’s the psychologist’s psychologist?” or “I’m not a political fighter / I don’t even have a cigarette lighter”.
Music

Interpol played one of Berlin’s biggest rock venues to a sell-out crowd of German indie kids, 20 to 30-something office workers and the odd Australian tourist.
The poised-for-fame Spoon, who I have been dying to catch live, was first up. But thanks to the super punctual German promoters, they started right on nine O’clock, and were off within half an hour, meaning I only caught the last song. A quick vox pop on the crowd revealed that (a) not many people knew who the hell they were, and (b) they sounded a lot like Interpol, boasting a set of tight rock songs complimented by deadpan vocals.
The venue flooded with a wave of cheers when Interpol took the stage. The quartet has enough big songs to please a crowd and net them a few cheers of recognition. But the roar settled down quickly: the songs barely strayed from the album versions, and even the breaks sounded like the gaps between tracks on a CD. There was no between song banter, not even a ‘Hello Berlin!’
They were nonchalant. But rather than studied cool, it was the disinterested routine of a band getting through the set list and onto the next town.
The New Yorkers wear their influences on their sleeves. That’s no bad thing, just about every band does. But when there’s not much more it can make the music a little hollow. Interpol’s big heroes, like Television’s Richard Hell and Tom Verlaine, were fuelled by fierce on-stage battles for the creative direction of the band. It just seems that Interpol have settled in for the ride.
Music