New Japrock book
 

For anybody with a passing intrest in Japanese Rock,check out Julian Cope's new book;Japrock Sampler,isbn 9780747589457,published by Bloomsbury,a very well researched tome,covers just about everything,got mine today!

Cheers. The question is, is it actually worth it? I think you should read it now and report back with a 2000 word essay by Monday. Thanks.

Didn't it come out today? Read mixed reviews of it, but want to get it nonetheless.

is number girl in it? if not, i don't care.

It mainly covers late 60's,70's ,alas not much on later bands like Number Girl,or Boredoms.But alot on Denudes (plane hijacking and all).Not much on Mr Haino either,so when i said it covers just about everything,i guess it was a bit of a fib!-sorry,but well worth a read as music books go,if you know of any books on the newer bands give em a mention,would love to read those too!.

Japanese Independent Music
(SONORE, SON-11, BOOK+CD 2001)

"The fullest picture available of Japan's explosively radical underground musical scene. This book is a comprehensive report on the exuberant activity of the Japanese independent scene at the end of the twentieth century. Structured like a dictionary with an historical introduction, it offers a vision of more than 600 artists from musical streams as varied as: electro, harsh-noise, avant-rock, free-jazz. Comes with a CD of rare and previously unreleased tracks from: Keiji Haino, Yuko Nexus6, Acid Mothers Temple, Ruins, KK Null, Sachiko M, Hoppy Kamiyama, etc."


I've got it, it's pretty good.

cool!

is cope's book going to be available in this continent? or do i have to spend extra money for them to bring it to me swimming?

is japrock OK to say?

it's to the same effect as krautrock, it used to be a demeaning term made up by the british press, but it then became the banner for some amazing music.

cope's using it the same way (since he already applied krautrock)

never heard the term!

what about Nipponese Rockafelia?

I recommend all of this series except for the Berlin special. Although that's quite good, I'm not terrifically interested in Berlin. It covers a very serene side of improvisation - it's interesting, but won't turn you onto much if you're expecting Haino/ AMT/ Rallizes type thrills.

all these sound great!

yeah, i thought about mentioning that but i didn't think it would be of much interest to people who aren't already aware of it. although it could just be because i'm not much into that stuff myself, while i think otomo and tetuzi akiyama both have the capacity for awesomeness the likes of taku sugimoto and sachiko m, well, i just don't get it.

How easy is that Japanese Independent Music book to read? I'm on the verge of ordering it, but if it's like some academic tome, I think I'll leave it alone.

it's not, it's a good but flawed book, worth reading if you have an interest in japanese underground music, i'd also recommend it to people going to japan as it has useful info about record shops

I picked it up almost a week ago (Waterstones had it on the shelves while we were still in August) but I've only got through 80 pages or so. As has been said before, it skirts around Haino and spells his name wrong. There are quite a few names spelled incorrectly as well. It's main problem is that it is unapolagetically skewed towards Copes personal taste. To be fair, he makes no pretense otherwise but that means that stuff like Haino is omitted in favour of tedious hippy guff (Far East Family Band) or mediocre Stones-a-likes (Speed, Glue and Shinki).

It's a funny one, for sure. There's plenty of interesting stuff in there but a lot of it is just... interesting. It's all of the Wire-y post-Bailey improv and electronic/ sound-art/ found sound/ sound-walks type thing. The problem is that for every Aki Onda there's a Haco. It doesn't really matter which of those I actually like (Haco), and I think that's sort of the point. You get it, you download some things, you're entirely turned off by some of it, and then you get a record like Bugscape (in my case) which, in spite of being made from the most 'arty' of viewpoints, is an incredibly good record. The compilations kind of taper off after 2004. And I'm very, very pissed off with reading about fucking Taku Sugimoto being 'ultra-radical' when he is, in fact, just shite.

schoolgirldistortionaladdict.

taku sugimoto's day job is as a school caretaker. not that that is relevent to anything.
anyway yeah, that berlin improv side of things bores me rigid to the extent that it puts me off reading the magazine/book, the last thing i want is to hear somebody else that sounds like annette krebs or seymour wright.