|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
shéna ringo
shoso strip |
|
|
|
Good old Ramones must have had some kind of vision when they sung “Sheena is a Punk Rocker.” In 1998 a 20 year-old girl from Fukuoka thought it would be a blast to dress up as a nurse, kick in glass screens and do other wild things others would, no doubt, get arrested for. But all that image schlock wasn’t even necessary, since Shéna Ringo’s outstanding singing and songwriting skills, combined with her naïve yet self-confident, direct way of making statements, are more than enough to take your breath away. Containing the manifest piece “Kabukicho no Joo” her debut album “Muzai Moratorium” stirred up the Japanese charts, adding a new and spicy flavour to the bland J-pop brew. |
|
Following the once-heard-never-forgotten melody of the fill-in single “Honno,” which kept expectations high between albums, the two rather average rock ballad-style singles “Tsumi to Batsu” and “Gips” were simultaneously released earlier this year to presage opus No. 2. From inside her own little Kabukicho world Ringo sings again of dreams, disappointments and complaints, and - against the expectations of the two singles - on “Shoso Strip” she even gears up and comes across in punk, electro-pop, swing rock, and even comic-strip-sound-collage disguise. With some deft arrangement touches to cover up some of her more played out melodies, Shéna Ringo manages to make Shoso Strip a strong follow-up. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
frank zappa
everything is healing nicely |
|
|
 |
|
|
|
Thanks to the relentless search for tapes of everyone who ever happened to be within recording distance when Zappa made a noise, the maestro’s posthumous oeuvre is set to soon break even with the more than 50 albums Frank could sign in person. While the majority of these recently released works focus on Zappa’s younger years or early ‘70s escapades, here is now a gem that documents the precious moments just before the magic circle connecting Zappa’s first and last work was about to close. |
|
EIHN is a recording made during the first sessions with Cologne-based Ensemble Modern, which resulted in the celebrated “Yellow Shark” concerts. In this ensemble Zappa found the band of his life, which may seem surprising until it is remembered that it was composers such as Edgar Varese, Anton Webern, and Igor Stravinsky, who led teen Zappa into music. With 70 minutes of joking, jamming, and improvising, so relaxed it didn’t seem possible with Zappa’s previous bands, EIHN offers an insight to the first reactions and the spontaneous assimilation of an ensemble that had never been confronted with working methods like Zappa’s before. Moving beyond Yellow Shark’s modern classical style, EIHN sets out into free jazz, ambient, and the outstanding dadaist pieces with ‘lyrics’ read by Ensemble Modern’s pianist, Hermann Kretzschmar, from his library card and from letters to PFIQ (Piercing Fans International Quarterly) magazine. The CD comes in a luxurious velour case, and the ¥4,500 is a justified price for a set of unique, humorous, yet serious art. |
|
rovo
pyramid |
|
 |
|
|
With members coming from such different fields as techno, rock, noise, jazz, and Latin music, it was mainly the poly-rhythmic structures the pieces on Rovo’s debut album “Imago” were built upon that earned the band the reputation as a Japanese answer to Tortoise. On their second long-player Rovo show a completely new approach to crossover rock in a single piece stretching for 43 minutes, with the help of guest musicians Fumie Kobayashi (voice) and Masaaki Kikuchi (contrabass). |
|
|
The tricky rhythms and arrangements are gone, replaced with a linear flowing composition. Pyramid starts slowly with the unique combination of ethnic percussion and blues harmonica, flows quietly through single-note spheres created by the voice/contrabass section, to culminate in an endless, wah wah-dominated futuristic funk piece with lots of sound effects and driving percussion. Pyramid probably won’t get much radio play, but this is not what Rovo make music for. |
|
|
 |
alboth!
ecco la fiera |
|
|
If you are one of those who believe that after Adolf Wölfli, H.R. Giger, and the Young Gods, there must be more to explore in the Confederation Helvetica, a.k.a. Switzerland, than Heidi and cuckoo clocks, you might have been waiting for something like this. Giving their pieces titles like Aldo Moro, Judas Priest, Herbert Von Karajan, or Frank Arsch Meyer, and singing in a kind of robot-lingo-fondue is something Alboth! have in common with Bavarian dada jazz ensemble The Blech, and in this age of remixing and remaking one |
|
might mistake Alboth!’s pieces for early Blech compositions interpreted on a meat grinder. Transferring data digitally to a CD is the elegant way to produce masterpieces such as Alboth!’s last work, “Amor Fati,” where the band demonstrated a breathtaking balance act between grind core and 12-tone music, ambient and noise, industrial rock and free jazz in 9 pieces of unbelievable tension. Throwing the same ingredients together in a scrap press and scrunching it to the size of a CD is another way, and it seems like after moving to Berlin the now-trio tried out this method on their new album “Ecco La Fiera,” a good soundtrack to the Swiss army penknife, with occasional melodies popping up. The CD is distributed in Japan by the tiny Inoxia label, the first address in town for everything beyond the beyond. |
|
|
