Barbelith Underground > Radio & Music > Anybody listen to asian music on this site?

re: trying to find obscure/weird records in boston or cambridge:

my first gut instinct would be to hit up weirdo records on mass ave between central and harvard. it's tiny, but packed to the gills with more or less what's on the tin. it's the kind of place where you can buy cheap dvdrs of old exploitation films, ethiopiques or afrobeat comps, and a recording of a one armed fiddler playing old time all in the same shopping trip. if they don't have it they may likely know where to order it from.

pretty much all the asian music i know is punk, hardcore, noise, or metal.

japanese punk has been pretty hyped in the states for years, and i'm finally getting past my hype aversion and starting to be able to appreciate it. in short, a lot of american punk bands half ass it and phone it in. japan is expensive to live in, expensive to get practice space in, and harder to get a show in, from what i understand. bands also, from what i've been told, typically practice for about a year before playing out. in a style of music where intensity is highly valued, the higher level of workmanship can really pay off sometimes. and the bands that get it together to tour outside of asia are generally the ones that are much more together than the ones that don't. a lot of it is very much like discharge, but often much noisier or more melodic. i wasn't that impressed with a lot of bands over the years that i saw, but part of that could just be being stubborn and sick of hearing about it, because for a couple years running it seemed like all anyone was playing was imitation discharge or imitation 80s thrash/crossover, and i got awfully sick of it.

seeing crude twice at chaos in tejas last year kind of brought me around. solid, aggressive, good songwriting, good musicianship, high energy - it was a pretty great package, and seeing them followed by harvey milk and eyehategod was pretty great. bastard this year was also really solid. i think their reunion "tour" was just two shows, one in tokyo and one in austin.

i like some japanese oi, but it may be partially out of unintentional hillarity. see youtube for the video of cobra looking like they came straight off the terraces into a motley crue stage show.

gallhammer by all rights out to be an annoying novelty, but i think they're pretty solid. three tiny waif japanese girls playing very slow, raw depressing music drawing heavily on amebix and early black metal. some of the vocals get borderline crushed throat ghost girl from juon, to the point that i actually turned something else on instead when i was listening to them alone way late at night in my room, because i just found it kind of unsettling.

are boris from japan?

i like melt banana, but i feel like they dropped off about five years ago and their live act started getting pretty boring. like they went from being experimental to just being a rock band with a lot of weird sounds. according to rumor, they also speak perfect english and play up the engrish for stage presence reasons.