JAPANOISE

JapaNews 

June 15, 2023

Here's a nice conversation with Christy Hallberg for her Rock is Lit podcast, from san episode on Ben Arzate's novel "Music is Over, "a story that deals with the lost years of musician Juntaro Yamanouchi of the Japanese Noise band The Gerogerigegege." Full episode here. 

October 25, 2022

The Old Grey Lady, aka New York Times, published a (paywalled, sorry) article about Les Rallizes Dénudés (I got to weigh in a bit), coinciding with the launching of the band's official site, and a great new set of reissues on Temporal Drift. Fly into the mystery.

November 18, 2020

The catalog for the Parergon: Japanese Art of the 1980s and 1990s exhibition is out, featuring several excellent essays on art, noise and music, plus photos by Gin Satoh from the 1970s punk scene, on Blum & Poe Press, curated and edited by Mika Yoshitake. Check out my essay "New Waves of Noise in the 1980s and 1990s: EYE, Haino, Otomo, YoshimiO"  here , and a video conversation for the 2020 Tokyo Virtual Art Book Fair with editor Mika Yoshitake and Black Editions label chief Peter Kolovos  here . 

March 5, 2020

A couple mentions for the Japanese edition,  one by 松山晋也 on Mikiki , and it is also discussed in a great interview with the always entertaining and illuminating Higashiseto Satoru  about the legacy of Bears livehouse in Osaka. Thank you Higashiseto-san!

January 6, 2020

I am grateful and happy to announce that the Japanese translation of Japanoise is finally out on Suisheisha Press! A million thanks to  Yu Wakao for his careful and dedicated work in moving these words between languages, and to Telle Kumazawa for her wonderful cover photograph of Masonna at the Festival Beyond Innocence 2002 at Bridge Osaka. You can find it at independent bookstores and online at  Rakuten , Honto , even  HMV  and  Yodobashi ...! 

April 5, 2019

If you are in Los Angeles, please check out Part II of the great exhibition Parergon: Japanese Art of the 1980s and 1990s , running through May 19th, featuring an amazing lineup of performances by EYE, Haino Keiji, Otomo Yoshihide, and SAICOBAB! I will be having a public conversation with Otomo on May 4 at Blum & Poe, and contributing to the exhibition catalogue. Congratulations to curator Mika Yoshitake!

January 25, 2019

At long last.... " Incapacitants the Movie! " Tarō Maruyama made this fantastic 45 minute documentary with great interviews and concert clips. With embedded English subtitles! A must-see!

November 29, 2018

The online journal Books & Ideas (La Vie des Idées) has published " Japanoise: Affect at the Edge of Music," an interview with Edouard Degay Delpeuch - the longer version is published in French in the December issue of Volume! The French Journal of Popular Music Studies as " Feedback global et mort du son: Une anthropologie de la Japanoise. " Thanks Edouard! 

November 16, 2018

The Malaysian underground publisher Repulsive Regurgitation printed a special local version of Japanoise with an alternative cover , limited to 150 copies and sold within Malaysia only, for cost, to raise funds for a local musician in need. Thanks to Repulsive Regurgitation and my gratitude to Duke for agreeing to a Creative Commons publishing license that allows for open access reprinting. 

June 1, 2018

The June issue of The Wireincludes my article on Senyawa and their roots in the Javanese underground music scene! Thanks to Rully Shabara for a great playlist to accompany the article, which you can stream on the Wire website here .

February 26, 2018

My short essay on Boredoms is out in the exciting and voluminous new textbook  Introducing Japanese Popular Culture  (Routledge, 2018) . The chapter - " In Search of Japanoise: Globalizing Underground Music " -- boils down the central arguments of the book for an undergraduate readership. Hope it's useful for those who want a short essay to introduce the basics of  Japanoisefor their students, and congrats to editors Alisa Freedman and Toby Slade for a sterling job in wrangling all of these chapters into the final publication! Also check out the online resources for the chapter here  (under Chapter 16).

December 28, 2017

The Wire's December issue features my On Location essay and photo on the 2017 Asian Meeting Festival Japan tour. Learn more about this great project on the Asian Music Network site !

June 15, 2017

I was lucky enough to catch a great show by Hijokaidan in Los Angeles (their first in the city since 1993) at the Handbag Factory! Thanks to Oxen Records for organizing. Here's a clip of my video footage .

March 17, 2017

A few more recent reviews to mention! Russ Skelchy penned one for the Journal of World Popular Music ; Benjamin Harley contributed one for the online journal of rhetoric  Enculturation ; and finally a multibook review by Rodney Garnett in Reviews in Anthropology  putting Japanoise in dialogue with 3 other great new books on anthro of sound (Daniel Fisher's  The Voice and Its Doubles: Media and Music in Northern Australia, Matt Sakakeeny's  Roll With It: Brass Bands in the Streets of New Orleans  and John Troutman's Kika Kila: How the Hawaiian Steel Guitar Changed the Sound of Modern Music)!

December 1, 2016

Happy to see Japanoise featured again in the Japan Times, this time in great company for a multi-book review by Ian Martin that includes Michael Bourdaghs's  Sayonara Amerika, Sayonara Nippon: A Geopolitical Prehistory of J-Pop  and David Hopkins's Dokkiri! Japanese Indies Music 1976-1989: A History and Guide . I look forward to Ian's new book “ Quit Your Band! — Musical Notes from the Japanese Underground ," just out on Awai Books.

October 24, 2016

Here's a couple more recent and very engaged reviews of Japanoise, one by Benjamin Tausig for Ethnomusicology Forum , and another for Current Musicology by Andrés García Molina !

August 10, 2016

I didan interview for BOMB magazine with the great Indonesian experimental duo Senyawa , in the midst of their first tour of the US. Check out their amazing live performance if you are in the vicinity of any stop on their tour !

May 19, 2016

Another double review, this time by Christine Yano pairing Japanoise with Michael Bourdaghs's terrific postwar cultural history  Sayonara Amerika, Sayonara Nippon: A Geopolitical Prehistory of J-Pop  in the latest issue of Ethnomusicology (firewall).

January 3, 2016

Check out the English translation of my interview with Naoki Kato on the Film International website ; then check out his films Carnival Folklore 2045and Abraxas !

December 20, 2015

Wonderfully in-depth double review of Japanoise and Bonnie Wade's Composing Japanese Musical Modernity by Scott Aalgaard in the November issue of the Journal of Asian Studies here (firewall).

July 21, 2015

This month I did a radio show on Onkyo-kei for Beijing-based experimentalist Yan Jun's Radio Enemy series, featuring many of my favorite artists (including one of my own field recordings of Cosmos (Sachiko M & Ami Yoshida) in their first performance in 1998). The radio mix is ​​a companion piece for the Chinese publication of my essay "Playing Off Site: The Untranslation of Onkyo," which can be accessed in two parts via the Subjam website . Thanks to Shan Huang for his translation!

June 15, 2015

Japanoise was recently honored with reviews by two of my senpai in Japanese popular music studies,  Taylor Atkins (author of Blue Nippon: Authenticating Jazz in Japan ) and Carolyn Stevens (author of Japanese Popular Music: Culture, Authenticity, and Power ), in Asian Music and American Ethnologist . Otsukaresama, arigatou gozaimashita!

June 5 and 6, 2015

A unique opportunity if you are in Seattle for the International Film Festival on June 5/6 to catch a "live movie screening" featuring T. Mikawa of Incapacitants/Hijokaidan as well as the Noise duo Sierror! in support of the new film 2045 Carnival Folklore  directed by Naoki Kato! The film is stunningly bizarre and original, and features an incredible series of Noise sounds and performances - check out this trailer featuring Mikawa  (who also plays "The General" in the film)...! You can read my interview with Kato-san on the Loadshow site (in Japanese).

May 18, 2015

Check out Hijokaidan performing live on TV, also with Otomo Yoshihide, in this unprecedented hour-long talkshow on the history of Noise! There's a genre history of Noise (culminating in Japanoise), starting around 10 minutes in, and at the end, there's a demo of Noisemaking technologies and the panelists "try out" Noise performance to hilarious effect. Amazing.

January 20, 2015

Nice review by Kaneko Tomotaro in this month's Artes Magazine! (Japanese)

December 10, 2014

Read excerpts of Japanoise translated into Chinese, posted on the Douban website,  here  and here .

​October 17, 2014

Red Bull Music Academy is in Tokyo this year, and the magazine is featuring Noise (yes, you read that right), including an interview with me  (also in Japanese, here), as well as one with Nakahara Masaya of VOC/Hair Stylistics , a piece on Haino Keiji , and an excellent "brief history of Noise" by Matsumura Masato . 

August 28, 2014

Decibel Magazine has a feature on Japanoise in its August 2014 "Noise" issue, featuring an interview with yours truly, by author Daniel Lake.

July 4, 2014

Proud to announce that Japanoise has won the 2014 British Forum for Ethnomusicology Book Prize ! Your very BFE!

May 26, 2014

For the hardcore: a 3-hour special interview feature on Japanoise, hosted by Muad' Dib on KFJC 89.7 FM in San Francisco ( Playlist / Listen )

May 2, 2014

Reseña de Japanoise en Español by Juanito Tormenta .

April 23, 2014

Max Ritts provides a cultural geography take on Japanoise in Society and Space .

March 6, 2014

Cool piece in the hacktivist media art magazine Neural , by founder Alessandro Ludovico. Standout phrase: "Novak's commitment to listen to the sounds live, despite the risks to his own hearing, make for a lot of engaging field reports."

March 4, 2014

Here's a thoughtful review of Japanoise at  Sounding Out! 

January 22, 2014

Check out Nana Kaneko's generous discussion of Japanoise on  Ethnomusicology Review .

December 19, 2013

Japanoise made the Top Books of 2013 lists at Colloidal Semantika and StompBeast , and landed in Neil Young Cloaca's 2013 "Inspiration Heap" at Boston Hassle .

December 3, 2013

Check out an extended interview with Carla Nappi for the New Books Network podcast series (cross-listed in East Asia, Anthropology, and Music).

November 2, 2013

Cool and adventurous presentation of Japanoise in this  Ars Sonora  broadcast on new books about Noise, for Spanish national radio RTVE (Japanoise segment begins at 16:15 with Pain Jerk track).

October 19, 2013

The Japan Times weighs in on Japanoise (as a national genre, no less)... 

August 15, 2013

Andrew Sullivan posts about Japanoise  on his blog Dish, and embeds a super-harsh Merzbow clip.

August 7, 2013

Inside Higher Ed features a review of Japanoise  by Scott McLemee (in the "Intellectual Affairs" section - how risky!). "A new book charts the rise of an artform so loud and harsh that "music" may not be the word for it. "

July 11, 2013

This week in Oxford for the Music, Digitisation, Mediation conference, to deliver the paper "Feedback and Submergence: Making Nonsense of Global Media."

July 1, 2013

My short Epiphanies essay , which describes how I got into the Japanoise project through early experiences with the Boredoms, is in the July issue of The Wire . I was also asked to contribute  this Portal of linksto my favorite online sound archives for the web-based part of the magazine.

June 7, 2013

An excerpt from Chapter 1  is featured today on the home page of web journal  Pop Matters .

June 4, 2013

Japanoise is born! Here's the UC Press Release for the book, based on an interview with Sonia Fernandez - nice video embed of the Incapacitants, too!