My recent hauls from Japan ~I will see you soon~

In my efforts to absorb, observe, cherish, preserve, etc, music from around the world, particularly Japan, I have been grabbing what I can left and right. In fact, over the past couple weeks, the haul you see above has been what I've been getting directly from Buyee, directly from Japan. Astonishingly enough, I've managed to find Japanese music in person from bands like X Japan and L'Arc~en~Ciel, but those are being left out of this post. However, since there is just so much to listen to at this point, I'm going to take a little time off from doing this blog to devote to just that.

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JAPANESE ROCK MUSIC

Up Hold
The Unbleached (w/obi)
Engine (digipak variant)

Back Drop Bomb
Diversive Audio EP
The Ocracy (CD/DVD Limited Edition)

Brahman
A Man Of The World

JAPANESE ROCK STILL COMING IN THE MAIL

Up Hold
Intersect Of Light & Dark
Deepness Of Disorder

Brahman
Wait And Wait
A Forlorn Hope
The Middle Way

The Mad Capsule Markets
Digidogheadlock (US Edition... no, I'm not kidding)

Nunchaku
Nunchakura
Nunchaku Archives (3 CD/1 DVD Box Set)

Shogo Hamada
Ai No Sedai No Mae Ni
The Moment Of The Moment

MISCELLANEOUS
"The Mad Capsule Market's & Bloody Imitation Society" (VHS tape-- cover blank, purpose unspecified, likely two music videos packed together for retail in-store play)

J-POP PART 1: THE CHECKERS

The Checkers
My-Nichi!! Checkers
Screw
Seven Heaven
Oops!

J-POP PART 2: TO BE CONTINUED

To Be Continued
To Be Continued... (aka Hi? How's It Going?)
How Zit?
Wagamama Ga Hoshii Komarasete Hoshii (non-album single)

Kohki Okada

Hip88

J-POP PART STILL COMING IN THE MAIL

The Checkers
Zettai Checkers
Motto!! Checkers
Flower
Go
I Have A Dream
Blue Moon Stone

To Be Continued
Creston Drive (w/unfaded obi)
To Be Clips 1, 2 & 3 (Laserdiscs)

Playstation EPS Series
Junko Mizutani - Believer Dreamer
Nomoa Yamamoto - Noise Reduction
Yukiko Morikawa - Because I Love You

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Needless to say, content will be overwhelming soon. I will attempt to upload what I can to YouTube in the meantime to prepare for eventual blog posts, however. Perhaps we'll all be able to discover, or even rediscover, this music together in the near future. For any of you out there who may be regular readers of this blog, thank you from the bottom of my heart for reading the material I've written here. I will see you soon.

Back Drop Bomb - Venometeoric

Here we are at the last Back Drop Bomb album I will be covering for a bit. It will be a while before I can grab my copy of The Ocracy, and it might be a while longer than that before I can reach for copies of 59days Preface and Loftinaction. In any case, this is the last album that BDB released under Toy's Factory, and how does it stack up to their awesome comeback album Breakdawn? Well, it might be a bit unfair to call this the Nipsong to Breakdawn's Micromaximum, since it isn't nearly as bad as Nipsong, but it is another somewhat unfocused album after an excellent and cohesive album. I really hope that isn't the case with The Ocracy and Loftinaction...

Don't get me wrong, there are lots of things to like about this album, whether it be from the sweet guitar solo that "The Light 'N' The Dark" rides out on, or the great instrumental that is "The Knight", or "Great View", which is an excellent track to open on. But throughout the album, there's a recurring feeling of incohesiveness and a lack of focus that draws up flashbacks of Nipsong. It's awesome that BDB continues to get more eclectic in their musical output, but there are times when it can get too eclectic for its own good, and those times happen pretty frequently on this album. What I can give this album credit for in spite of this, at least, is that the album doesn't feel barren in its mixing, so those bits of reduced focus come off smoother.

The packaging is something I really love about this album, though, and made me a little disappointed that graphic design this awesome wasn't housing an album that quite matched it. Just about all of the printing on the front cover/liner note booklet, back cover and obi strip is holographic, and printed on an extremely glossy, semi-thick paper stock. It feels great to hold them, but it does make them a pain in the ass to photograph. Thanks to my usual flash photography, the covers and obi all come off less colorful and less bright than they actually are, as I've seen occasional cover scans look. But rest assured that every bit of this CD's packaging is gorgeous.

The tracklisting is as follows:

1. Intro

2. Great View

3. Tokio On The Horse

4. Don't

5. Nobody Gets It -The Beginning Of Conga-

6. The Light 'N' The Dark

7. Far To Go

8. The Knight

9. World Wanna Be

10. Not Never

11. Anything

12. Losin'

13. Outro

Back Drop Bomb - Breakdawn

After the incohesive disappointment that was Nipsong, it's hard to imagine if Back Drop Bomb could've gotten their old magic back without nabbing a new saxophonist. When I originally gave this a spin (I grabbed this, Nipsong and Venometeoric at the same time) immediately after finishing Nipsong, it was a nervous and difficult sit. After some time with this album, however, I've incredibly warmed to it. It manages to be both eclectic in its musical influences and cohesive in its presentation at the same time-- Nipsong's failing was having the former without a direction to accomplish the latter. I'm still not entirely sure if BDB even had a certain direction in mind while recording this album, but the end result turned out really well whether they did or not.

The album still has its weak points with ridiculously sudden switchups in a few songs-- "In Order To Find The New Sense" is pretty guilty of it, and "graySONGzone", while a bit more streamlined, picks up this issue towards the end-- it isn't to the extent that Nipsong has them. The vast electronic backdrop that scours this whole album is much welcomed, and provides a nice cushion for when BDB start drifting into almost-too-experimental territory for a bit. The mixing is also very heavy on both the bass guitar and kick drum for a lot of the album, which I always appreciate.

All I can really say now is pick this album up and give it a couple spins, and it might come around for you as well. From what I gathered from domestic reviews of this album, Japanese listeners really liked that BDB was finally writing songs that had Japanese lyrics. I do appreciate it as well, but I honestly don't mind either way, and I dunno if other Western listeners will find that a point of praise or contention about the album... although it would be stupid to get mad over an album from Japan having Japanese lyrics, if you ask me.

'Tis a promo copy, like the back of the obi shows.

The tracklisting is as follows:

1. Intro

2. アティピカル

3. Like 8 Beat

4. Boogie & Swerve

5. The Maze

6. Oh, Oh

7. In Order To Find The New Sense

8. High Times

9. スリル

10. Twisted

11. graySONGzone

12. Amplitude

13. Outro

Back Drop Bomb - Nipsong

Something happened to Back Drop Bomb between Micromaximum and this album. Something that would end up changing the direction of their music for the rest of their time on Toy's Factory. They lost their saxophonist. The effects of this loss were already felt on the 2254 Universal EP, a release that split the four-year difference between this album and Micromaximum right down the middle, but BDB managed to squeeze out some great material for that EP, like "Sigh" and "Remind Me". Except for a few songs here and there, and the inclusion of "Remind Me" from the aforementioned EP, this album represents a dramatic fall in quality after Micromaximum.

It's a shame, because there are quite a few good ideas interspersed through the numerous tracks on this album, even in the weaker links. Whenever vocalists Takayoshi Shirakawa and Masashi Ojima unite for some sweet harmonies, the result is more often than not a shining moment on whatever track it happens on. But a lot of the album feels directionless, incohesively patched together from ideas they just couldn't find a way to flesh out into full songs. The weird mastering on the album doesn't do much to help the barren musical landscape-- if anything, bringing the drums really high in the mix makes it feel even more barren. I don't know what happened for them to lose their saxophonist, but I really wish they didn't, because the presence of one would've helped this album in a lot of ways.

If nothing else, this album has a lot of cool stuff thrown in with it. This particular 2-disc deluxe edition came with a "bootleg" CD of a couple live renditions of some of their songs. I haven't listened to it, because live albums just don't really do anything for me most of the time, but at least the song choices are pretty dope-- one song from Micromaximum, two from the 2254 Universal EP. They also threw in a sticker of the logo they created for this album, and I always appreciate cool feelies.

Oh, one extra disclaimer: the version of "Never Shined" on this album is not the awesome version playing in this music video. That version was released on the Diversive Audio EP they put out in 2004, a year after this album came out. You might ultimately be satisfied with just grabbing the two aforementioned EPs that bookended this album's release instead of this, if you're not in it for collecting every release the band put out.

The tracklisting for Nipsong is as follows:

1. Intro

2. Flip Out

3. Mastadabestah

4. From Experience

5. Instant Triumph

6. Understandin'

7. Never Shined

8. Dub Beyer

9. Remind Me

10. Your Choice, Your Decision

11. In My Position

12. Missin' The Point

13. Nothin' Phony

14. Down To Earth

15. Ram Atomic (原始的魂)

16. Perspective

17. Outro

The tracklisting for Official Live Bootleg CD is as follows:

1. Back And Forth/Never Too Late

2. Sigh

3. You Up Around

Back Drop Bomb - Micromaximum

Outside of a few appearances on split EPs and compilations, there wasn't much material from Back Drop Bomb other than yesterday's covered mini-album before their transition to Toy's Factory in 1998. They quickly released an EP called Rough Introduction For The Next (which I don't have yet, unfortunately) in January of 1999, and then dropped Micromaximum, their first full-length album, a few months afterward. Containing two re-recorded tracks from Rough Introduction ("Flow (It's Like That)" and "Turn On The Light"), a song from their early split EP Back Drop Bomb Vs. Echo ("That's The Way We Unite"), and a bunch of altogether new material, it's the perfect transition piece between New South Hand Blows... and their later albums.

Since it's an album on a somewhat major label (granted, one that regularly signs hardcore punk bands, but still), it stands to be expected that their sound would pop up a bit, and indeed you can hear traces of their earlier hardcore punk sound dissipate as the production value rises. In spite of this, their other influences rise in prominence, so the music doesn't feel watered down or anything. From what I've heard of their later albums so far, this reigns supreme as my favorite BDB release, since it's a perfect fusion of the elements of their sound... however, that could of course change at any given moment. Check out the samples below and you'll see what I mean.

The track listing is as follows:

1. Intro

2. Bounce It

3. Blazin'

4. Clap

5. That's The Way We Unite

6. Never Seem To Last

7. Turn On The Light

8. Live And Direct

9. You Up Around

10. R.O.C.K.S.

11. When The Man Have Realized The Sound

12. Flow (It's Like That)

Back Drop Bomb - The New South Hand Blows And North Kick Blows

I found out when I was doing my initial research on AA= for the blog that the main vocalist, Takayoshi Shirakawa, was the vocalist of a band called Back Drop Bomb, but I didn't think much to include it in my articles from back then. Later on, however, I discovered that Back Drop Bomb were not only quite eclectic and hard to categorize, but that they also did pretty damn well on the Oricon charts, and have a massive discography that just continues to grow. (Granted, some of the singles I'd heard from Nipsong, Breakdawn and Venometeoric sound a bit too eclectic for their own good, but I'll leave that judgment to when I get my copies of all three later today.)

This mini-album, which is both their first release and their only release on Sweet Honey Record (which seems to be a sublabel of... Megaforce Corporation? Is that like Megaforce Records?), is probably the most conventional of their stuff that I've heard so far, in that it's the easiest to describe: hardcore punk fused with elements of ska, reggae and hip-hop. It's an interesting, fun mix that sets the tone for their first full-lengther Micromaximum, which heavily tones down the hardcore punk element and replaces it with elements of rap-rock and a slightly increased emphasis on reggae. It's usually cheap enough to find online, especially on Yahoo Auctions Japan, so go for it if you want a good place to start collecting BDB's discography.

The track listing is as follows:

1. Back Drop Bomb

2. Bad News Come

3. Black Sky Above

4. Another Way, On My Way

5. Check Y'All Fake

6. Don't Wangle

7. Words... (feat. DJ Hasebe)