![]() You’ve said that in Japan it wasn’t like that because there wasn’t a particular drugs scene – has that made the music different, in a way? There are some venues that are well curated and book great bands, so people follow the venue instead of the artists themselves.Ī lot of traditional western psych rock music, especially from the 60s and 70s, is intimately connected with drugs, expanding the mind and consciousness. ![]() But as far as we can see, or hear, there aren’t really any new things or challenging music coming from Japan from young bands. Tomo Katsurada: We haven’t been there this past year, actually, so we don’t know. Some venues have stopped ‘pay to play’, but they’re just not charging it to the band anymore – bands still don’t get paid. Has it got any better for smaller bands there? You’ve talked in the past about ‘pay to play’, and how it’s very difficult to play to live audiences. Most of the bands on our label play similar music, but they were already around when we started. We haven’t seen new bands coming out of Japan with a similar style. Have there been a lot of bands following in your wake? Your band restarted the psych rock scene in Japan to a certain extent and revived interest in it. Masana Temples certainly achieves that it’s their most wide ranging, eclectic record, and one that reflects where the band currently find themselves – far from home, possibility stretching out to the horizon. The band sought him out not just out of admiration for his work, but a desire to record with someone from a vastly different background to challenge themselves, essentially, and add new dimensions to their sound. Laid-back funk, jazz, and classical Indian music sit alongside their trademark motorik grooves and acid-tinged folk, with the audible influence of Portuguese jazz guitarist and producer Bruno Pernadas. Fresh from a day’s rehearsals with Ryley Walker – their one-off collaboration, Deep Fried Grandeur, is an hour-long improv jam due to be debuted in a few days at Le Guess Who? – there’s the small matter of an upcoming world tour in support of new LP Masana Temples, a rich, mellow record that’s drenched in life and colour, much like the kabuki-inspired artwork that graces its cover. The city is “the centre of the earth for European bands,” says Katsurada, and it’s here we meet, just ten minutes from the house the pair share in the hip, industrial-chic neighbourhood of Oost.Īs ever, there is much work to be done. Kurosawa and guitarist/vocalist Tomo Katsurada escaped permanently in 2016, moving the heart of the band – and their label, Guruguru Brain – to Amsterdam, a switch that was inspired by logistics and a desire to make conquering the West easier for those following in the band’s slipstream. Such an experimental approach marked them out from their noisier Japanese peers and saw them flourish beyond Tokyo’s cramped clubs and insular music scene. Their early work flipped between feedback-loaded guitar solos and long sitar drones, and a more progressive, folk approach to psychedelica, a New Weird Japan that borrowed as much from Dylan as it did from the likes of Jefferson Airplane. The quintet have come a long way – both literally and metaphorically – from busking on the streets of Tokyo back in 2012. “At first, we just wanted to get out of Japan. “We all write four or five songs a month,” says drummer and vocalist Go Kurosawa of their prolificacy during lunch on a rare day off, “and add them to our Dropbox.” And the Never Ending Tour? He chuckles. ![]() ![]() Is there a harder working band than Kikagaku Moyo? Over the past two years alone the acclaimed Japanese psych rockers have released two albums and one EP, toured both the US and Europe three times, and racked up dates across China and Australia (not to mention countless festival appearances and collaborations across the globe).
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