Tag Archives: Japan

>Today’s New Band – FRAP FRAP FRAP

>If yesterday’s post and band celebrated the benefits of a UK-centric existence (or at least a teenage life revolving around CD singles, posters torn from the NME and the avoidance of contact sports), then today’s will be an extension of that, right? It could even develop into a theme week of good ol’ Britishisms, lending coherency and structure to the whole damn website, right? Yeah!

Except, of course it won’t and Today’s New Band isn’t. Well, it is, but at the same time, it’s not – ANBAD is Anti-Consistency, don’t you know. They’re the preposterously named FRAP FRAP FRAP, and are as different to yesterday’s Indie-aesthetic as possible. But then, conversely, they’re not. Hmmm. Just take their mentalist remix of Blur’s Boy’s and Girls, a song that, by it’s ultra-aware, fine-tuned arch Britishness, should defy attempts at remixing.

But FRAP FRAP FRAP are Japanese and geographically detached enough from the 90’s Britpop humdrum hoodoo to not care about slaughtering such sacred cows. Thus, they turn Girls and Boys into a weirdo, space-trance, stadium-dance, rigid-beat dancefloor riot.

Rock Show (a remix of the ace song by Peaches) is a similar burst of keep-it-simple-stupid, four-to-the-floor thumping. By turning an aggressive song into a metronomically hypnotic floor-filler, FRAP FRAP FRAP demonstrate that they have more in common with those pasty white Indie teens than you might initially think. Songs like this only come from a pure, simple love of good music, and the desire to create something simple, new and awesome, which is what they’ve done.

FRAP FRAP FRAP crank out these thudding remixes at a rate that suggests minor obsession with their craft. That’s as good a hint as you need to listen here!

>Today’s New Band – Hinariku216

>Of all the types of music in the world, the one that makes me want to rush outside and jump in front of a bus is Funky House. If you haven’t ever heard of Funky House, you’re a liar. If you’ve ever been in a knowingly cool shoe shop or walked past a soft-top Audi TT driven by the owner of a knowingly cool shoe shop or been put on hold when you call a knowingly cool shoe shop, you’ve heard Funky House.

It’s dance music that’s so middle-of-the-road, so bland and so inoffensive, that it actually travels full circle, straight back into the category marked ‘Über-offensive’, and is guaranteed to sap your will to live. If you had synesthesia, if you heard some Funky House, you would visualise nothing but a flat, infinite wall of greyness.

Today’s new band is Hinariku216 and seems to bridge that gap between quirkily interesting electronic music and Funky House – a gap which probably never wanted to be bridged. I stumbled across his MySpace page – www.myspace.com/hinariku216 and almost instantly moved on, but something made me stay and listen. His music veers between mid 90’s French dance, weirdnik squelching and vocodering, and the Devil’s choice, Funky House. It was strangely compelling, a bit like when you just have to poke a dead animal with a stick to see if maggots come out.

N.B. – A friend of mine is travelling around Australasia at the moment. In a few weeks he’ll be visiting Tokyo. When he told me this, I dipped my toes into the icy waters of casual xenophobia, and jokily asked him to bring me back the usual stuff – worryingly bizarre manga porn, photos of Engrish, things like that. I didn’t ask for any music, though. Perhaps that would have been a better idea, and less insulting to an entire race.