Welcome to part 3 of the Denki Groove Mega-party! Growing up, Pierre Taki had a mother who was a professor of nursing and was too busy to spend a lot of time with him. His father spent much of his time away from the family trekking in the mountains of Tibet. Without regular parental contact Taki was largely brought up by his older sister. He grew up learning about what young girls do and how to be feminine, a subject he uses in many of his works today. Later in life, Pierre Taki felt pressure to pursue a career in the medical field like his mother had but suddenly dropped out of university mid course in order to queue up for the debut release of Nintendo's RPG game, 'Dragon Quest II'. Today he is married, has one child and is still a game lover.
These days, performing often dressed in drag, Pierre Taki is the front man of Denki Groove. Taki is known for writing lyrics for many popular Japanese bands particularly for the pop band 'Puffy', now known as Puffy AmiYumi (thanks Diddy... lame asshole). He is a television presenter and is sometimes the goal keeper for FC Kaos. Now nearing the age of 40, Taki needs to be in good shape to block all those goals. Today's video will show just how he stays in such good shape in the form of '36 Year Old Gymnastics'.
Taki is as famous for his video work as he is being Denki Groove's primary vocalist. He has dedicated many years to producing video works in combination with live performance for himself and many other groups. In late 2004, he released 'Pierre Taki Presents COMIC Kiba Deluxe / Pierre Taki to Beethoven LIVE at LIQUID ROOM Vol.2', a DVD featuring some of his recent pieces.
While a talented lyricist, in today's video Taki opts for the minimal refrain, 'Pierre Ohayo!' which simply means 'Morning Pierre' over and over again. The video uses popular Japanese cultural references such as Totoro, juxtaposed by scenes of control and humiliation. As out there as the video may seem I can't help but relate to it on many levels. Maybe it's my comparative age. It also seems to mirror yesterday's Ishino entry nicely. Taki and Ishino obviously share a similar head space.If you liked Taki's 36 Year Old Gymnastics please check out the one he made six year earlier to celebrate his 30th!
Welcome to part two of the Denki Groove Mega-party! Takkyu Ishino has a lot to do with the musical direction of the group so it seems appropriate to take a look into his solo career. I had originally planned to feature the Ishino video for the single Rising Suns (2004) in this post. It's a great video that I saw featured at Kirin Plaza Osaka Art Gallery a few years ago. The video must have been a monumental effort, featuring crowds of thousands of people cleverly filmed from the air so please click this link to take a look.
It's great to see the serious side of Ishino but I will alway love him for his irreverence and so present to you 'Last Scene'. Last Scene was released in 2001 and is the first single to come out after the very funky, tongue-and-cheek, Karaokejack. It features the vocal talent of Tabito Nanao, who is an interesting vocal choice and is not really known for electronic music. It's Ishino at his most honest, not trying to be Denki Groove and not trying to be German-school tekno powerhouse.
The video is about racquetball, disco dancing (thanks largely to Japan's portly, afro-headed, disco king, Papaya Suzuki!), and finding true love. Ishino and Taki are real suckers for playing with male sexual identity and often use adolescent stereotypes in their music and videos.
UPDATE! This video seems to have been removed! Sorry, I'll keep an eye open and try to replace it soon.
UPDATE2! Still looking but in the meantime why not check out Takkyu Ishino and Pierre Taki's pet project released in 1992, 'Techno Kayou' by Fumie Hosokawa. Fumin' started her career as an sexy idol and became the Miss Magazine cover girl in 1990. The strange video is 'Niko Niko Nyan Nyan'.
It may surprise you to find out my favorite music in Japan was the traditional ska/rocksteady/dub scene. I must have gone to every Osaka Skankin' Night both in Osaka and Kobe for over two years and my favorite overall band I saw was the Miceteeth.
Long before I ever attended my first Skankin' Night, I found the Miceteeth's Kiri no Naka, their first CD single, at the Shinsaibashi Tsutaya Megastore. I have long learned to trust my instincts when it comes to trying random discs. Something about the Kiri no Naka single begged to be listened to and I'm glad I did or I may never have found this wonderful little group. As far as little groups go this one is pretty big sporting a ten piece band. Drummer and band leader Bondo Tsuji has lead the band to become masters of the essential ska vocabulary of chugging, syncopated proto-reggae rhythms and melodic horn parts, while at the same time nodding to the J-pop market in the form of singer Taisuke Tsugimatsu's sweetly delivered Japanese lyrics. Miceteeth have collaborated with many heavyweights such as Hakase-Sun, UA and most recently Bonnie Pink as well as a whole slew of Jamaican superstars.
I had a chance to meet the band in Kobe during one of my visits to Osaka Skankin' Night. I met Bondo who happens to speak perfect English which made it much easier to tell him and and the band exactly how much I loved them. As I expected, they were all pretty shocked and pleasantly surprised when I whipped out my iPod and showed them I had all their tracks. Then he promised me he had something new for that concert which I would soon discover was their new single (at the time), Sleep on Steps.
Today's track is true to many people's lives in Japan, finding small joys in the immense fog of despair. I know I felt this way on many occasions while living there. There is something so wrong about being surrounded by so many only to realize you are completely alone. This is a beautifully sorrowful track that accepts its own fate. I hope it proves a departure from the Emo preteen angst so forcefully marketed on the masses in North America. Adults get sad too sometimes.
It's time for the Denki Groove Mega-party! I've been meaning to do an entry on one of Japan's most influential techno-rockers but the problem has been that no one entry can do these guys any justice so to remedy this dilemma I have decided to do series of posts related to the band/duo along with side-projects to give you a feel for their range and styles. I don't want to commit to a certain number of entries and may slip other interesting bits of music along the way so please try to enjoy this very weird band.
The Shizuoka-born duo are lyrical comedians, nonconservative Japanese traditionalists, electronic pop stars, sound experimentalists and performance artists, all in a way that may make you question their sincerity. They seem to thrive on challenging their audience though seriousness vs. unseriousness and information vs. misinformation - in the most interesting ways possible. It's fun, it's strange, it's Denki Groove and it begins right now!
Beginning in 1991 with Flash Papa, their early works have a focus on pop sensibilities. With later releases their style has evolved through several types of electronic dance music, though often with many asides in unrelated genres. Recent work has largely been composted of German-style techno. Their lyrics are often tongue-in-cheek and sometimes quite bizarre.
Today's video, Cafe de Oni (which means devil or demon), is from their aforementioned debut with animation from comic artist and musician Masakazu Amahisa.
I'm pretty sure this video is well on it's way to becoming the meme of the week and due to its musical nature I felt not including it would deprive my extremely limited audience of true greatness! Today's bonus video is lovingly entitled 'Little Superstar'. It's a clip from a Tamil-language Bollywood film, possibly Maaveeran, starring Rajnikanth as the old guy lying on the couch. The music is from Swedish (AGAIN) DJ's, MC Miker G & DJ Swen's Holiday Rap, which is so school I plan to bust to that for a fortnight. If you didn't catch the inspired sample used, it is from Madonna's 'Holiday'.
While the following is unconfirmed, sources claim the little guy is a famous impersonator/comedian/dancer. In the scene he asks for a cigaratte. The old man says "No, you are too young". That is followed by "I only look small but I am 10 years older than you" (which is true). The old man asks "What will you do if I don't give you one". To which he answers, "I will cut you into pieces". The old man gives him the smoke.
It's strange to feature two Swedish artists on my blog considering until this week I hadn't heard a single (I'm guessing here) Swedish group in my life. Granted the Basshunter was kinda a joke but he wouldn't have made the cut if he didn't do it for me in some offbeat way. Again, I'm not sure why I'm drawn to this so much but I do know that I'm gonna take the Swedes seriously from now on.
Today's treat is Britta Persson's 'You are not my Boyfriend' off her first full length album 'Top Quality Bones and a Little Terrorist' pretty much just out (August 23rd - Yesterday!). Britta Persson was born in 1982. She grew up in Uppsala in Sweden but currently lives in Stockholm. In 2004, she sang together with Swedish indie-pop heavy-weight Kristofer Åström on his record and later joined him on tour. On this album Britta has once again worked with Kristofer who has helped her with recordings.
On her web site she offered fans a unique chance to vote on one of three different songs to decide which would be her first and second singles. Today's offering actually was voted as number two. The video is beautiful in it's simple use of colors and images that work well in mirroring the vocals. It's probably safely to assume English isn't Persson's first language but it doesn't seem to matter in her lyrics. While simple, they feel open, vulnerable and a tad bit angry - really quite fun to sing along to. In the end however, it's that mad, grungy electro-beat that really wins me over.
This song begs to be remixed into a full-on club track!Dare I say it? Basshunter, anyone? I've lived in a small country before and (presuming they're both in it) know for a fact that they can't be more than 8 hours away from each other at any given time. Ok, maybe that isn't what the doctor ordered but it could be pretty awsome! Click here to see today's video at a much higher resolution via Burning TV, a site dedicated to the Swedish indie scene.
Prefuse 73 was introduced to me by a university friend a few years back and since then I have really grown to like his cut and paste style often referred to as glitch-hop. Prefuse 73 is Scott Herren know for fusing 70's soul with the vintage hip-hop of the 80's. But Spain-based Herren has his fingers in a thousand different side projects as well such as Piano Overlord and Savath & Savalas. Herren's Cubana/Irish/Catalan roots help inform his musical style on his many different projects.
Using laptops, turn-tables, samplers and an assorted array sampling and manipulation equipment, Herren is able to create and fuse sounds that simply wouldn't be possible by conventional DJing. This has lead many people to joke about the idea of seeing Prefuse live, seeing some dude standing behind a laptop playing with his mouse. Having seen a few laptop DJ's in the past (tho never 73) I know that it can sometimes work. But Herren has a wide assortment of skills including some awesome beat-bouncing powers that lead me believe that it would be great show to watch live.
Directed by Aleix Pitarch, Prefuse's video for 'The End of Biters - International' was released off his 2003 album, 'One Word Extinguisher'. The track is, at one minute and 17 seconds, probably the tightest, shortest, hip-hop jam to come out in '03. Cymbals crash into pianos and snippets of a voice are tossed into the mix, coalescing into a vigorous challenge rap. The animated video skillfully deals with the songs rapidly changing atmosphere and breaks out the eventual deconstuctionist's happy ending.
There is nothing in life I enjoy more
than music. Like Tower Records says,
No Music No Life. This blog is dedicated
to the music that makes me smile.
I hope you’ll like it too!
The picture of me is by my awesome
sister, Kelly! It makes me smile a lot!
Welcome to part 3 of the Denki Groove Mega-party! Growing up, Pierre Taki had a mother who was a professor of nursing and was too busy to spend a lot of time with him. His father spent much of his time away from the family trekking in the mountains of Tibet. Without regular parental contact Taki was largely brought up by his older sister. He grew up learning about what young girls do and how to be feminine, a subject he uses in many of his works today. Later in life, Pierre Taki felt pressure to pursue a career in the medical field like his mother had but suddenly dropped out of university mid course in order to queue up for the debut release of Nintendo's RPG game, 'Dragon Quest II'. Today he is married, has one child and is still a game lover. 
Taki is as famous for his video work as he is being Denki Groove's primary vocalist. He has dedicated many years to producing video works in combination with live performance for himself and many other groups. In late 2004, he released 'Pierre Taki Presents COMIC Kiba Deluxe / Pierre Taki to Beethoven LIVE at LIQUID ROOM Vol.2', a DVD featuring some of his recent pieces. 
