A short one today about this band from Kyoto, Japan, called
LLRR (pronounced "lew-lew-low-low").
Featuring the vocalist of O Summer Vacation
(whose first album should be out very soon), the guitarist of
Sizenkai no Okite, Word, One and No Key and
the drummer of
Otori, Worst Taste and
O Summer Vacation
(as often with Japanese bands it gets very difficult to track their online
homes), the trio has a wealth of experience in the field of bouncy,
high-pitched punk that Japan is so good at delivering.
Released on the Tokyo-based label
Call And Response, LLRR's debut tape is a little gem of what I find a very typical kind of
Japanese punk rock. There is something about very high pitched female
vocals in the Japanese scene, I've written before about
a few of these bands
(mostly on the hardcore punk side) and I tend to enjoy listening to them
even if the vocals usually get on my nerves at some point.
LLRR is all about frantic rhythms, bouncy melodies and controlled chaos.
They're far from reaching the total madness of fastcore female
fronted bands (check my post about
NO NO NO) that have been destroying eardrums for decades in basement shows all
over the archipelagos but they do manage to turn chaos (or at least what
one might call a nervous overexcitement edging with nervous breakdown)
into music.
Thanks to
the mix made by the band
to present their various influences to their listeners, I am able to name
a few bands that are probably much more relevant (and much less well
known) than Melt Banana that any website in need of inspiration
will quote over and over again when it comes to Japan and screaming ladies.
And that's how that, on top on discovering that these guys like Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Drive Like Jehu and a lot of super weird electronic and cheesy pop stuff, I discovered Gaji (no wave/punk from the 90s) that makes me wanna dig deeply into the 90s Japanese art-rock/noise scene, the fascinating Californians of Death Sentence: Panda! (and indescribable mix of Korean folk music and No-wave), the psychedelic madness of the instrumental kuruucrew and the groovy art-rock of Otori (in which LLRR's drummer also plays). And indeed I can really hear how all these bands fit together somewhere in the band tracks... Yes LLRR is arty but punk, groovy but frantic, "experimental" and weird but mastered and under control... this band is indeed many things and you will get you dose of No Wave / Post-punk if that's what you're into.
So if, like me, you consider Japan to be a breeding ground for fascinating but somewhat incomprehensible and, above all, faraway bands, any opportunity is a good one to dive into this parallel world... so just do it!
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