Hailing from chilly Aomori Prefecture, far to the north of the teeming Tokyo metropolis, Supercar has quickly morphed from UK guitar band soundalike into a pioneer in experimental music with a fully-formed musical vision. Often compared to Radiohead, another sometimes experimental group that has managed… ...

Among the various boy-girl duos on the J-pop music scene, Orange Pekoe stand out as one of the most musically interesting. The duo comprises Kobe natives Kazuma Fujimoto and Tomoko Nagashima, who like many other J-pop acts, first met as part of a "music circle," or club, while in university…. ...

Just why Takao Tajima (aka Original Love) doesn’t top the charts regularly is something of a mystery. He is without doubt one of the Japanese music scene’s most talented songwriters and performers. Maybe it’s his slightly adenoidal voice, which is something of an acquired taste. But that hasn’t prevented… ...

While members of Oui Oui probably aren’t quitting their day jobs just yet, this DJ/performance unit is manna for Pizzicato Five fans who still can’t get enough. Comprising vocalist Maki Nomiya (Pizzicato Five), Rieko Teramoto (TV Jesus, Pizzicato Five chorus member) and DJ Noboru (who also does hair… ...

Petty Booka is an engaging, if unusual, concept – two women singing and playing different genres of music on ukuleles. The duo first formed from the ashes of the all-girl punk band Flamingo A Go Go, which recorded for Benten Records in Japan and released one album in the United States. Petty was the… ...

The Plastics were electronic pop group contemporaries of Yellow Magic Orchestra during the late 70′s and early 80′s. The band were Chica Sato on vocals, Toshio Nakanishi- guitar & percussion, Hajime Tachibana-guitar, Masahide Sakuma- keys & guitar, and Takemi Shima- rhythm box. The group was… ...

Plus-Tech Squeeze Box are a studio laboratory manned by the musical duo Hayashibe Tomonori (keys, programming, etc.) and Wakiya Takeshi (guitar, bass, etc.), who first teamed up in 1997. They create a mixture of pop, lounge, hip-hop, bigbeat , electro, jazz, and techno in odd combinations that usually… ...

When it comes to Japanese musicians trying to break through overseas, one of the classic might-have-been stories is that of the Pugs. In 1997, after putting out four poorly received but very cool albums in Japan, the Pugs released an album comprising tracks from their Japanese releases on L.A.-based… ...

Hailing from the ancient capital of Kyoto, Quruli is a refreshingly original melange of power pop, lo-fi, electronica, and punk. Somehow simultaneously scattershot and consistent, the band posseses the elusive ability to coax beauty from both quieter numbers and their occasional trainwrecks of flanged… ...

Rip Slyme first began in 1994 with Ryo- Z and Ilmari, friends since elementary school, working as an MC duo. They performed at parties and events, and made their first mark winning a rap contest called "Young MCs in Town". The next to join in was Pes, who met Ilmari while attending an international… ...