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3 december 2014

Otori: some tightly composed brutality from Japan

 

 

The above live track (the only video of otori I could find on YouTube) may at first sound like a trash heap of noise to my distinguished audience. These songs are aggressive and uncompromising, yes, and the singer sounds like a hyperactive infant on an overdose of Redbull from a post-apocalyptic world.

But otori deals in tightly written compositions, perfectly timed, full of surprising turns and titillating intermezzos, not to mention the pulsating rhythm driving these songs. They have a new album out, their first proper studio-album, I believe, and it is definitely one of my favorite albums of the year. It’s called I wanna be your noise and you can buy it here, but not on iTunes if you are in Europe, which keeps irritating me to no avail. It’s 2014, guys, almost 2015!

First listen to some tracks on Soundcloud. You will probably like Suru Communication right away since it it echoes the ska-rock that was popular in the seventies (Selector). There are two more tracks on their Soundcloud page. On YouTube there is a trailer for their album. Very, very exciting stuff.

I’m telling you, if there hadn’t been the Japanese underground scene, I’d have declared the musical year 2014 dead.

Filmpjes, Japan, Japanese Rock Chicks That I Am Awe-Struck With
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