Ian (F) Martin

@ianfmartin.bsky.social

631

Posts

Writer and indie music scene person, based in Tokyo. Author of Quit Your Band! Musical Notes from the Japanese Underground (Awai Books, 2016) / バンドやめようぜ！ (Ele-king books, 2017) and owner of Call And Response Records.

Posts Replies Media

Reply to

Grant McGaheran

The one named after my reaction to earthquakes is OPA.

Reply to

Grant McGaheran

Oi! Oi! - the only Japanese retail chain officially endorsed by 80s punk ruffians the Cockney Rejects.

Three days in a row DJing at Koenji Uptown Records this past weekend. Just went with all party bangers from the years 1978-1983 for my short set on Sunday night. No more gigs for a while now and kind of looking forward to the break.

Me last night, listening to Cyber Cherry playing her 30 minute set of music by The Garden (and related projects):

I'm DJing again tonight and I'm slightly ashamed to say that as much as I enjoyed hearing 30 minutes of The Garden last night, the main inspiration I took away from it was to add something from the album The Garden by John Foxx to my next set.

The other thing it inspired me to do was listen to Plus-Tech Squeeze Box again.

Second DJ gig of the weekend last night. The theme was for each DJ to only play music by one artist (including solo and side projects). I chose Stereolab and, since it was only 30 minutes, leaned on the pop side rather than going hard into all the Nurse With Wound stuff (much as I'd have liked to):

Reply to

Nick J Mascis

It’s an end of the 60s album, which in seasonal terms makes it both summer and autumn. Being about the end of a thing makes it both intensely about the thing, but also situates it in the fading era of that thing.

A friend had a "Who Killed Brian Jones?" murder mystery birthday party tonight, so in my swinging London criminal guise of DJ Ronnie Cray Cray I played two sets about murder, death, cops and crimes to keep her vibe up on this special day. (My hip-hop game was too weak to even touch that rich seam).

We're wavering over whether the next murder mystery night will be Kurt Cobain or Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes. I'm leaning Left Eye, mainly for the depth opened up by the Nipsey Hussle death conspiracy connection.

Opposite here. My wife (Japanese) loves watching teenage boys suffer emotionally, but hates seeing pictures of rats, so could only handle Ratatouille when pitched as the closest stupid American pop culture could get to Evangelion.

Ratatouille is the perfect film to introduce your girlfriend to the rich world of Evangelion

Reply to

Sean Carroll

There’s only like 8 of us here including the staff, so it’s a cosy experience!

Reply to

Works of Genius

What was the score? I miss Twitter where the whole gaijin community would rally around every wobble like it was a sports game.

Reply to

Sean Carroll

I’m DJing a murder mystery night right now and found a way to slip The Kill in there.

Reply to

Joe Blackwood

They only take like 30 seconds to print out at 7-11, so I can easily make you a new one if the ones I have somehow sell out by then.

Much as I love the potholed chaos of the Japanese music scene, though, I'm looking forward to visiting the UK again soon, partly for the exotic thrill of seeing thousands of people watching the same weird music together at End of the Road rather than lurking in groups of 6 or so in a Tokyo basement.

A frustrating but also kind of cool thing about Japanese indie music is that you could ask ten knowledgable people for their top 50 releases of the year and there'd be absolutely zero crossover. Like, the artists on one person's list would be completely unknown to the people making the other nine.

Not saying there's more diversity than elsewhere, but in the UK or US you do at least seem to get a consensus gathering around a few releases. That happens with Japanese music overseas too in a way it really doesn't in Japan itself. For example, no one in Japan really knows who Otoboke Beaver are.

Well, OK, obviously *some* people do. They snagged a late night slot at Summer Sonic last year and they're popular as these things go. But they're not particularly part of the conversation, and that's not really a reflection on them so much as just that "the conversation" doesn't exist.

Anyway, long story short, I write a zine every year, compiling everything I found interesting in Japanese music from the year before, and it's almost all stuff no one else is writing about (not because I'm better, just in a different plane of reality): call-and-response.bandcamp.com/merch/last-y...

Last Year's Sounds (2023) from Call And Response Recordscall-and-response.bandcamp.com Last Year's Sounds (2023) from Call And Response Records

Reply to

Brett Fujioka

Right, but in this context it feels more like a reassertion of reality in the face of a Republican Party that was so used to receiving no pushback that it got very weird indeed inside its own info bubble. It wasn’t Very Online Twitter bros instigating the weird bit: it was Cheery Minnesota Grandpa.

Reposted by

Ian (F) Martin

Fascists plan to target Gya Williams Immigration Solicitors in Bristol on Wednesday 7th August as part of a co-ordinated nationwide attack against immigration solicitors and support services. Join Bristol Against Hate, 7pm sharp at Gya Williams Immigration, West Street, BS2 0BL Bristol, let's go!

Reply to

Stephen

I don’t want to feel less insecure!

Reposted by

Ian (F) Martin

Bristol being Bristol #drinkciderbeatnazis

For the release party of her album "Fake California Forcefield" last night, Tokyo DIY pop singer Cyber Cherry projected Chunking Express on a loop and asked the DJs to incorporate some of their own phantasms of the imaginary land of California into their sets. Naturally I went hard on the theme.

Reply to

words

Heh, I am the Bristol music stuff knower.

Reply to

words

Yeah, Geoff Barrow and Ben Salisbury, right? Theirs and Alex Garland's soundtrack collaborations go way back. And it probably shouldn't be a surprise that a guy who helped make this is a fan of The Silver Apples: youtu.be/9Y7HsS4bj-4?...

Reply to

Polito’s Way

Yeah. And I think Eno's role in Lodger is easy to downplay as there's no obvious ambient-influenced side 2, but thematically songs like Fantastic Voyage feel like part of the same constellation of ideas as Music For Airports and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts — this rootless sense of a world in flux.

Reply to

Nick J Mascis

I always do a little double-take when I realise The Au Pairs' cover of Repetition was only a year or two after the original was released. I know that was about three musical lifetimes in the scale of things at the time, but I'm a fan of artists covering near-contemporary songs.

Reply to

Nick J Mascis

This album feels a bit unfairly overlooked in Bowie's catalogue (if such a thing is possible with an artist as intensely scrutinised as him). A friend of mine described it really well as "an amazing collection of B-sides" but it really is an amazing collection.