King Khan sound from Japan [The Ton-up Motors]

The Ton-Up Motors live at Bar Jam in Shinjuku, Tokyo

Finally spending time in Japan yields a good new band. The Ton-Up Motors played an amazing show when I saw them a few months ago, playing a very LOUD style of rock that reminded me right away of King Khan. The lead singer is crazy although not in the don't-give-a-fuck way like Khan, more in an "oh my god is he gonna kill me?" kind of way. Click on that first picture to see his facial expression better, he's really into looking right at people in the audience. It's exciting, I enjoyed it.

The band plays soulish punk rock, and the singer has the Suntory-and-cigarettes voice to back it up. The recording of their album was a little bit cleaner than I would like, but I think you can still that they're a real rock band. Enjoy!!

Note: I used online translation for some parts of the titles, so the English is not exact. Strangely enough I am most sure about "Right Hand Man Fire"

The Ton-up Motors - Stupid Smile (バカ笑い大将) [Soul is Dynamite, 2009]

The Ton-up Motors - Our Ballad (俺達のバラッド) [Soul is Dynamite, 2009]

The Ton-up Motors - Right Hand Man Fire (右腕ファイヤー) [Soul is Dynamite, 2009]

Cornelius

Cornelius at The Fillmore, 1/19/08. photo by hippiesaredead

It's always a good sign when multiple people grab you to say "dude, you must see this band." This happened to me a couple of months ago with Cornelius, and I'm glad I went. He and his band (collectively, the Cornelius Group) put on a very enjoyable rock show, with extremely technical audio-visual synchronization. He's not doing anything that's going to rocket him to the blog stratosphere, but if you like rock music (ha) these tracks should be up your alley. Let me just mention now that The Smashing Pumpkins sit at the top of my own personal Olympus of rock bands, and I hear some of those arena-rock leanings in Cornelius, especially "Beep It."

Cornelius - Beep It [Sensuous LP, 2007]

Cornelius - Music [Sensuous LP, 2007]

Whispers from Japan

Eddie

Eddie Marcon is good music to post today, the first lightless gloomy day we've had for a while here in the Bay Area. This isn't sad music, though, it just seems to come from a lonely place.

Maybe that's because it sounds like these songs were recorded in a gigantic cave! The guitar and percussion bounces all around, but the centerpiece of these songs is Eddie's voice, which comes through loud and clear. Can you keep a straight face if I say that her voice is "haunting"? Well, I think it is, and whoever produced this record did awesome work because everything sounds great. It may have actually been the band themselves, since the CD says it was recorded at Eddie's house.

Apparently they have some pedigree in the Japanese psych scene. I don't know anything about that, but their label, Preservation, has a page with more of this info if you're interested. I heard about them from an article on Dusted profiling a bunch of interesting Japanese bands. Thanks Dusted!

Eddie Marcon - Blues [Shining on Graveposts, 2005]

Eddie Marcon - Mukau [Shining on Graveposts, 2005]

I couldn't find this album when I was in Japan (!), but you can pick it up online at Boomkat (£) or Miramoglu ($).