Talking to The Very Best

Posted on August 11, 2012 by philipbrasor

No rappers in sight

One of the very best shows at last month’s Fuji Rock Festival was The Very Best, an electronic dance act built around the beats of Johan Hugo, formerly of the production duo Radioclit, and the vocals of Malawi musician Esau Mwamwaya. During their performance on the White Stage their hype man/rapper, Mo-Laudi, was wearing a T-shirt with the words “Africa is the future” written across the chest. Musically, at least, that’s true, and it’s the past, too. No one challenges the idea that almost all pop music we care about was born in Africa, and if The Very Best proved anything with their late afternoon set it’s that African forms are what it’s all about. The chanting style of the group’s first hit, “Julia,” set the standard. With every break beat Hugo set up the crowd would explode in a frenzy of good feeling. “Are you happy,” Esau would ask, stating the obvious. What else is African music supposed to accomplish except making people happy? It’s such an elementary concept that the music already starts from a position of power.

Earlier in the day I caught up with Johan and Esau at the Prince Hotel and we talked. Continue reading →

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August 2012 albums

Posted on August 2, 2012 by philipbrasor

Here are the album reviews I wrote for the August issue of EL Magazine, which was distributed in Tokyo last week.

Cancer 4 Cure
-El-P (Fat Possum/Hostess)
Contrast
-DJ Kentaro (Ninja Tune/Beat)
As long as there’s been a style of music called hip-hop there have been MCs who merged the political with the personal, but DJs? For sure there were, but it wasn’t until the late 80s that beats were recognized as having a thematic life of their own separate from whatever was being rapped over them. El-P, the producer who sometimes rapped and helped found the most diehard “underground” hip-hop label of the 90s, Def Jux, seemed to emerge fully formed from some left-field political science program for hyperactive teens. Though outing the military-industrial complex was hardly novel in 1999, El-P was perhaps the first hip-hop artist to advance it as his rationale for beat-making. His artists benefited in that they got the most potent tracks imaginable, even if the context wasn’t always clear. Then El-P released his solo joint I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead in 2007, and the personal-political dynamic took on the trappings of pure paranoia. Having placed Def Jux on indefinite hiatus two years ago, El-P, who still provides beats for other people, seems determined to make his opinions heard, and Cancer 4 Cure is like a declaration of war against war, an album populated by born killers and suffused with PTSD. Its worldview isn’t defiant but desperate, so much so that narrators can’t choose which side their hearts will lean, the abuser or the abused, the exploiter or the exploited. El-P’s own raps are augmented by the likes of Killer Mike, Danny Brown, and eXquire, MCs whose iconoclastic rep is touched by hints of madness. Having been associated with the intellectual side of hip-hop through his work with Cannibal Ox and other Def Jux alumni, El-P seems determined to make matters more visceral, because he can’t intellectualize pure terror and cruelty. But in a way his music can. This is dystopian rock of the most irresistible sort, sounds you don’t escape into but absorb with the need to engage the thing you fear and hate. Japan’s finest hip-hop production son, DJ Kentaro, doesn’t appear to have the same psychic concerns, but his new album purports to contrast the “positive” with the “negative,” qualities that seem to apply to the music rather than the words, of which there are relatively few. It wouldn’t be off the mark to equate “negative” musically with minor keys and more bass. However, being an old-school turntablist, Kentaro’s distinctions as a producer are mostly rhythmical, so the contrast isn’t easy to delineate. He has a habit of whipping the beat to and fro, as if reversing a platter in mid-phrase, creating tension in the usual clubland way, though he insists on a through melody line, either sung or played on crude-sounding synthesizers. Foreign Beggars provide the requisite hard style, mostly on the subject of hip-hop itself, and MC Zulu allows Kentaro to show off his dancehall chops, which pays the bills in Japan. Too bad there isn’t a DJ event at the Olympics. Continue reading →

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Fuji Rock 12

Posted on July 31, 2012 by philipbrasor

I’ve attended the Fuji Rock Festival every year since 1998 and worked for the Fujirockers web site every year since 1999. I won’t say this year’s was the best but it was definitely the most fun I’d had at the festival for a number years, owing mainly to the wonderful weather. One’s enjoyment level really rises when you’re not worried about precipitation. For more detailed descriptions of the festival see the Fujirock English site and for some great photos check the Fujirock Express Japanese site. Here are a collection of stray photos I took over the weekend.

The White Stage on Thursday at dusk, before the prefest party started.

Continue reading →

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August 2012 movies

Posted on July 25, 2012 by philipbrasor

Here are the movie reviews I wrote for the August issue of EL Magazine, which is distributed in Tokyo today.

The Avengers
With Joss Whedon at the wheel and 7-count-em-7 heroes, this extrapolation of Marvel’s super group promises to be all payoff all the time, and as it turns out two hours and 24 minutes is barely enough to contain all of Whedon’s ideas. The spunky writer-director made his reputation in television, where ideas are given plenty of room to develop, and many of the ones in The Avengers were already developed in the prequels that focused on the individual heroes, so if you didn’t see them you may need a scorecard before sitting down and trying to enjoy the main event. For instance, you have to know what the tesseract is (from Captain America), and you need to understand why the Norse demigod Loki (Tom Hiddleston) is such a threat to the universe (from Thor). It helps to know that Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) is a stuck-up playboy genius (the two Iron Man movies). But with all this careful preparation, the movie may still feel overextended, perhaps because you have to make room in your mind for the Hulk, whose previous two movies provide little preparation since he’s being played by Mark Ruffalo, who didn’t appear in either; and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), who seems to have been shoehorned into the script. Oh, and did I forget to mention Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), who sorta kinda appeared in Iron Man 2? Never mind. Loki, disgraced in the Thor movie, plans to recapitulate his evil credentials by stealing the tesseract from Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), the scoutmaster who aims to make all these unruly superheroes into a combined force to protect earth from whatever. Loki, with the help of some brainwashed principals from the earlier movies, forces the issue and Fury has to work fast, not to mention loose, since his main difficulty when recruiting the super ones is not their busy schedules but their egos. This is where familiarity with the prequels is essential, because we need to know why Captain America (Chris Evans) is open to ridicule for being so out-of-touch, or why Thor (Chris Hemsworth) comes off like some hippie reject from a production of The Tempest, or why Tony Stark just won’t listen to anyone. The clash of personalities is more fun than the actual clash of power rays and fists and armor but it doesn’t exactly get the movie anywhere. By the time Loki’s troops are pouring out of a wormhole in the sky above Manhattan, you might actually be relieved that you no longer have to suss out motivations and can just sit back and absorb the mayhem, which, apropos the combined super-powers on display, is pretty fierce. I have even more respect for New York City now. Those people can take anything. (photo: MVLFFLLC & Marvel) Continue reading →

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Media Mix, July 22, 2012

Posted on July 22, 2012 by philipbrasor

July 16 demonstration in Yoyogi Park. (Masaya Noda/JVJA)

Here’s this week’s Media Mix, which is about differences in reported numbers of the turnouts at those antinuclear demonstrations. In the article I mention the efforts of the Japan Visual Journalists Association, and my editor wanted to use one of their aerial photos to accompany the column but there apparently wasn’t enough time to determine the whole licensing matter. For those who would like to view JVJA’s photos of the demonstrations, here is the website for July 16 and here is the website for June 29. It should be noted that JVJA does not, to my knowledge, make their own calculations, but there are methods for doing so which I didn’t have room for it in the column. According to an article in the July 7 Asahi, at about 6:30 pm on those Fridays when there are rallies in front of the prime minister’s residence, the organizers start counting the number of participants. “Several people” do the counting using “counting devices.” Each person is given a sector to count. The combined number is used “as a base figure.” Then, just before the end of the demonstration, the various counters make an eyeball estimate of how much the crowd has grown since 6:30 and extrapolate the base figure accordingly. The police have a different method. The Asahi says that whenever a large demonstration takes place they send plainclothes officers to the site to “estimate the number” by isolating pre-determined areas and calculating the number of people in those areas based on “density.” For instance, if the crowding is intense but people still have a degree of free movement, the density is measured as 8 persons per square meter. The Asahi says that this method “requires a certain amount of skill” but that the police have never openly disclosed the method. In fact, more interesting than the counting methodology is the reason for not revealing their numbers except through anonymous leaks. As mentioned in the piece, the numbers that are usually attributed to the authorities are provided by reporters from major media outlets who belong to the press club attached to the police (in this case the Tokyo Metropolitan Police, not the National Police Agency). They receive rough estimates from their various sources and then, together, reach an agreed upon number after talking it over (dango). I’ve read this explanation several times, but the one I quote in the article is from Nikkan Gendai, a tabloid that doesn’t belong to the press club, which is probably why the reporter stated rather boldly that “the police don’t count accurately because they have no intention of disclosing the correct number.” Also, Gendai says that the major media’s method of basing their own numbers on anonymous police sources calls into question their “morality.” This dynamic was explicated somewhat humorously in an article in the magazine Alterna. A reporter confronted the police’s PR flack with the rumor that media numbers were derived from police leaks, and the rep said that the police are not interested in the correct number, but that they are interested in how the media determined the number they attribute to the police. Well, so are the rest of us.

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Media Mix, July 15, 2012

Posted on July 15, 2012 by philipbrasor

All together now

Here’s this week’s Media Mix, which is about drinking after work. Coincidentally, in the same edition of the Japan Times there is an editorial about the decline in drinking among workers, with the focus mainly on its effect on household spending and the economy in general. It’s difficult to tell from the tone of the editorial if this is a good thing or a bad thing. I guess, economically speaking, it is a bad thing, since it points to greater consumer belt-tightening and thus less spending; but this rationale assumes that the salarymen who are cutting back on booze don’t want to cut back on booze. My suggestion is maybe they don’t really want to drink that much, or, at least, not with their colleagues. The implication of “alcohol harrassment” is that people are being compelled to drink by their colleagues and superiors, and that, left to their own devices, workers wouldn’t drink as much.

And there is an economic cognate to this idea: the popularity of non-alcoholic “beer.” Though people who profess to liking beer speak derogatively of zero-alcohol brews, it’s important to understand why they are selling so well. The usual reasons given are practical: that they offer a “break” from daily drinking by dedicated beer lovers (difficult to believe since really dedicated beer lovers would probably rather drink anything but “fake beer”), or that they can be enjoyed by people who have to drive or otherwise can’t take a chance of acquiring a beer buzz. I don’t really buy these arguments, but it wasn’t until Suntory recently opened its so-called non-beer beer garden on the grounds of Tokyo Midtown that a more logical explanation presented itself. Beer has become the de facto beverage of conviviality. In social gatherings it’s the drink that brings everyone together, but if you can’t drink alcohol or just don’t like to get drunk, you could feel left out, even if no one minds that you’d prefer an oolong tea or a glass of Bireley’s. My first reaction when I heard of the Suntory non-beer garden was: Why even call it a beer garden if it doesn’t serve real beer? Is it simply a marketing tool to sell non-alcoholic beer? Well, of course it is, but it likely wouldn’t exist if there wasn’t already a demonstratively receptive demographic–especially in such a high-rent location as Tokyo Midtown. Maybe people who drink non-alcoholic beer in social situations instead of ooling tea or Bireley’s are just deluding themselves, or maybe they value the social situation over the drinking. Or maybe they really do hate the buzz but like the taste. To dedicated beer drinkers, that’s simply an unfathomable paradox.

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Media Mix, July 8, 2012

Posted on July 8, 2012 by philipbrasor

AFP-Jiji

Here’s this week’s Media Mix, which is about the consumption tax and how it’s structured. As I pointed out in an earlier column, most of the major media bought the consumption tax increase a long time ago. In this piece I try to explain how the tax is collected, because most people who pay it don’t really understand how it works, and they need to understand how it works in order to decide for themselves just how “fair” it is. Whenever the media reports on how more small and medium-sized businesses may go out of business after the consumption tax increase goes into effect, average consumers may misunderstand the reasons as being solely due to loss of demand. For sure, stifled demand will have a bad effect, especially this time. The last time the consumption tax was raised, in 1997, the government also passed an income tax cut, which offset some of the negative effects for the consumer, but bankruptcies still increased. As secondary media like Tokyo Shimbun and Aera have reported, bankruptcies will likely increase significantly with a consumption tax increase this time because of the tax itself and not just because of downward pressure on consumption. If people don’t understand that, they’ll just buy the mainstream media line that the consumption tax is too low by world standards and the government line that it’s the best means of bringing down the deficit. But if you use those points of reasoning, then why doesn’t the government increase taxes on assets, such as capital gains, inheritances, and property? In those areas, Japan also has lower rates than the rest of the world, but the Liberal Democratic Party won’t have it, presumably because it’s not “fair” to people with higher incomes.

The consumption tax has another adverse effect on the economy in general. As I mentioned in the column, businesses calculate the consumption tax they owe by subtracting their supplies from their sales and then multiplying the difference by 0.05. Personnel costs, however, are not counted as supplies. What I didn’t mention in the column is that businesses can get around this rule by using contract workers and temporary services. The fees that companies pay to independent contractors can be included in the expenses they subtract from their sales, thus reducing their consumption tax burden. Also, businesses pay consumption tax to temp companies when they use their services, so they also can add that consumption tax to their expenses. However one feels about the practice of “regular employment,” the fact is that after the consumption tax was raised in 1997, the number of “self-employed” workers went up dramatically, especially in the construction field. The irony here, though somewhat latent, is that the original purpose of the consumption tax was to help support social security programs, and most of these workers who were suddenly rendered as “private operators” had to provide their own benefits, meaning they lost the benefits they’d previously enjoyed as company employees. So, in a way, the consumption tax increase was theoretically helping to make up for that loss of benefits. Now, however, it isn’t even doing that because 80 percent of the revenue from the newest consumption tax increase will go to paying off the debt. And one more thing: in the unlikely event that those private operators make more than ¥10 million a year, they have to pay consumption tax on their wages, which means they are compelled to charge consumption tax to the company or companies they work for. There are rumors that the government would like to lower the ceiling to ¥5 million, which means that I would also have to pay a 10 percent consumption tax on top of the other taxes I pay since I am a self-employed freelance writer. Over the past ten years the fees that publishers and others pay me has been dropping steadily for various reasons. Asking those companies to pay me an extra 10 percent in consumption tax will not only be ridiculously complicated and time-consuming, but probably fruitless. It’s likely they will simply ask me to reduce my fees accordingly. After all, they aren’t required by law to pay me. I’m only required by law to pay the government.

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Media Mix, July 1, 2012

Posted on July 1, 2012 by philipbrasor

Argo Pictures

Here’s this week’s Media Mix, which is about the documentary Lonesome Sparrows. In the column, I mainly discuss the nature of Japan’s immigration policy and use examples provided by the movie to show that immigrants, while hardly invisible, are forced to the margins of society because they are perceived as being nothing more than components of the economy. They are not expected to participate in society and thus can only relate to one another, even if they were born and raised in Japan. What should be pointed out, however, is that while the Brazilian immigrants and their children featured in the film express frustration at being marginalized, they understand their position perfectly and to a certain extent accept it. For me, this was the most confusing aspect of the movie because I wanted the filmmakers to investigate this seeming paradox. Though all the subjects were discouraged, some to the point of anger, that they were being indirectly forced to leave Japan after the economic downturn of 2008 and move to a country, Brazil, they knew of only secondhand, they didn’t blame anyone specifically, not even the faceless authorities who carry out the policy from a remove. However cold and implacable these authorities are, and however uninterested the Japanese populace is in their situation, these young people are, for want of a better term, “Japanese” enough to know that they have little recourse. The situation also speaks to the basic civility of Japan, a word that may sound strange when talking about such a mercenary social dynamic, but it’s what the majority of non-Japanese find attractive about Japan. Several of the subjects in the film have run-ins with the law–off-camera, of course–and therefore their amiable demeanor on-camera, bolstered by the use of polite Japanese, is probably at least partially a front, a means of evoking sympathy. But it’s also in their nature because they’ve grown up in Japan and understand that interpersonal dynamics are not the same as social ones. Japan’s social dynamics force them to associate almost exclusively with other Brazilians, but Japan’s interpersonal dynamics persuade them to be decent to one another and treat even people they don’t know with a certain degree of deference. When the gangbanger Yuri talks about not getting enough respect while attending public school, he’s talking about the social dynamic, but it’s obvious from his deferential attitude that he knows how the system works, and, deep down, it’s a system that he appreciates. If he caused problems it was because he wasn’t accepted by society; the stealing that landed him in a juvenile corrections institute had less to do with rebelling than with getting caught up in the only lifestyle where he could find companionship. Once you understand this paradox, the situation of immigrants becomes even more perplexing. Here are young people who not only understand Japanese society, but appreciate what’s special about it, and the fact that they are not appreciated in return seems a tragedy. Not to be too mercenary about it, but to me the saddest revelation of Lonesome Sparrows isn’t so much the marginalization, which as a foreigner I have some direct experience with (though, being white and American, that experience is vastly more positive than these young Brazilians’), but rather the idea that these young people could contribute so much to Japan. If they are really just economic tools, then they are also a wasted resource.

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July 2012 albums

Posted on June 29, 2012 by philipbrasor

Here are the album reviews I wrote for the July issue of EL Magazine, which was distributed in Tokyo last Monday.

Trespassing
-Adam Lambert (Sony)
Magic Hour
-Scissor Sisters (Polydor/Universal)
Asking Paul Rodgers to fill in on vocal duties was a terrible idea from the surviving members of Queen. By the same token, the group’s recent decision to ask young Adam Lambert to fill Freddie Mercury’s glitter sneakers was genius. Rodgers may be one of rock’s most indelible singers, but he’s not gay. Lambert is. That may sound like a patronizing distinction, but even if Mercury spent his career hiding his homosexuality, his vision of rock’n roll was informed by the same campy regard for flamboyance that characterizes most gay-identified pop culture. It’s what made Queen’s brand of rock unique, and during his American Idol appearances and on his first album Lambert demonstrated the same theatrical flair in his own approach to rock. He’s also a technically better singer than Mercury ever was, so it’s disappointing that his sophomore album leans so heavily on production. Now that he can afford the best knob-twiddlers Sony can buy, Lambert has somehow attracted talent who don’t have much experience in rock and seem to think they aren’t doing their job unless all the rough edges in Lambert’s voice are smoothed over through overdubs and equalization. Even Pharell Williams, who knows a good rock song when he plays it, positions Lambert in front of a bank of synths that could have been shipped over from the last Ke$ha session without being reprogrammed. I like Ke$ha as much as the next pop sycophant, but we don’t really need another major label generic dance pop artist. Thanks to Nile Rodgers’ disco-dipping bar chords and diphthong-dripping backing vocals, “Shady” delivers more of what radio rock fans should expect from Lambert, but it’s such a throwaway performance it could have been an outtake. Much of Trespassing tries to turn Lambert into a funk artist, a vocation he’s not built for. Queen is correct to groom him as Mercury’s successor. After all, Prince is still with us. Pharell also contributes to the Scissor Sisters’ new album, which has a more classic rock feel to it even if the songs are more diverse. Due to his omnivorous love of everything popular in the late 70s leader Jake Shears has as much of a claim on Mercury’s legacy as anyone, but while he can be as flamboyant as Lambert and is more demonstrative about his sexuality he’s part of a group whose members all like to act out. Scissor Sisters have done more than any contemporary act to fuse disco and rock in a way that doesn’t condescend to fans of either, and if Magic Hour fails to reach the giddy glammy heights of their best material it’s due to Shears’ desire to forge an identity all his own. The rock on “Inevitable” is progressively dull in nature, while the Grace Jones disco of “Let’s Have a Kiki” lacks oomph. In between are mostly ballads, a form Mercury made his own, but he would never have countenanced compositions this shapeless. Continue reading →

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July 2012 movies

Posted on June 27, 2012 by philipbrasor

Except for The Amazing Spider-Man, here are the movie reviews I wrote for the July issue of EL Magazine, which was distributed in Tokyo on Monday.

The Amazing Spider-Man
The gratuitousness of rebooting Marvel’s most indiosyncratic character will certainly be discounted by all the money it will make, but those idiosyncrasies were never fully exploited in Sam Raimi’s trilogy so there’s at least that to look forward to. Moreover, Andrew Garfield, with his more hyper take on teenage nerdiness, skews closer to the image I have of Peter Parker than did Tobey Maguire, whose laid-back sensitivity seemed too self-conscious for what was basically a high school soap opera that aspired to grand opera. Marc Webb’s movie delves deeper and more carefully into the source material by centering the plot on Peter’s dead parents. Were Webb more adept at the exigenicies of pulp storytelling he might have made the mystery of Richard Parker’s (Campbell Scott) flight into the night and subsequent fatal accident actually compelling, but the solution, put off too long and with too much business in between, seems secondary to so much other stuff. And Webb’s supposed strong suit, his facility with young-love stories, is undermined by the scriptwriters’ use of the hoariest romantic cliches when mapping out Peter’s crush on and eventually winning of the brainy beauty Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone). Webb finds his footing in the relationship between Peter and his Aunt May (Sally Field) and Uncle Ben (Martin Sheen). Personally, it was Peter’s hormonally charged interactions with adults that made me a fan of the comics way back when; the way his secret superhero status exacerbated the usual pitfalls of adolescence and thus made his suffering all the more poignant. Garfield nails this dramatic counterpoint, alternating the emotional highs attendant to his discovery of his new powers with the self-hatred attendant to his lapses of responsibility. When Spider-Man, full of himself, taunts a petty thief holding a knife, one feels the full impact of stupid, giddy youth that the original comic was so good at conveying. Likewise, when he realizes the pain his erratic behavior is causing his aunt he punishes himself with exaggerated ferocity. The punishment he metes out to the nominal villain, Dr. Curt Connors (Rhys Ifans), isn’t nearly as potent but we have CG for that, and even though Webb has more sophisticated technology at his disposal than Raimi had, the action set pieces don’t cohere. When the big finish wraps up you may wonder what the outcome really is, and then have to contend with the usual wait-til-the-next-installment implications. The fact that Peter Parker is much more interesting than Spider-Man makes The Amazing Spider-Man better than your average superhero blockbuster, but unfortunately Spider-Man is still the main draw. (photo: Sony Pictures Entertainment and Marvel Comics) Continue reading →

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