Sonar Tokyo 2011 day 1 – Saiyan saves the day

This is a two-part review of Sonar Tokyo 2011. Part 2 is here. Thanks to Davide at RBMA and Sonar for their help over the weekend.

Last night a Saiyan came to Tokyo and brought salvation to a ravaged island through music. He was flanked by a kid in a spacesuit playing keys and a mystic shaman playing bass. Or maybe it was the unhealthy amounts of shochu I’d been drinking which made me see things. After all as someone pointed out on twitter, who organises a festival during hanami season?

No doubt the alcohol played its part in my imaginary vision, though the reality of what went down on the first night of Sonar Tokyo is not that far off. With the recent natural disasters and bad news befalling the north of the country and the capital, the two day Sonar Tokyo festival went from being one of the highlights on everyone’s calendar to a guessing game of ‘who will be there and who won’t’. Roughly half of the international line up cancelled their appearances – Modeselektor, Hudson Mohawke and DJ Scotch Egg being the absentees during yesterday’s day one. I won’t lie, this sudden bout of cancellations definitely put a downer on the whole thing for a lot of people I know. And that’s not even considering what those who paid for their tickets in advance felt like. All this brought on – I assume – by the rabid Western news coverage that seems to depict Tokyo as some sort of post-nuclear wasteland where no one wants to do anything anymore. Still Sonar should be congratulated for their stellar work in providing replacement acts in such short time, and luckily for them the main headliners did not pull out.

Continue reading “Sonar Tokyo 2011 day 1 – Saiyan saves the day”

Posted in Event reviews, Japan, Music, Music in Japan, Online Portfolio.

Tagged with Event reviews, festival, Flying Lotus, Japan, Music, Sonar Tokyo.

No comments

By Laurent –

Notes from a contaminated island – 29/03/11

“Since the earthquake, there haven’t been any foreigners” explains the owner of a small restaurant slash souvenir shop situated right outside a reconstructed traditional village on the shores of Lake Sai, in the shadows of Mt. Fuji. “It’s been really quiet, you’ve been good customers today”. All we did was spend 1,000 yen on some soba and a hot sake. The village itself, which I’d visited once 4 years ago, was also quiet with half its shops and educational/cultural houses closed as well as its two traditional soba shops – though that could just be bad timing on our part, it was 3pm when we got there.

I first visited Kawaguchiko, one of the five lakes that surround Mt. Fuji, nearly 4 years ago to the day. Today was my third time and I couldn’t help but feel that the area seemed oddly quiet. It’s definitely not the biggest tourist season for the area but taking into account the shop owner’s remarks it seems that the earthquake has been slowly taking its tolls on some of the country’s tourist destinations. Most of the hotels around the lake seemed empty, though most hadn’t opted to turn the lights they didn’t need off. Walking back to the station from the shore a lot of the small restaurants I remembered from my first two times there seemed empty. The term ghost town felt appropriate for the first time since March 11.

Continue reading “Notes from a contaminated island – 29/03/11″

Posted in Japan, People and places, Society and life.

Tagged with earthquake, Japan, People and places, Society and life, Tokyo.

No comments

By Laurent –

Notes from a contaminated island – 25/03/11

Back on the shinkansen. This time a longer stretch from Okayama to Tokyo. Stopped at Kyoto station. Turned my head around to see an old woman on the platform look at me and smile.

I left Tokyo on monday morning after what has been one of the most exciting and exhausting ten days of my life. Headed south for some r&r – two days in Kyoto picking up my friend who’d flown in for two weeks, then two days in Shikoku (Kawanoe to be exact) to visit my old friend Tatsuki who has just relocated to Japan after spending most of his life in England. He’s a recent, and very proud, dad and as my flatmate put it a few months back ‘London is no place to raise a kid’. An old house on the hills overlooking the city with nature, good neighbours and family within close distance is definitely a step up from Clapham.

During those four days, south/western Japan has felt like a world away from Tokyo. No aftershocks. No radiation fear. No panic buying. Lots of tourists (including French, funnily enough), lots of smiles, good food, drinks and friends. At the same time I kept seeing the internet explode at regular interval with various scare stories associated with the Fukushima nuclear plant meltdown. The last of which was a panic related to contaminated water which was deemed unfit for infants – thus leading to adults with no children panic buying and seemingly leaving those who need bottled water most without it. My mind still can’t make sense of such reactions. Personally the only effect this ended up having is that once more friends and family back in Europe insisted I stay away from tap water, because as they said the risk isn’t worth taking. I still maintain that personal choice in these situations, especially for those us which don’t cave in to mass hysteria, is the only way to go. So I’ll be drinking tap water when I get back to Tokyo tonight, and failing that I’ll just rely on tea and booze.

Continue reading “Notes from a contaminated island – 25/03/11″

Posted in Japan, People and places, Society and life.

Tagged with earthquake, Japan, Music, People and places, Society and life.

No comments

By Laurent –

Notes from a contaminated island – 21/03/11

Monday 11am. I’ve been back in Japan for about 10 days. On the shinkansen to Kyoto, for the first time in three years – more or less to the day when I took my dad and little brother there in 2008. Now depending on where you live, and the degree of information you willingly subscribe to from the mainstream media, Tokyo – and to a smaller degree Japan for those geographically impaired – is either a ghost town, engulfed in a radioactive cloud or on the brink of collapsing both socially and economically. Or even all three.

Today is rainy. I’d forgot how rainy Tokyo can get. London does rain well. So does Tokyo. “It never rains, it pours” could well have been written by someone who spent time in the Japanese capital. Considering Tokyo’s newly acquired radioactive properties, a few tweets have popped up with links explaining that the rain pauses no threats or dangers to those who haven’t yet fled the – still – bustling metropolis. Makes me wonder really. I can see the benefit in reassuring those still in Tokyo as to the rain’s lack of threat yet I also can’t shake the feeling that it’s exactly those kind of stories that help feed the paranoia machine. I guess the government needs to cover its back, after all they’ve already got enough on their plate.

As I wrote a few days ago – a post which should be included in a book of stories to raise money for the quake and tsunami victims – my first week in Japan in three years has been rather ‘interesting’. The first few days brought with them fear, paranoia and tiredness. At one point on saturday 12th of March I found myself in the center of an international news maelstrom. In front of me, and on my computer, Japanese news were rolling while on my email and twitter news were coming in from France, Italy and the UK. I’ll never forget the point at which I realised every source was saying something different, or opposite, to the other. On sunday I had to leave the house. The sun was shining and cabin fever was making me feel sick. In Shinjuku park everything seemed as normal as could be. Later that night I found myself in a cheap izakaya in Harajuku with some friends and Tokyo couldn’t have been more similar to how I’d left it three years before. Minus the discussions of earthquakes and panic.

Continue reading “Notes from a contaminated island – 21/03/11″

Posted in Japan, People and places, Society and life.

Tagged with earthquake, Japan, Nihon Kizuna, Tokyo, tsunami.

No comments

By Laurent –

Nihon Kizuna compilation – Buy music, help Japan

So I may have mentioned that in the past five days, my host (XLII) and some friends (Broken Haze and Audace) and I have been working to put together a compilation of music from worldwide artists to raise money for the Japan Red Cross and the relief effort to help those in northern Japan.

The compilation is now available to buy featuring 50 artists from around the world. For £10, or more should you choose to, your money will go to a worthy cause and you will receive some of the most amazing music I’ve been privileged to work with.

It’s been 3 hours since we went live with the album and already we’ve raised nearly $2500. I am a little drunk.

So all I will say is please support if you can/want to and thanks to everyone who made this possible. It feels good to know that the internet is good for things other than lolcats and pr0n.