The landscape of media, society, and even the microcosm of noise rock has changed greatly, but Onuki and Agata have locked jaws on the diametric constants: energy versus agitation, phobia versus euphoria, and instant nostalgia versus the relentless pursuit of the upgrade.” -Jason Heller, Pitchfork. “That Melt-Banana is making some of the best music of their career-over 20 years into the band’s existence-speaks to the universal and transcendent quality of their noise. Nobody can do what they do and nobody can adequately use words to describe them.” -Jeb, Crass Menagerie ![]() There are other extreme hardcore bands out there who are experimental and unique but MELT-BANANA are more than that. “MELT-BANANA are in a league of their own. And I think that pretty much sums them up.” – Olli Siebelt, BBC The band once described their live show as “Shooting machine gun and laser beam, chaos in order”. that far outshines ninety-nine percent of most other bands out there. “A band who have justifiably been championed across the world, Tokyo’s MELT-BANANA have been responsible for some of the most complex punk rock ever made…. Try to imagine an even more energetic incarnation of the Boredoms. Searing, intense, and mind-blowingly fast are perhaps the first adjectives that come to mind when listening to Melt Banana’s music. ![]() Melt Banana’s unique style, however, comes as a result of the distinctly piercing vocals of lead singer Yasuko O., as well as the frenzied, effect-charged playing of guitarist Agata. Although their music sounds noticeably different from any sort of traditional punk, it contains some punk elements: shrieking vocals, overdriven guitars, and one-and-a-half-minute songs. than in their own country, gaining a small but dedicated fan base among American and European punk rock fans. ![]() They discuss what he sees around him in the Little Tokyo in transition today as opposed to the one he grew up in 40 years ago what it means to play "Los Angeles music" in this multi-ethnic city how the band's koto player June Kuramoto learned her classical instrument while growing up in a Los Angeles black ghetto the question of whether you can build a modern, western band around the koto, which Hiroshima has always tried to answer how musical traditions with deeper roots cooperate better together making their musical mixtures work as, in microcosm, making America work making the still mutable Los Angeles work as, in microcosm, making America work his time as an Asian-American Studies department chair at CSU Long Beach, and what he found out about Japanese-Americans there music as a "way of healing" from the self-hate he once took from the media his lunch with Ridley Scott and Hans Zimmer how it felt to become part of a group considered "the bad guys" again in the 1980s, just as Hiroshima really took off the band's first trip to Japan, and the visceral feelings it brought about the universality of craft as an integral part of Japanese identity the difficulties companies have had categorizing Hiroshima, and the special problems of the "smooth jazz" label his lack of desire to play music for secretaries who just need their afternoons to pass more quickly how they honed their chops in the Los Angeles black communities, and how black radio gave them their first big push and the composition and meaning of the striking cover of their second album, Odori.Japanese noise rock band Melt Banana found more success in the U.S. Colin Marshall sits down in Los Angeles' Little Tokyo with Dan Kuramoto, founding member of the band Hiroshima who have now played for 40 years and recently released their 19th album, J-Town Beat.
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