Out & About (updated)
Back in town again after a Christmas jaunt in England, bleary-eyed and bodyclock-buggered but otherwise good enough. Had been cursing my luck prior to leaving, what with all the thoroughly dope stuff going on around town (Madlib, Acid Mothers, Pixies, Richie Hawtin, etc. etc.), only to get back and find that my flatmate hadn’t been to any of it. Brilliant. Apologies for the paucity of the January "Out and About" column (assuming there are any crossover readers here in the first place); working to over-zealous deadlines is hard enough as it is when you’re in the info-peddling trade, but that article got slung together (ooh, hasty!) in the second week of December. Read: far too bloody early. The listings are looking rather less threadbare now, so here’s a quick round-up of the stuff that should’ve ended up in the mag. But, er, didn’t: With a name like that, you just couldn’t say no to AMAZON SALIVA, hitting HUCK FINN on WEDNESDAY 11TH JANUARY. Just paid a visit to their website (www.amazonsaliva.com) and immediately recognised guitarist/vocalist Tabata as the guy I tried to dissuade from shopping for drugs in the sex quarter of Umeda at 5 in the morning, after an all-night Acid Mothers gig. Stranger things have been known to happen. 19:00 start, 2000 yen adv / 2300 yen door. http://huckfinn.co.jp/ Moving on… I’ve got fond memories of nights spent gurning to the strains of CHRIS LIBERATOR at a ludicrously divey joint in Sheffield. Delightful to see, then, that he’ll be at CLUB MAGO on FRIDAY 20TH JANUARY. Expect hours of repetitive, pummeling acid techno, the way they used to play it in the M25 Orbital raves era. Apparently. 22:00 start, 2500 yen adv (1d), 3000 yen door (1d). www.club-mago.co.jp Word from the Britpop Battlefront: it seems someone’s gone and thrown a spanner in the works here. THE ORDINARY BOYS have cancelled their appearance at CLUB DIAMOND HALL on SUNDAY 22ND JAN, though support act THE DEAD 60’S will still be appearing… with SUPERGRASS, who were supposed to be at CLUB QUATTRO on MONDAY 23RD. And now won’t be. Got all that? Fab. 18:00 start, 6300 yen adv. www.diamond-hall.com For "file under quirky" this month, see: lo-fi electronics from Olympia, WA act IQU (see photo, above), at KD JAPON on FRIDAY 27TH JAN. Expect theremins. 19:00 start, 2000 yen adv, 2500 yen door. www2.odn.ne.jp/kdjapon/