Tag Archives: the japanese

MUSIC
New EP from The Japanese

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A blurb from drummer Daniel Moakley ’13:

Cupid miss his mark last week? Fall in love all over again with The Japanese’s brand new EP, “Skyward.” The five-track alt-post-rock album, Kickstarted in part by listeners like you, will drizzle you in honey, fight off the resulting bees and bears, and won’t wait until next weekend before calling you again. It was even thoughtful enough to not make one pun about aural pleasure. In short, it is the perfect complement for your tortured soul. Start off your weekend with an earload!

Check out the new EP on bandcamp. Also don’t miss the Chase sequence music video, directed by Jack Pearce ’11.

The Japanese is Adrien DeFontaine ’13, Neo Sora ’14 and Dan Moakley ’13.

EVENT
First Annual Last Concert Ever

From Mickey Capper ’13 Adam Isaacson ’13 WHATEVER YA’LL:

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Packing is for losers!! So many seniors playing music TONIGHT at Eclectic cause they never will ever again! If you’re on campus, don’t miss it. If you’re off campus come back to campus for this show or you’ll regret it for the rest of your life. BRING YOUR PARENTS CUZ YOU LOVE THEM!!!

10:00 pm Elvis Presley

10:05 pm Protein Stains

10:30 pm Dr. Hackensack

10:50 pm Miami Heat

11:20 pm The Japanese

12:00 am Treasure Island

12:30 am Bamenda

12:45 am Perfecto

01:15 am Adrien Feat. William

01:30 am Tonsil Hockey

01:55 am Juke Wherry???

WITH SLOLIVIA DROPPING THE HOTTEST SLO SONGS ALL NIGHT LONG!!!

schedule subject to change so don’t even exist anywhere other than this show from 10pm-2am

If you can’t go at all try tuning in to WESU 88.1 fm. We might be live streaming?!? [Also always a source for great freeform radio! Donate today!]

Date: UNTIL THE END OF TIME
Place: Eclectic.

MUSIC
Wesleyan Band The Japanese will do Funny Things for You if You Help Pay for Their Next EP

Incoming news from The Japanese, a 1/3 Japanese-American band composed of Adrien DeFontaine ’13, Neo Sora ’14, and Dan Moakley ’13 (and back in the day, Will Solomon ’13, who has unfortunately dropped off the face[book] of the earth):

We’re the Japanese. Some of you may know us from various shows around campus. We’ve been together since freshman year, and now that our time here is coming to an end, we wanted to release a professionally recorded EP. We’ve already started the recording process at a studio in New York, but due to monetary constraints, we are far from finishing it. We’ve explored all avenues with raising money with the school and on our own, but we need your help! Please check out our kickstarter page. We greatly appreciate any contributions and check out our rewards including “dress up Neo,” “quiche by Dan,” or “meat with Adrien.”

Hop to it, folks. A lot of these gifts are pretty time- and location-specific (there are only two Finals Week Specials left!), so you should help out for the story, even if you hate this band a whole lot or are just mad that they opened for Linus back in the day. I get along fine with ’em myself, but hey.

Got a creative project of your own that you’d like help funding? As long as it’s Wes-relevant, feel free to let us know, especially if you don’t know us, because we would be kidding ourselves if we ignored that people who happen to know regular Wesleying contributors pretty well just happen to have a much better chance of ending up on the blog frequently, and even though there’s not really intent to do this people who do work that doesn’t get put up on Wesleying often rightly feel shorted, and so we probably should do a better job of reaching out to underrepresented artists on Wesleying, but in the meantime please don’t feel intimidated to just shoot us an email about whatever it is we’re doing that we’re fools for not knowing about and maybe we’ll stop being fools so much.

FEATURED
Girl#$wag Takes the Crown at Battle of the Bands, Will Open Spring Fling

Not pictured: Girl#$wag. Sorry.

Last night at Eclectic, seven Wesleyan bands kept the crowd raging and vibing for almost three straight hours. The bands performed in the following order: Girl#$wag, Molly Rocket and the Crooks, O Presidente, The Japanese, Robert’s Don, Grand Cousin, and Treasure Island.

Girl#$wag began the show at around 9:30 p.m. to a large crowd of fist-pumpers and ragers. A bit more mellow acts followed after, but still maintained a vibrant crowd throughout. I ran away from the mosh pits that formed during The Japanese’s performance.

After a slow but incredible performance from Robert’s Don, things took a turn as established campus acts Grand Cousin and Treasure Island got the crowd jumping for every second.

If you don’t know already, the winning band gets to perform as the opener for Spring Fling. The thirteen-some judges stayed for the entirety of the show and deliberated afterwards which band would take the prize. (Disclosure: This blogger was among them.) After considering many different criteria, such as which band would translate well outdoors, get people dancing, excite the crowd for the rest of the concert, and more, the judges, myself including, held a vote and Girl#$wag came out on top.

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FEATURED
WESU brings Zammuto, Snowblink and The Japanese to Eclectic

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Zammuto’s play with sound and sonic possibility makes you go “Aww!” Sound-smithing and experimentation create perfect musical spirals with creative sampling and synthesizing. Zammuto is the Nick Zammuto half of The Books, with a new live backing band. If you don’t know about the now-defunct Books, they scavenged for sound bits (like family videos from Goodwill, or the contents of the blog Everything is Terrible) to knit together into sampledelic folk-inspired musical pieces.

Zammuto records all of its music in an idyllic house in the woods of Vermont. They are basically awesome. Projected visuals, like finger skateboarding or rushing wooded landscapes, were all a part of the sensory concert experience. The crowd gobbled up the surreal juxtapositions of images, cheering at an image of a hardboiled egg getting sliced in half and  returning the gesture when one video featured a bunch of middle fingers. When they were called back onstage for an encore, Sean Dixon started out with an epic drum solo, which turned into the drum rolls of the Paul Simon classic “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover,” with a funky, syncopated rendition of the chorus. On top of Christopher Owens covering “The Boxer,” it’s really too bad former student Adrian Simon, formerly ’15 hasn’t been around to hear his dad’s tunes and get all embarrassed.

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EVENT
#YOZO: Zammuto, Snowblink, The Japanese @ Eclectic

If you read our winter concert forecast (cloudy with a chance of Delicate Steve), you’ll recall the short bit we included about Zammuto:

Zammuto is the solo project of guitarist/vocalist Nick Zammuto of the generally inimitable Books, who called it quits a year ago. Zammuto features that same glitchy, wildly inventive cut-and-paste aesthetic, but more vocal-oriented and less emphasis on bizarre spoken word samples. (If you don’t know The Books, stop what you’re doing and watch this video.)

Guess what, homedrones? Winter’s over, and that means Zammuto is bringing his powers of freak experimental wizardry THIS SATURDAY to ECLECTIC for a FREE CONCERT that is OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. Jesse “Skeevy on the Radio” Brent ’13 with the crucial deets:

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FEATURED
Photos: The Japanese, Jacco Gardner Take WestCo Cafe

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This weekend represented a moment of renewal for a number of student bands. For one, on Thursday, the Japanese, now featuring plaintive songwriting and Adrien DeFontaine ’13’s new hairdo, returned to activity after a long hiatus. Also, Grand Cousin (who I do remember, bawwwk, was once called Grandfather) has perhaps made the ranks this weekend  as hardest-working or most persistently present Wesleyan band, what with their two appearance on concert headers and avant-garde new music video. Also, Featherwood Bee (on Thursday) continued being awesome, and O Presidente continued to prove that they can’t keep themselves away for long after their debut album release.

One of the few outsiders thrown into this mix was Jacco Gardner, the NPR-acclaimed Dutch producer and multi-instrumentalist, and his bandmates, who played on Friday night. Their music was soothingly atmospheric, balancing on the historical cusp between mid-60s mod rock and late-60s psychedelia. Songs like “The Ballad of Little Jane” had just the right amount of creepiness, and reminded me of the Rolling Stones in their Brian Jones era. Jacco was endearingly sincere, expressing gratitude to the crowd and excitement for their adventures in America (it was their first time playing on this side of the pond) and imminent trip to SXSW. The drummer wore sunglasses indoors, which I can both respect and suspect for a lad from the pot-soaked Netherlands.

Click through for some video of Johnny Love and the Heartmen from A-Batte ’13 and some jumbled-together photos from me (Eric Lopez ’15‘s set makes for a more complete document).

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EVENT
TNGHT: TH JPNS, GRND CSN, JHNNY LV ND TH HRTMN T WSTC CF

Whr th vwls t? drn “Jpns Blnd” DFntn ’13 xplns:

This is it. The show you never thought would happen. Three bands. That you have probably heard of but never seen. Return. To. Campus. Period. [Click pic for short version of this.]

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The Japanese resurface after nearly two years of conducting subterranean experiments. The last time you saw them, they opened for Lightning Bolt during Insanity Weekend ’11. Now they’re back together for the first time. Again. Watch their super-NSFW vid here, and come ready to party/die.

Grand Cousin changes names like that girl from your high school on Facebook. Whatever you call them, they play rock and/or roll and want you to come see them. Robby “Ronald” Caplan ’14 (bass), Evan “Que Lastima” Low ’14 (drums), and Henry “Seed” Hall ’14 (vox/tar) promise it will be “the fun.”

Johnny Love and the Heartmen have (has?) never played at WestCo Café, and you won’t want to miss them (him?). “Equal parts dulcet and abrasive, his gloomy baritone will inspire everyone, be they big or fat or nothing at all. He truly is one of the last great geniuses.” #startedfromthebottom

Here are important links:

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EVENT
Insanity Weekend: Lightning Bolt at Eclectic

CLICK IMAGE FOR NOISE:

Birthed out of Rhode Island School of Design sometime in the ’90s, Lightning Bolt consists of Brian on (cello-tuned) bass and Brian on drums. They play fast and furious noise [rock], and they play it loud – so loud I invested in some earplugs this morning (two for a buck at the Cardinal Technology Store!). I fully expect things to get real crazy real fast, though it remains to be seen if they will generate more sweat than Static Stamina did in Malcolm X House’s basement last night.

As for the opening acts,The Japanese, who are in the running for the busiest band on campus this year (also contenders: fall semester Almonds and Elephants, Grandfather last weekend), are sharing that role with raucous punk duo The Parents, who are filling in for raucous punk quartet Miami Heat. Be there. Instead of marking shots on your arm, have someone sharpie your forehead for every bruise/sprain/hairline fracture/sickening crunch you sustain. Spoilers: You’ll get a metric shit-ton.

Content from the opening acts, a color poster, and possibly more in the mysterious land beyond the jump…

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