J-Pap? Maybe Not!

We've been trying for almost a year now to 'get into' Japanese music. Well, that's a lie actually. We very quickly scaled down our aspirations and have been trying to find any kind of indigenous music that is tolerable. Watching MTV Japan is a bit like watching a succession of Eurovision Song Contest auditions, but with much better videos. A quick roll-call of J-Pop gives you a clue - Rip Slyme, Mr Children, Bump Of Chicken...

Yes. I'm afraid that really IS Bump of Chicken...

It's not that they are lousy musicians - quite the contrary in fact. The precocity of youth here is quite frightening. No hanging around on street corners menacing the elderly for them, they're all indoors polishing their fretwork. It's just that the music is so utterly derivative and well, dull. Unlike manufacturing, music isn't just about build quality.

And they've got no excuses - the Japanese music industry is the second largest in the world, so there's no shortage of cash. Million-selling records in Japan are not as frequent as they used to be, but they still exist (unlike the UK, where it seems you can just email your mates these days to get to Number One). The highest-selling single in Japan was in the 70s, when some dodgy nursery rhyme sold over 4 million copies. This pales into insignificance compared with the biggest-selling single of all time - Elton John's horrible Candle In The Wind - which has amassed an astonishing 26 million sales worldwide. But then credit where credit's due - Japan's sales are achieved solely in Japan. After all, no-one else is going to buy this stuff.

The Yoshida Brothers are pretty interesting on the face of it. 'Their axes are old school, their music is new school' proclaim their marketeers. Their 'axes' are three-stringed shamisen, and you have to hand it to them for even having the idea of covering Brian Eno's By This River from Before and After Science (Yoshida Brothers III). Respect indeed. Unfortunately the whole twangy-plink deal that is the charm of the shamisen doesn't have legs - in fact it really starts to get on your thrupennies after about 15 minutes.

But recently we have happened upon a band that we think aren't half bad at all. Oreskaband are a six-piece girl band from Osaka who are smart enough to mine a genre that is quintessentially derivative from the outset - ska. Maybe it's because I'm from Coventry, the (second) home of ska, or maybe it's because I'm just over the hill, but there's a hint of Specials, Dexys and Roland from Grange Hill's sister about this bunch. What a treat they are. Check out their website. And remember where you heard it first...