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CMU Approved
Approved: Sakanaction
By Andy Malt | Published on Monday 27 October 2014
Of the three bands who played last week’s Japan Night showcase at the Tokyo International Music Market conference, Sakanaction perhaps had the most work to do in the goal of reaching an international audience.
“We sing in Japanese, and we don’t know what the reaction to this will be”, said frontman Ichirō Yamaguchi at a press conference last week, noting co-billings [Alexandros] and Vamps’ more travel-friendly English lyrics. But, he said, in pushing their music outside of Japan, they hoped to raise awareness of the diverse music Japan has to offer. “When you look at Japan from abroad, anime and [pop] idols are the most prominent image. But we have a rich music scene and we would like to give that more exposure”.
Filling the headline slot at the Japan Night showcase, the group began by performing some of their more house-leaning tracks, stood side by side in a visually uninspiring line behind a table, which didn’t fill me with much hope that their performance would be the one to win over a new audience of international fans. But a few songs in, a clever sleight of hand saw the room plunged into darkness with them re-emerging in a full-band set up. From here the show really took off, the band joined on stage by dancers dressed as geisha, and their sound complemented by a mind-blowingly impressive laser show.
Oh and the music – the music was good. Right then and there, they needn’t have worried about not being understood. While it is likely that their style of dance-inspired rock would struggle to find an mainstream audience in the UK on record without English lyrics, when exposed to their performance the language barrier couldn’t have been further from my mind.
Check out 2012 single ‘Night Dancer’ and their latest release, ‘Eureka’:
