Annexed off with canvas walls at Brighton’s Moshi Moshi Sushi bar and open to the most lamentable June weather for years, the Tokyo Sounds showcase endured the night’s cold with three takes on Anglo/Japanese indie pop.

Bartholomew Square June 30.

Billed as a night of Tokyo Music, English band members from our white and pasty isle outnumbered the Japanese on stage. But that’s just nit picking: no one was demanding to see official papers of authenticity or passports on arrival to the stage. However, all of the bands are based in the UK, and that’s got to save on airfare in a time of recession and fuck-all available money.

Openers Ken Kobayashi and the Colours were hard to dislike just on the sheer nature of their in-offensiveness. All shared benign smiles, general passivity and puppy-like good vibes. Ken and his friends like to keep things gentle.

Songs invariably started with Mr Kobayashi plucking some sub-samba Jose Feliciano type chords that would soon meander into familiar indie trappings as the Colours took lead from his doleful and wistful musings. Ken’s clearly a sensitive boy in search of a spine, but harmless enough and ultimately quite endearing.

London’s Smallgang were an entirely more edgy affair than the openers. They combine Northern post-punk miserablism with the ‘sonic’ US art-house experimentalism that emerged from New York lofts in the mid 80s and blossomed state to state across the 90s.

Headed by brothers Simon and Toshi Kobayashi, who share a fraternal love of rigid dynamics and stomping on effects pedals for maximum visceral impact, they give a troubled yet considered take on human frailty.
Brothers swapped and shared vocals, their songs traversing the peaks and troughs of mini-personal crisis. Tunes are polarised between bleak passages of dispassionate half-mumbling to anxiety-swamped guitars that increase in authentic unease.

Things just got plain silly with headliners No Cars: wantonly obtuse, admirably shambolic, and – on their own admission – bladdered.

Done up in a hybrid of traditional Japanese clobber and Western duds, plus some cock-eyed origami hats donated from a front row punter, No Cars bought some much needed and overdue mirth and warmth to a night that was growing uncomfortably cold.

The all female three-piece clearly don’t give a fuck about the questionable merits of professionalism, and most of the between song banter was as much fun and eccentric as their singular interpretations of the three minute pop song. Should the whole band things go tits up, lead guitarist/singer Haruna should consider branching out into stand-up.

Her anecdotes were quite simply nuts, combine this with partially successful handstands, the continual dropping of plectrums, plus a general good-natured ineptness and you’ve got a one-off of a front-woman.
With brief blasts of bubblegum garage punk pop, No Cars push songwriting into the peripheries of the absurd. A former band-mate’s love of bananas gets a musical airing, as does a Selotape themed number, plus some more familiar territory; an ex’s infidelity with a Norwegian woman about whom Haruna had little positive to share.

A unique and strange night of Tokyo inspired indie-culture delivered via London and largely by Japanese ex-pats.

Words: Luke Randall
Photos: Simon Brice