Tokyo Indie

Back on Your Radar

Creativeman’s new music platform Radars is back for 2012. We interviewed Creativeman’s Yoshinari Hirayama about the event back in April when they brought Everything Everything, Miami Horror, Little Red and Is Tropical over for the inaugural show. Their ethos is simple – “By showcasing emerging foreign talent we hope to make it easier for these kinds of artists to tour Japan independently”.

This year will see the event take more of an experimental direction, featuring the post-punk stylings of S.C.U.M and the manic drumming of Islet.

Both of the bands are super-groups of sorts – Islet was born from the ashes of The Victorian English Gentlemens Club, attack + defend and Them Squirrels, whilst Huw Webb and Samuel Kilcoyne of S.C.U.M are the brother of The Horrors’ bassist Rhys Webb and the son of Add N to (X)’s Barry Smith respectively.

Headlining the event will be the melancholic tunes of Airship, who are the latest in a long line of Manchester bands to take on the world. The band have been playing together in various guises since they were sixteen years old, but after a recent headline tour of the UK and Europe, the four-piece’s career seems to be in full flight. At its very heart their sound is dreamy shoe-gaze, yet it is anthemic in its execution.

The final band on the bill will be Japanese rockers White Ash, who have been gaining quite a reputation on home soil in the past couple of years. White Ash rose to fame after beating off 200 other acts at the 2010′s amateur music contest “RO69 JACK” and winning a chance to appear at 2010′s Rock in Japan Festival in the process. Since then they haven’t looked back.

The show will take place on January 28th at Ebisu’s Liquidroom and will be sponsored by UK airline, Virgin Atlantic, who have helped make the show happen.

For tickets and more information, please visit the Radars website.