So, after that lovely ramble of an introductory blog, I thought I should write about something slightly more interesting. MUSIC! After all, that's why I created this thing. Here goes.
I came across Japanese Voyeurs a few months back. February? March, maybe? Sometime near the beginning of the year, anyways. They were in Kerrang!'s Introducing... article one week and for some reason I decided to check 'em out. Turns out, I pretty much fell in love at first listen. And I'm still not entirely sure what I love so much about them. Romily Alice's vocals are amazing - swinging between an atonal drown and an ear-splitting shriek and yet in between those two extremes, she has such a sweet voice. And the music itself - definitely grunge sounding, but definitely not grunge as most people know it. Most tracks follow the whole "quiet verse, loud, heavy chorus" pattern, which is pretty normal for grunge, but Alice's vocals, combined with some of the more unusual moments of music definitely put them slightly outside of "traditional" grunge. I found one article online which described them as spaz-grunge and as yet, I think that's possibly the best tag I've found. Doesn't apply to all of JV's music, but it'll do for now.
Anyway, having gorged myself on the tracks that were on their myspace page, I decided I needed to download a few tracks, so I headed over to the UK iTunes store, hoping. Bearing in mind, the UK store is notoriously bad at actually having the music I want, but considering Japanese Voyeurs are English, I thought I was in with a good chance of finding something. And I did - That Love Sound/Blush, a double A-side single. Happy times for me. So I played that on repeat. A LOT. I then discovered that the band had the song Dumb available for free download. More happy times. And then I realised that Dumb actually came from an EP - Sicking and Creaming - that was released in 2009. Try as I might, I couldn't find a download for the other two tracks anywhere. I gave up after a while.
A few months later, I set up a group on deviantART for music reviews. A couple of weeks after setting it up, I decided I wanted to review something by Japanese Voyeurs. I looked again for the rest of the Sicking and Creaming EP and once again only came up with physical format - vinyl at that, which is useless because I have no record player. It got to the point where I was posting on Twitter about how annoying this was. It's a good job I did, because their manager got in touch and kindly offered to send me the mp3 files. I could've hugged him. Suffice to say, the review was very positive - you can read it here.
Several months down the line, I discover the band have made Smother Me available for free download ahead of the release of their debut album. This caused a major flailing moment for me, in which there was much squeaking and waving of arms and general hyperventilating. I should point out this is my normal reaction to music. So, now I'm just waiting for the album. And hoping madly that I'll be able to find some way of getting it in Australia.
Smother Me is available for free download via JV's myspace page. As far as I'm aware, no release date has been given for the album, but I'm guessing before the end of the year. Check 'em out, let me know what you think and pass it on.
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