Satanicpornocultshop are a band from Osaka, Japan who specialize in creating music that blends hip-hop, glitchy noise, traditional folk music, pop standards, and much more into a sound that is both frantic and reassuring, comforting and hysterical. In 2007, the group appeared on Cyclic Bits: The Raymond Scott Variations, the special created for Ergo Phizmiz's Phuj Phactory on WFMU, which is now available for download via the Free Music Archive. Since then, the group has released a few stellar records, including the impossibily-long titled yet brilliant Arkhaiomelisidonophunikheratos and the super funky Catholic Sunspot Apron.
I was delighted to e-mail core Satanicpornocultshop member Ugh via e-mail. Please check it out after the jump.
Ψ(Θ)_(Θ)Ψ This song on this album [Catholic Sunspot Apron] is very important. I have covered this song
under three different situations - "Logic," "Expression," and "Destruction." To transform an original song’s outlook by a cover song, this is an important theme of Satanicpornocultshop. An original song’s outlook is transformed by combining layers of sampling, the language, and the arrangement. Especially, "Suicide Is
Painless," which is a wonderful song that can be interpreted. I wanted to present the variation of "Selection of Recognition" on this album by same song.
Anyway, now I fight to complex the work for release Catholic Sunspot Apron on Some Bizzare, UK. It’s UK edition with a different mix, the different order. I will try to one more remix version of "Suicide Is Painless" on this forthcoming edition, to be released this year.
On the subject of the covers, on Satanicpornocultshop records, the band seems to usually alter the title from the original, with the cover of Vashti Bunyan's "Glow Worms" on Arkhaiomelisidonophunikheratos being billed as "Next Year's Snow" and one of the "Suicide is Painless" covers on Catholic Sunspot Apron listed as "Suicidal Empire." Why do you list your covers like this? What inspires you to delve into the work of others?
Ψ(Θ)_(Θ)Ψ This is due to my idea, irreverently. I think someone's music is covered as well as sampling on Hip Hop. The song cover is a quotation for Satanicpornocultshop. When the cover song is taken into a certain theme, it’s reborn to another title. Yes, this is thief's complaint! Naturally, we are criticized!
Oppositely, only the meaning might change though the title doesn't change. Before, I've covered Kylie Minogue’s "I Can’t Get You Out Of My Head" as love song of Iraq, changing the song into the desire of people who destroyed life by the air raid... Sorry, I don't understood about Iraq war's difficult view because I am not Chomsky. Anyway, this is a part of Mash-Up culture, though it is those who think who very irreverently for the original writer?
There also seems to be a big hip hop influence on your music, from the cover of Ol' Dirty Bastard's "Brooklyn Zoo" on Catholic Sunspot Apron to the use of turntablism and samples. Is Hip Hop culture popular in Japan? How has this sort of music had an influence on you?
Ψ(Θ)_(Θ)Ψ The influence of Hip Hop is great in Japanese music. However I think it’s only for the composition method and marketing. However, rhyme of Hip Hop of Japan today is strange - They don’t criticize power, and have expressed gratitude to the friend and parents "Thank you, thank you…". Perhaps, Japanese Hip Hop is ruled by the cult that I do not know! Scary, scary, scary...
The influence that it has on me might be a little different from other Japanese. Hip Hop is an art of the
quotation and the jest. This cover of "Brooklyn Zoo" is Frosen Pine’s idea. He is huge fun of Ol’ Dirty Bastard. However, we live in not Brooklyn but Osaka. There is a Tennoji Zoo in Osaka. We replaced it with the song of Osaka, Japan. We incidentally abused the politician in Japan on which had gotten drunk in this "Tennojizoo".
The remix of "Tennojizoo" is contained to [Some Bizzare Edition]. This time, the mass media of Japan that doesn't exclude the crossing ownership is criticized by using a sample of Turkish pop song that describes a disastrous scene of village to pressman.
Hip Hop for me is a collage art. Moreover, the art is only formed with not a special material but a familiar one, and that is wonderful. The good material is in the garbage, etc... That is not only a superior record but also the press advertising and someone threw away. For instance, I think that the person who makes culinary delights from the remainders in the refrigerator is the highest DJ! Bricolage forms many sides, we want to become such a band, as interesting as any standard like a painting by Pablo Picasso.
When did you establish the "Nunulaxnulan" record company? Do you have any future releases you are especially excited about? What is the group/label's radio program "Yoru No Nunulaxnulan" on Radio23? What sort of content do you play?
Ψ(Θ)_(Θ)Ψ From middle of 90's. In the beginning, we, Nunulaxnulan concealed some noise cassette tapes in the garden lantern of the Shinto shrine, or we would deliver the cassette tapes to the post of the person who we didn’t know… The reason why? When I was TEENAGE, I picked up a cassette tape returning about the school in the dump site. It was a tape of the noise band written, "Infantile Diseases Building". It became yucky and I threw it away to the same dump site on the next day, though it still worked. A classmate picked up the cassette tape on the day. However, he also threw it away. At the school, the cassette shared in the dump site got into the news. I wanted to do such with a music label!
Anyway, the first CD was released in 1998 – it’s Satanicpornocultshop’s first album "Nirvana or Lunch?", ltd 300 copies. Now, spooky artists such as orionza, Akumadaikon, Dag Shen Ma, bebedelbanco, Seetaake, DJ Wubqun and DJ*eS has gathered in nunulaxnulan. I hope to release their works in the near
future. We also have CDR or mp3 download label named "neji". It can quickly announce their works.
Ψ(Θ)_(Θ)Ψ And more wider activity can be done in radio program. We, nunulaxnulan are broadcasting the monthly radio show “yoru no nunulaxnulan"on Radio23, every second Sunday (you can listen to Radio23 from all over the world through internet: with iTunes, Real Player, WMP and etc. here). We introduce "Unacknowledged Pop-Music" in there. Seetaake, Taiki (from orionza), Akumadaikon, DJ*eS, Dj Wubqun, Klanqschaft and me (with Satanicpornocultshop) - Every time, the personality or place changes. In the program, introduce interesting music and the friend guest.
The nationality is unrestricted, and not musicians perform, for example, there was an interview with a man living in Chinese underground at Shanghai, a real Japanese ninja, Cercueill (a band from France), Elena (from Stella, a band from Germany), Koppen (band from Norway), live recordings from Japanese Traditional Festival, reports of cheating of temple and shrine temple in Japan…and next month is the working poor report of Japan by researcher at Swiss university...! Anyway, I wish you enjoy the podcast archive. I additionally remake the theme song to the content every time.
You have been credited to much of the album art for Satanicpornocultshop releases, which has usually consisted of amazing psychedelic collages and really great computer generated images. What or who has inspired you on these covers? Do you think it's important for a group to have consistency in their album covers?
Ψ(Θ)_(Θ)Ψ Thank you, I’m happy that you’d like art direction! You can't touch music through a digital download. I want to make a wonderful artwork so that everyone may come to want to touch Satanicpornocultshop’s CD. If artwork is the one that music is supplemented, it’s more wonderful.
I influenced by so many different artists, such as... Katsura Funakoshi, Barhus, Lucie Rie, Jan Švankmajer, Jan Fabre, Taro Okamoto, Manuel Ocampo, Alexandro Jodorowsky, Jakuchu Ito, Irina Ionesco, Jimmy Ohnishi, Joseph Ferdinand Cheval, Pablo Picasso and more…The technology and the inspiration can be received from a great artist.
Courage can be received from a familiar artist. The artist who had the largest influence on my collage is Colas Meulien of an initial member of Satanicpornocultshop. He made collage with trivial photo book in Japan anywhere, and he made up an unexpected collage-art book. I respect his every works though he left the band. Moreover, the snaps of familiar photographers give me big courage.
What was the impact that Alan Folkroe, the group's original founder, with Ghammehuche, had on Satanicpornocultshop? How did you come to join the group after his death? At that time, was there any thinking by Ghammehuche not to go on?
Ψ(Θ)_(Θ)Ψ I’m very sorry. I cannot speak anything of these two people. A certain thing is… in Satanicpornocultshop, all members changed have places.
Satanicpornocultshop speaks often of the concepts of bricolage and plunderphonics. Where do you think these ideas fit into music? Where do you see your music headed, sonically speaking?
Ψ(Θ)_(Θ)Ψ Oh, "Plunderphonics" is sounds cool! I want to make Satanicpornocultshop a band like the villain wrestler – it’s a bean sprout fellow, actually... Though it’s detailed, music is a complexion of a detailed element. They are bricolages of a detailed element, and pastiches by a past work. Like there is no music separated from the root, I think Satanicpornocultshop’s method is not unusual.
Our theme is a combination of different elements, and constructing another world. Expensive material like an expensive premiere record is unnecessary. It’s good in the leftover part of the refrigerator. We that love old cassette tape that lies in dump site.
some super live videos of the group playing around the world...
caught these catzzz livE in tokyo a couple of years back... i was a little drunk on a mixxx of their sound, alcohol and life but i would still insist that they are one of the the first "important" 21st century pop bands... yes, i know... every sperm is sacred. but sperm were too limited by emergent technology to fully realise their yoni-delic-techno-plasms... and what about jesse owens? that's righteously awful... anyways,
total pre-atemporality sisthers...
now beyond yr gods u rock... why?
Posted by: mother extra-thereastical | March 09, 2011 at 08:11 AM
http://feeds.feedburner.com/nunulaxnulan
Posted by: Wkradio | March 17, 2011 at 01:30 AM