Evening News: Living the Music Dream in Japan

Many bands from all over the world dream of playing live in Japan. It’s often seen as a utopia for many overseas musicians as the Japanese, it could be said, take their music very, very seriously. In the 1990s, for example, even niche UK indie bands such as The Pastels and the BMX Bandits became huge in Japan due to the love and interest in Western music. The hugely influential Shibuya-kei (渋谷系) movement in the 90s reflected this fascination with foreign indie music and led to domestic success for Japanese bands who channeled overseas sounds including Cornelius, Kahime Karie and Pizzacato Five.

Melbourne-based electronic and instrumental dance band Evening News are the latest band from Australia to take a crack at the Japanese live music scene. Since the borders reopened a few years back Australian bands have been playing live all over the country with recent success stories being Tambourine Jesus and The Lagerphones.

Inspired and influenced by Jungle, 2 step and IDM (intelligent dance music) legends Squarepusher, Aphex Twin and u-Ziq, they push boundaries of what a live band can do in crossing over to the realm of what can be considered electronic.

Evening News arrive in Japan on a nationwide tour taking in Nagoya, Osaka, Kyoto and Tokyo to promote their debut EP New World. In an exclusive interview with Voyapon, the band explains:

“The idea behind New World is to take the electronic music that we all love as a band and incorporate those sounds and musical concepts into a live setting. We’re aiming to recreate the sounds faithfully, but doing it in this way is never going to be the same as a fully electronic album, so recording this music, live, all together in one room and using that as the jumping off point for further musical exploration yields interesting sounds that we think are pretty fresh.”

The band, previously known as Beatnik Collective, has been making serious waves in Australia and hope to bring their infectious enthusiasm and positivity to Japan. I spoke to Dan Rock, founding member and bassist of Evening News ahead of their Japan tour to find out more about the band and what Japan-based music lovers should expect from their live experience.

Can you introduce the members of the band to your Japan-based audiences? 

Yes! My name is Dan Rock, I’m the bassist and founding member of Evening News. 

The first of our two keyboard players is Christy Wozitsky-Jones. Christy is a wizard on the keyboard and has his own solo electronic project called Skinny Wizard. He has the most beautiful lips you’ve ever seen.

The second of our two keyboard players is Winton Findlay. Winton pilots the Battle Station on stage, his unit of three synths, percussion and a whole heap of other toys. Unfortunately, we cannot bring the entire synth battle station with us to Japan so you’ll see him running two keyboards on the shows here.

Miles Henry is the driving force behind Evening News. He is one of the busiest and most creative drummers in Melbourne. He takes live electronic drumming to a new level. He plays live drum n bass like no one you’ve ever seen. He’s just as crazy and enigmatic off stage as he is on stage. He keeps us all pushing the sound forward.

How does Evening News differ from your previous incarnation as Beatnik Collective?  

Beatnik Collective was influenced by lots off jazz funk, acid jazz and UK Modern Jazz. I think the sound pushed further past Beatnik Collective as we all grew to appreciate electronic music more in our practice and in our aesthetics as musicians. Beatnik was us trying to make ‘jazzy house’ but Evening News is us coming together to be a band, not just a shared project. In Melbourne, it’s really easy to play in lots and lots of bands and be playing lots of gigs, so moving towards Evening News as a band, no rotating members or guests felt right. Beatnik had lots of members changing and evolving which was fun at the time, but this project is more focused on one goal. We want to make new music that is fresh to us.

How would you describe your sound? And which musicians and bands are you influenced by? 

Much of the influence on Evening News comes from each individuals appreciation for different Electronic music. We’re all big fans of all genres of house music but Evening News delves a bit deeper into some sound of UK garage, drum n bass, jungle and more specifically 1990s IDM. Aphex Twin, Squarepusher and u-ziq are all musicians that inform the sounds we play and the ideas we’re trying to use in our influences. The sound is created by us trying to implement the electronic sounds we love with a live band. With keyboards this can be fairly simple but the fun is trying to make it work with drums and bass. We spend lots of time on sounds in the studio and trying to recreate them faithfully, however it never ends up that way. More modern musicians would include Floating Points, Four Tet and of course the reason we came to Japan, Soichi Terada! 

Could you tell us about the process of making your EP New World? 

The process is fairly straight forward. All of the music gets written together, in one room. Someone might have a musical idea that came from a Jam or practicing and I bring it to the band. We flesh it out from there together. Recording is pretty simple for us. The songs get recorded in two or three takes. Once we have that done we work on the overdubs and send it off to the unofficial fifth member of the band Moses Carr to mix and master it!

You are coming to Japan for a five-date tour in July. Have any of you been here before? What are you looking forward to? 

Christy is the only one who has been to Japan before and he loved it. He’s staying for a few months after the tour is finished so if there are any musicians who want to connect with him I’m sure he’d be excited to link up!

We may or may not be recording with one of our favorite producers Soichi Terada whilst we’re in Tokyo, so making some music with him will be really exciting!

I’m really excited for all of the shows but we have a show at 440 in Shimokitazawa, Tokyo with our good friend from Melbourne, Nikodimos. It happened last minute that he was here at the same time as us so we’re stoked to add him to the lineup.

Shout out to Three Tides Tokyo! I’m getting tattooed while we’re here by some of the best tattoo artists in Japan who all work at Three Tides. 

You are playing in Nagoya, Osaka, Kyoto and Tokyo (for two dates). What do you know about these cities? 

Everyone we know who talks about these cities just tells us how beautiful everywhere is! We’re lucky to have some downtime in each place to explore and see the sights. Lots of onsen in each place and lots of drinking is probably what will be taking place everywhere we go.

What should your Japanese fans expect from your gigs in Japan? 

The live show is equal parts beautiful synth melodies and equal parts over the top drum and bass. Everyone in the band is a real master of their instrument in their own way so fans of virtuosity and synth exploration will have a good time. Having said all of that, the music is still rooted in electronic dance music, so getting the dance floor pumping is the end goal.

Do you have any messages for your fans here?

Thank you for listening and supporting! It’s amazing to us that anyone wants to listen to our music even in Melbourne so to be able to come and share it with other musicians and lovers of music in Japan feels really special.

Evening News Japan Tour: July 2 at KD Japon in Nagoya, July 4 at Socore Factory in Osaka, July 5 at Urbanguild in Kyoto, July 8 at 440 in Tokyo and July 10 at Nanahari in Tokyo. For information and tickets please check here.