ASTRO B
YOGA DISCO
Release Date: 23rd Apr, 2001Cat No: DISCO0104
Format: CDS
Yen Guerrillas
Even as the once all-consuming Japanese economy teeters on the brink of total collapse, the cream of its underground pop scene are revelling in and reflecting the chaos that surrounds them.
Welcome to Astro B, star players in the vibrant Tokyo `future rock' scene, which bends the boundaries between pure pop and disco and dissonant techno-punk. They sing in English but can barely speak the language, they get phone calls in the middle of the night from Catatonia telling them how much they love them and are somehow on heavy rotation in some of Chicago's coolest indie clubs.
It all started when Judo-Man, experienced in composing soundtracks for Japanese horror and Yakuza films met singer Kiyomi Multicolours, an illustrator for numerous underground magazines. They wanted to make people dance, they wanted to snatch the discos back from the perpetrators of bland sterility. Most of all they wanted to take the piss. Which is why `Yoga Disco' - Astro B's debut release in Europe - is so refreshingly, life-affirmingly DAFT. While the band (now expanded to a five-piece) live is a terrifying assault on the senses - somewhere between Atari Teenage Riot and Vengaboys - on record they could be scrapping it out with the world's disco elite.
Astro B have already toured the States, supporting Chicago's Kleenex-Girl Wonder, as well as playing dates over there with the UK's own Seafood. The band's debut album, `Space Camp', was a crossover success in Japan but it wasn't until the very end of 2000 that they got to tour Europe, including a brief, chaotic four-date jaunt through the UK. Thus far their main source of British success has been some Catatonia-fuelled enthusiastic bedlam in Wales.
And now Astro B's dancefloor-filling, culture-bashing, grinning Cheshire pop cat is well and truly out of the bag. So take it home and cuddle it till you burst with joy.