[USA PRESS, TV & ONLINE] kip@tellallyourfriendspr.com
[EUROPEAN PR] Lenz@groenland.com
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[UK/Europe/Japan/ROTW] greg@elasticartists.net
Influences
2003
Electro Karaoke in the
Negative Style
CD Album
Massive Advance (madv003)
May 2006
Transparent Things CD Album
Tirk Records (Tirk017)
March 2007
Transparent Things
European version with bonus
track (CDGRON59)
available now as mp3
January 2007
Transparent Things US version
with bonus track
DD&B Communications
December 2007
Electro Karaoke in the
Negative Style
Reissued album Strange
Tongues Records (FM001)
August 2008
Knickerbocker Single
UK ONLY-Full Time Hobby
7-Inch Vinyl/Digital Release
September 2008
Lightbulbs Album
Full Time Hobby, DD&B,
Groenland
Vinyl/CD/Digital Release
Serge Gainsbourg
MF Doom
Vivian Stanshall
Project Jenny Project Jan
Kraftwerk
Aphex Twin
Brian Eno
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Imagine that Fujiya & Miyagi are mask-wearing technicians dissecting music, keen to magnify particles of sound to create a pulsing antidote to the ordinary. They speak in tongues, using language as a rhythm, picking words that sound good, rhyming ‘jigsaws’ with ‘carnivores’.
Their songs are incisive snapshots of real lives that make household appliances sound threatening. They are steeped in vintage music from evocative krautrock to deep soul, with wafts of early Human League synth, Floydian Englishness and the throbbing groove of Tom Tom Club, all filtered for modern times.
In total, Fujiya & Miyagi don’t really sound like anything. Instead, they sound like everything condensed into perfectly arranged three minute chunks of infectious pop music, a strange hybrid of James Brown on Valium and Wire gone pop. Or maybe Serge "Gainsbourg with a PhD in electronics backed by David Byrne’s Eno-produced scratchy guitar mixed by MF Doom. It’s Darwinism gone mad.
Formed in 2000 as an electronic duo of David Best (guitars and vocals) and Steve Lewis (synths, beats, programming), they released Electro Karaoke In The Negative Style two years later, a minimal electronic set it hangs eerily on Best’s distinctive whispered vocal. Adding bass player Matt Hainsby in 2004, they released a series of ten inch EPs that took them to the hearts of fanzineland. Gathered together these parables of personal injury, both physical and mental, made up three quarters of the well-received (Pitchfork, NME, MOJO, etc) album Transparent Things in 2006. Named after a Nabokov brain dump on the relationship between the past and the present. It sums them up.
A Regal seven-inch, Uh, further concentrated their sound. A set of vocal ticks, a funky bass and a storyline about a relationship as prickly as two porcupines, it made small talk sound sinister over an infectious groove. It was the perfect set up for their third album, Light Bulbs – imagine 11 classic ideas clicking on above your head, now with real drums in places, courtesy of Lee Adams, and the picture is complete.
Fujiya & Miyagi stay away from lyrical themes that have been done to death. Using old synths to punctuate their beautifully-observed anecdotes on romantic triumphs and disasters, heroes and villains and the world at large, their rhythms palpitate to produce modern symphonies like no-one else. Light Bulbs is a journey littered with fragmented images, anecdotes from the sublime to the ridiculous, blurry stories that you feel you shouldn’t have overheard. Each track an aural contamination set to itch your inner ear every waking moment.
“I’ll never be Big Maybelle,” says David Best of his unique singing style. True, but as a stylist fronting a band inspired by their evolution, plundering the past but set in the future, Fujiya & Miyagi’s Light Bulbs carves a niche of its own. This is truly contagious music, a completely unique take on modern pop music that’s completely their own.
Touring takes a slightly more relaxed pace over the summer and the band are looking forward to returning to Ireland and France as well as playing in Athens and Moscow for the first time. Touring for 2009 will end at Bestival on the Isle of Wight and then the band will be taking some time out to record the next album, so catch them live now while you can.
The video for Sore Thumb, directed by the ingenious, award-winning Wade Shotter, who also made the videos for Ankle Injuries and Knickerbocker, is now available on itunes. It was shot last November in a very cold studio somewhere in the east end of London and all the props are handmade.
Also listen out for F&M in collaboration with the wonderful Project Jenny Project Jan on their single Pins & Needles (video featured below), which is deservedly getting lots of attention in the USA...PJPJ's The Colours EP featuring collaborations with other great artists is out now and you can BUY IT FROM ITUNES HERE:
WATCH FUJIYA & MIYAGI LIVE AT THE PARADISO, AMSTERDAM
HERE
Nur LOLLIPOP das ORIGINAL rockt den RedRoom in Karlsruhe-City!!!
Nach den vergangenen MEGA Erfolgen mit namhaften Größen wie den 2NiceDjs, 12Inch Rockers, bigFM DJ Boulevard Bou oder Deutschlands No.1 Entertainer Nate Da Great präsentiert euch LOLLIPOP the Club im Juli direkt das nächste Highlight:
Am Samstag den 04. Juli werden wir mit euch gebührend im Independence Day Style feiern. Erlebt LOLLIPOP das ultimative Blackmusic Event diesmal mit DJ Dollar Bill und DJ Xtreme hinter den Plattenspielern. Seit früh da und ergattert eine von 111 brandneuen MixCDs der beiden Top DJs.
In original Lollipop Tradition werden euch außerdem unsere heißen Candy Girls erneut in sexy und glamourösen Outfits mit jeder Menge Lollis verwöhnen.
Achtung, diesmal haben wir für euch eine MEGA Drink Aktion im Gepäck: Denn von 23-01h gibt es Caipirinha Cocktails für nur 3,80€!!!
On top gibt es auch diesmal wieder Shirts, New Era Caps, Subway Gutscheine und jede Menge Goodies for free...
Nur LOLLIPOP das ORIGINAL rockt den RedRoom in Karlsruhe-City!!!
Nach den vergangenen MEGA Erfolgen mit namhaften Größen wie den 2NiceDjs, 12Inch Rockers, bigFM DJ Boulevard Bou oder Deutschlands No.1 Entertainer Nate Da Great präsentiert euch LOLLIPOP the Club im Juli direkt das nächste Highlight:
Am Samstag den 04. Juli werden wir mit euch gebührend im Independence Day Style feiern. Erlebt LOLLIPOP das ultimative Blackmusic Event diesmal mit DJ Dollar Bill und DJ Xtreme hinter den Plattenspielern. Seit früh da und ergattert eine von 111 brandneuen MixCDs der beiden Top DJs.
In original Lollipop Tradition werden euch außerdem unsere heißen Candy Girls erneut in sexy und glamourösen Outfits mit jeder Menge Lollis verwöhnen.
Achtung, diesmal haben wir für euch eine MEGA Drink Aktion im Gepäck: Denn von 23-01h gibt es Caipirinha Cocktails für nur 3,80€!!!
On top gibt es auch diesmal wieder Shirts, New Era Caps, Subway Gutscheine und jede Menge Goodies for free...
..
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