Otoboke Beaver is a punk band from Kyoto named after a love hotel in Osaka that was located near the high school of one of its members. They’re brilliant:
Metafilter recently had a post about the death of the music review’s power to end careers and people wondered how you find new music without looking at sides like Pitchfork et all. For me, finding this particular band started by looking up Shonen Knife on Spotify, then browsing through the related artists, finding another great punk band 54 Nude Honeys, browsing through their related artists list and ending up with Otoboke Beaver. Shonen Knife of course had a brief burst of popularity outside Japan in the early nineties, so I knew them from when Dutch radio used to play them, when it was still possible for cult bands like this to actually be on the radio. Spotify now fills the same function for me.
Reviews, especially those of the Pitchfork variety, have never been that important to me, though there were times when I’d follow the recommendations of a site like warr.org — run by two enthusiasts rather than professional reviewers– religiously. And sometimes it was the random musings of a blogger I followed that got me interested in a particular band — and ultimately in this case, an entire prog rock subgenre. You can only find new music if you’re open to experiment and break out from your regular listening, by either getting recommendations from people you trust, or by just following the trail leading out from a band or artist you already like. What with so much music available effectively for free, there’s no need for the safety net of a review anymore before you sample a new band.
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