Hans Ruedi Giger was a Swiss artist best known for his airbrushed images that blended human physiques with machines, an art style known as "biomechanical". Giger later abandoned airbrush for pastels, markers and ink. He was part of the special effects team that won an Academy Award for the visual design of Ridley Scott's 1979 sci-fi horror film Alien, and was responsible for creating the titular Alien itself. His work is on permanent display at the H.R. Giger Museum in Gruyères, Switzerland. His style has been adapted to many forms of media, including album covers, furniture, tattoos and video games.
Indie rock is a subgenre of rock music that originated in the United Kingdom, United States and New Zealand in the early to mid-1980s. Although the term was originally used to describe rock music released through independent record labels, by the 1990s it became more widely associated with the music such bands produced.
In Japan, music includes a wide array of distinct genres, both traditional and modern. The word for "music" in Japanese is 音楽 (ongaku), combining the kanji 音 on (sound) with the kanji 楽 gaku. Japan is the world's largest market for music on physical media and the second-largest overall music market, with a retail value of US$2.7 billion in 2017.
New Musical Express (NME) is a British music, film, gaming, and culture website and brand. Founded as a newspaper in 1952, with the publication being referred to as a 'rock inkie', the NME would become a magazine that ended up as a free publication, before becoming an online brand which includes its website and radio stations.
Shoegaze is a subgenre of indie and alternative rock characterized by its ethereal mixture of obscured vocals, guitar distortion and effects, feedback, and overwhelming volume. It emerged in Ireland and the United Kingdom in the late 1980s among neo-psychedelic groups who usually stood motionless during live performances in a detached, non-confrontational state. The name comes from the heavy use of effects pedals, as the performers were often looking down at their pedals during concerts.
Glay is a Japanese rock band formed in Hakodate in 1988. The core four members, vocalist Teru, guitarists Takuro and Hisashi, and bassist Jiro, have been together since 1992. Primarily composing songs in the rock and pop genres, they have also arranged songs using elements from a variety of other genres, including progressive rock, punk, gothic rock, electronic, R&B, folk, gospel, reggae, and ska. Originally a visual kei band, the group slowly shifted to less dramatic attire through the years. With five million copies sold, Glay's 1997 compilation album Review is the fifth best-selling album of all time in Japan. Their July 1999 concert "Expo '99" at Makuhari Messe was attended by 200,000 people, making it the largest-ticketed concert ever held by a single act at the time. As of 2008, Glay had sold an estimated 51 million records; 28 million singles and 23 million albums, making them one of the top ten best-selling artists of all time in Japan.
Indie pop is a music genre and subculture that combines guitar pop with DIY ethic in opposition to the style and tone of mainstream pop music. It originated from British post-punk in the late 1970s and subsequently generated a thriving fanzine, label, and club and gig circuit. Compared to its counterpart, indie rock, the genre is more melodic, less abrasive, and relatively angst-free. In later years, the definition of indie pop has bifurcated to also mean bands from unrelated DIY scenes/movements with pop leanings. Subgenres include chamber pop and twee pop.
Rip Slyme is a Japanese hip hop group. In its best known incarnation, it was primarily composed of four MCs and a DJ, Fumiya. Pes and Su have since parted ways with the group. Their sound is influenced by old-school hip hop and other western rappers such as The Pharcyde, De La Soul, Public Enemy, Jurassic 5, the Beastie Boys, DJ Premier and Leaders of the New School.
Gaye Bykers on Acid (GBOA) are an English psychedelic rock band from Leicester, and one of the founder members of the grebo music scene. They later released both thrash punk and dance music albums under various aliases.
A music competition is a public event designed to identify and award outstanding musical ensembles, soloists, composers, conductors, musicologists or compositions. Pop music competitions are music competitions which are held to find pop starlets.
MGMT is an American rock band formed in 2002 in Middletown, Connecticut. It was founded by singers and multi-instrumentalists Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser. Alongside VanWyngarden and Goldwasser, MGMT's live lineup currently consists of drummer Will Berman, bassist Simon O’Connor, and guitarist and keyboardist James Richardson.
Pop Etc, formerly known as The Morning Benders, is an indie rock band. They originally formed in Berkeley, California but moved to Brooklyn, New York later in their career.
Amber Rubarth is an American singer-songwriter and actress. She has toured extensively throughout Europe, North America, Japan, South Korea and South Africa.
Eureka Machines are a British pop rock band based in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England, who formed in 2007. The band consists of Chris Catalyst on lead vocals & guitar, Davros on guitar & backing vocals, Pete Human on bass guitar & backing vocals and Wayne Insane on drums. Described as "power pop" by Classic Rock magazine, they are something of a cottage industry, putting out their own records and being self-managing and self-promoting while also touring and gaining press coverage and airplay at a national level.
Robert Andrew Scott is a Canadian musician and songwriter, specializing in alternative country, alternative folk, and folk rock, with additional interests in folk music and blues. Scott was born and raised in Grande Prairie, Alberta, Canada. He is married to Julie Sauve Scott.
The Watanabes are a 1960s influenced British indie pop rock band based in Tokyo whose lyrics are often inspired by life in Japan.
Kev Gray & The Gravy Train are an alternative pop rock band formed in Tokyo in November 2008, with members from America, Canada, England and Japan. After being chosen as a feature band in the government-sponsored, UK-Japan Year 2008, the group achieved mixed success on the Japanese music scene, after signing to Hemlock Music and twice winning the national music award, Gaijin Sounds.
Dirty Three are an Australian instrumental rock band, consisting of Warren Ellis, Mick Turner and Jim White (drums), which formed in 1992. Their 1996 album Horse Stories was voted by Rolling Stone as one of the top three albums of the year. Two of their albums have peaked into the top 50 on the ARIA Albums Chart, Ocean Songs (1998) and Toward the Low Sun (2012). During their career they have spent much of their time overseas when not performing together. Turner is based in Melbourne, White lives in New York, and Ellis in Paris. Australian rock music historian Ian McFarlane described them as providing a "rumbling, dynamic sound incorporated open-ended, improvisational, electric rock ... minus the jazz-rock histrionics". In October 2010, Ocean Songs was listed in the book 100 Best Australian Albums.
Bandage, stylized as BANDAGE, is a 2010 Japanese independent film directed by Takeshi Kobayashi, who also served as the editor, producer and composer and written and produced by Shunji Iwai. Based on the original novel Good Dreams by Chika Kan, Iwai adapted it along with Kan and renamed it Bandage.
C86 is a cassette compilation released by the British music magazine NME in 1986, featuring new bands licensed from British independent record labels of the time. As a term, C86 quickly evolved into shorthand for a guitar-based music genre characterized by jangling guitars and melodic power pop song structures, although other musical styles were represented on the tape. In its time, it became a pejorative term for its associations with so-called "shambling" and underachievement. The C86 scene is now recognized as a pivotal moment for independent music in the UK, as was recognized in the subtitle of the compilation's 2006 CD issue: CD86: 48 Tracks from the Birth of Indie Pop. 2014 saw the original compilation reissued in a 3CD expanded edition from Cherry Red Records; the 2014 box-set came with an 11,500-word book of sleevenotes by one of the tape's original curators, former NME journalist Neil Taylor.
