LP - Black Vinyl.
Informed by UFO encounters, ritualism, robots, Northern Soul, and nuclear weapons, space-surf-psych-rock quartet Japanese Television announce their second album 'Automata Exotica', set for release on 22nd March 2024 by Tip Top Recordings.
A combination of cyclical, mechanical rhythms, and heavy bass, 'Automata Exotica' is louder, tighter, bolder and rawer than anything Japanese Television have done before.
'Automata Exotica' was recorded live to tape in three electric all-night sessions in a windowless room in Homerton by Kristian Bell of The Wytches. "We wanted to make a tighter, more compact record", says guitarist Tim Jones. "We whittled the songs down to be as lean as possible. All the tracks are frst or second takes, all of us recorded live playing together, with limited overdubs. No fat, just the energy captured".
Album opener, the expansive, krautrock inspired chugger 'Golden Birds', sounds like looking at an endless horizon. The fuzzed out lead single 'Tabadaboum' is titled as a made-up French onomatopoeia, describing the sound of the main riff. Keyboardist Ian Thorn says "The song was the last to be recorded in the session and we were trying to get that 'end of a gig' energy into the track. The layered outro (using a wah-wah pedal that was owned by bassist Elea's dad) was inspired by a week touring with GOAT and their duelling guitarists".
Inspired in a roundabout way by The Fall, the title of 'Typhoon Reggae Police' comes from the name of a demo cassette listed in Mark E. Smith's autobiography 'Renegade'. According to Tim, the song is better summarised as Link Wray (the undisputed king of weird instrumental garage surf rock) playing in Ahmad Zahir's band (Afghanistan's 'Elvis'). 'Death Waltz II' is inspired by 3am drives in the tour van around Birmingham listening to a Nigerian funk compilation, while 'Fantasia' is something akin to 'The Night' by Frankie Valli, a sort of Northern Soul stomp, but in a space-surf style. Initially conceived in the style of Dr Feelgood- esque R&B, the more the band played 'Uranium Knights' the faster and more unhinged it became. Ian's organ line became more wheeling and berserk and Elea's bass got fuzzier and fuzzier. Now paranoid and dangerous, it's something akin to an unstoppable army of nuclear weapon equipped robots charging across the desert.
'Ariel School Sighting' is about "my favourite alien encounter / UFO sighting", says Tim. From a spate of reports across southern Africa in 1994, TV footage of Zimbabwean school children hauntedly describe beings with large black eyes coming from a silver disc landing nearby. "They describe the unnerving, juddering way the beings move, which I tried to relay with a heavily delayed, shuddering guitar line", says Tim. Ian adds "We were aiming for the right combination of robotic and groovy - that's a recurring theme for the whole record - so obviously we went with a bossa nova feel".
Tracklist: