Big in Japan started as an instrumental trio comprised of Matt Pierce on Rhodes, flute, and vocals, James Griffith on bass and guitar and Michael Lowry on drums. In recent years the band has become a collective including Ed Harris on bass, Woody Ranere on guitar and collaborations with artists from other groups such as vocalist Katrina Ford from “Celebration”. Their sound is at times sweeping and cinematic or alternatively furious and bombastic. Some of their music is written in advance but sometimes their live set may rely wholly on improvised material where the band foregoes traditional song forms such as soloing. The band is currently in the process of writing new material for collaborations to be grouped with previous collaborative works recorded, that were produced by Dave Fridmann. These tracks will be released later in 2011.

We were so excited to see Big In Japan perform for their microshow. I hadn’t seen them since the late 90s opening for Soul Coughing. What was even more of a treat was that Katrina Ford from Celebration sang on 4 songs in the 2nd set!

Woody Ranere: Guitar, Vocals
Ed Harris: Bass, Acoustic Guitar
Matthew Pierce: Rhodes, Pump Organ, Juno 106
Mike Kuhl: Drums, Steel Drum

Technical info: Kick: EV 868, Cajón: AT Boundary, Drum Overhead: JZ Black Hole BH3, Bass: 421, Acoustic Guitar: Shure SM81, Pump Organ: JZ Bat 201 (Spaced Pair), Katrina Ford Vocals: JZ Vintage 47, Woody Ranere Vocals: Blue Mouse

Engineered by Austin Stahl.

Download MP3s - 83.09 MB

Photos by Tedd Henn, WhatWeekly.com

Big In Japan functions as not just a side project or offshoot of the long-running Baltimore quintet Lake Trout, but as effectively a subset of it — all three of Big In Japan’s members also play in Lake Trout, and even the two musicians in the latter who aren’t members of the former have sat in with Big In Japan during live shows. Still, Big In Japan have now been doing their thing, with on-again off-again live residencies full of low key improvised grooves, for over a decade themselves, and have grown into a distinct entity. While Lake Trout focused more and more on song-based studio creations, Big In Japan remained exclusively a live concern, only issuing live recordings as albums.

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Live At 8×10 2009 was released for free by The Biggest Label Ever, the same website that issued Lake Trout’s recent live album. With numerous improvised pieces edited down into a handful of untitled tracks, the structure is identical to Big In Japan’s debut release, 2001′s Goodlove Sessions Vol. 1, but the formal similarities highlight the differences in content. Big In Japan may still be playing at the 8×10, the Federal Hill club that’s been their stomping grounds since the ’90s, but musically they’ve continued to develop and diversify their sound away from the jazzy flute riffs and drum’n'bass rhythms that used to be their signature.

“Untitled 05” is the record’s real gem, with a busy but restrained rim-tapping rhythm foregrounding some evil synth bass and spooky, ethereal vocals. On the flipside, though, “Untitled 06” is vintage Big In Japan, with the bass guitar thumping out relaxed whole notes over a tight, funky beat and a repetitive synth pattern. Still, Live At 8×10 2009 sometimes feels a little too edited down at only 33-minutes, and some tracks, like “Untitled 03,” which starts out with the album’s most raucous noise but quickly peters out, feel like they’ve been cut too short. They do get credit, however, for leaving you wanting more, and “Untitled 07” ends the set on an offbeat note, with what sounds like a harmonica solo, albeit one run through enough delay and distortion effects to make it all sound thoroughly Big In Japan.

Since forming in the mid-’90s, Baltimore-based quintet Lake Trout has released four studio albums that, for better or worse, tell a woefully incomplete story of the band’s musical evolution. Each release marks a stage in its development, from a party band with moments of jazzy improvisation, to long groove-driven instrumental tangents, and then most recently to brooding alt-rock with a greater emphasis on songwriting. But those recordings are ultimately snapshots of a band that’s always done its most inspired work onstage, where it won a dedicated fanbase that heavily bootlegged its live recordings.

Lake Trout calls Live, which it recently released through the free music website The Biggest Label Ever, its “first official live album,” but that’s not entirely true. In 2000, the band released a live collaboration with DJ Who, Alone At Last, which is now out of print, and an EP of live recordings titled There Are No Words was briefly available in 2006. Those releases emphasized the exploratory instrumental work that dominated their shows at some points in the band’s history, but Live captures Lake Trout as it was when it last played out frequently in 2006, focusing on the vocal material from its last two studio albums, with occasional moments of improv.

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Only two tracks on Live are among the countless previously unreleased instrumental songs that have peppered the band’s shows for years and one of them, “New Thing,” is by far the highlight of the album, with driving guitar riffs and and a pulsing soft/loud structure. Of course, the track isn’t entirely instrumental, given the distorted screams of keyboard/flute player Matt Pierce that punctuate the song’s climaxes.

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In concert, Lake Trout has always shown a fondness for covers, ranging from the Ramones to Aphex Twin and the Rolling Stones. And Live features the first official release of a longtime staple, “Wave of Mutilation” by the Pixies (done in the slower ‘U.K. surf’ b-side arrangement, rather than the original album version). While much of the disc ends up sounding a little too much like the band’s last two studio albums, with five tracks each from 2002′s Another One Lost and 2005′s Not Them, You, it’s moments like “Wave of Mutilation” and “New Thing” that make Live an essential Lake Trout release, even if it ultimately falls short of its potential.