Courtesy of Sony Music Associated Records

Sitting down with Midori in the antiseptic confines of a
conference room at Sony Music, it’s hard to connect the unruly performance of a few nights ago with the quiet pair that faces me across the table.

At O-West in Shibuya, Midori were a maelstrom of activity. Garbed in Japan’s iconic high school seirafuku, singer Mariko Goto stalked the stage, occasionally jumping into the audience or climbing high atop stacks of speakers as she spat out lyrics and hacked at her guitar. Support bassist Shingo Harada was equally ferocious, wielding his upright bass like a giant bayonet, while drummer Yoshitaka Kozeni and keyboardist Hajime were more stoic if no less frenetic presences.

What did it all mean? “For me there’s no particular meaning to it. In fact, I don’t ascribe meaning in particular to anything at all,” says Goto. “But to put it into words, it’s like an explosion.”

Formed in 2003, Midori—named after their drummer’s grandmother—are the latest in a growing line of noise-rock bands to emerge out of Kansai that includes the Boredoms and King Brothers. Is there something in the air that makes groups from Osaka chuck musical conventions out the window?

“The difference with Osaka is that musicians start to perform before they know how to play their instruments,” explains Goto. “The music ends up sounding guchagucha (confused, messy), but it also has a natural, unproduced quality.”

According to Goto, Midori were actually one of the more experienced bands around. Although she had never sung or played guitar, their drummer was experienced with wadaiko drums, and Hajime was a piano veteran. “People who’ve never done anything in their lives but knit might even get up on stage,” she says about the Osaka band scene. “It’s not that Osaka audiences aren’t necessarily more forbearing. It’s the reverse: they’re more willing to tell bands that they suck, but the bands are OK with it.”

Getting to the heart of the matter, Goto suggests that for many Osaka musicians, the music emerges out of the performance and not the other way around. She recalls Midori’s first jam session: “We just said, ‘OK, let’s play,’ and hit our instruments—bah! And the drummer answered tah, tah tah! And we expressed what we wanted to that way. No chords, no melodies.” Which is not to say Midori’s music is entirely atonal.

In addition to the seirafuku, their twist on noise rock is to introduce elements of jazz and swing into the chaos. This makes their new six-song mini-album, Shimizu—named for the bucho at Sony who scouted them and who appears on the jacket—surprisingly listenable. Goto has a blood-curdling shout as she sings about love (of all things), and their songs are chaotic in a joyous, cathartic way. But she is also capable of pulling off a ballad on “Goodbye,” with a reedy but pitch-perfect
voice that vaguely recalls Sheena Ringo’s.

So why the seirafuku then? It’s a no-brainer. “At first I played in T-shirts. But in order to make people sit up and pay attention, we needed something different. A female guitarist makes people look, but a female guitarist in a skirt—now that really makes people pay attention.”

Large parts of the music-listening public may settle for tuneful melodies, booty-shaking beats and sexy bods. But another segment, Midori’s success attests, want something different. “I’ve broken my little finger and had my ear bloodied like a pro wrestler,” notes Goto. “The audience actually gets off on seeing blood.”

With their riveting performances, novel musical mix and iconic, Japanese noise-rock shtick, Midori look as likely as any act to follow the Boredoms and Guitar Wolf to overseas success. By recently signing them, even a conglomerate like Sony demonstrates that it can still recognize a gem in the rough—one that intends to stay that way. “There’s no big transformation when you go major,” concludes Hajime. “Rather, the band is in a continual process of change. As long as we protect our sound, we can change without giving up our uniqueness.”

Liquidroom, Nov 25. See concert listings (popular) for details. Shimizu is available on Sony Music Associated Records.

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