It’s common for Japanese bands to split up and converge, forming new lineups and spinning a vast web of connections, but what about the instances in which Japanese musicians form bands or collaborate with western musicians?
I’ll kick things off with a couple of industrial projects!
First up is Schwein, a short-lived group made up of members of Buck-Tick and KMFDM that was active in 2001 and released one album.
zilch has always fascinated me. Though fronted by hide, their debut album was unfortunately a posthumous release. Formed by some regular hide collaborators and coming from bands like Danzig, the Cult, and Prong, there’s a lot to like about 3•2•1. One of the tracks on the album even has the entire 80s Killing Joke lineup performing!!
FF7 Advent Children OST “Safe and Sound” is the first song I can think of. It’s a collaboration of Kyosuke Himuro (BOØWY) and Gerard Way (My Chemical Romance).
YOSHIKI & TOSHI (X JAPAN) and Roger Taylor (Queen) performed Foreign Sand in 1994.
I guess this applies to my band haha.
Central California farm boy who become leader of Vkei bands here in Japan using fellow Central California KoRn boys’ tuning goodness but then passing my compositions through the filter of my Japanese members~
but let us not forget the OG, whitesnake bassist who joined VOW WOW
On the more experimental side of things, avantgarde composer/guitarist/bassist Ron Anderson has been collaborating with drummer Yoshida Tatsuya (Ruins, Koenjihyakkei, Korekyojinn, ex-AMT) since the mid '90s. They played together live in various configurations and also recorded some material over the years in the experimental rock / free jazz genres.
First as RonRuins…
…and more recently as a spinoff of Ron’s project PAK (this one’s my favorite).
Last time Ron played bass for Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso UFO on their US tour, but afaik no official recordings have surfaced of that yet (tho knowing the AMT guys, they’ll probably release something later).
Not finished
And we will probably make a proper JRO playlist later with the songs mentioned in this thread. So stay tuned.
The ones in there is just what I remembered now of the head.
Sailing are pretty fond of collabs tbh, so you can find plenty of them inside
