Built on a Weak Spot

Often times my love for the layered fuzziness of shoegaze leads me to search in the vast amount of Japanese music out there. It seems that the genre is pretty alive and kicking there and has many highly impressive bands creating some wonderful music. One in particular is the band Cruyff in the Bedroom who I discovered a couple years back upon listening to their album Perfect Silence after it being recommended to me. It definitely caught my ear the first time through and eventually led me into an obsessive phase in which I tried to track down as much of similar material as I could. I guess Cruyff in the Bedroom could be considered a gateway band for me into the world of Japanese shoegaze.

It’s too bad that I don’t know how to read Japanese, or I would probably know a lot more about this band. Online translators are almost worthless whenever I try and use them. Regardless, the band was formed sometime in 1998 right around the time of the World Cup in France. Why is that of any importance? Well, apparently the members of the band are obsessive soccer fans. Their name is derived from the bands favorite soccer player Johann Cruyff. It’s to the point where their first album Perfect Silence was released on the first day of the World Cup finals in 2002, not only that the CD has a soccer ball printed on the top of it.

To date the band has a handful of EP’s and two full length albums under their belt. Their sound is very reminiscent to the earlier days of shoegaze; however it carries a sort of relaxed and chilled vibe to it. While their first album Perfect Silence was initially the album that got me hooked, their second album Hikarihimawari is probably the better and more accomplished of the two. It’s a bit more filled out and the experimentation drifts a bit further with some pretty good end results.

Perfect Silence:
Cruyff in the Bedroom – Into My Sleep, Under the Stars [MP3]
Cruyff in the Bedroom – Dream All Day [MP3]

Hikarihimawari:
Cruyff in the Bedroom – A Walk at Twilight [MP3]
Cruyff in the Bedroom – Sunflowers Bloom in Dark [MP3]

The unfortunate part of being a fan of all of this is that trying to obtain all of the material can be fairly pricey and on top of that it isn’t always easy tracking it down either. I haven’t really found a place where Perfect Silence is still available, unless you count the many strictly Japanese sites that carry it. However, I did manage to find an import site where you can purchase Hikarihimawari. That can be found here. Anyway, enjoy the tunes!

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This entry was posted on Monday, March 5th, 2007 at 6:51 am and is filed under j-rock, shoegaze. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.