Certain bands have different means of thinking when it comes to making music.

Your friendly neighbourhood death metal will want you to rock out when they’re not baking cookies. And of course, we can stereotype all day long when we assume all reggae fans will listen to their Bob Marley 12”’s while dreadlocking up their arm and smoking funny-smelling cigarettes.

What is certainly different about Japanese Pop Songs is their approach to how they write and record music. A lot of bands can sometimes take up to two/three years to complete a song from when a lyric is penned, to the final mastering process. Japanese Pop Songs do everything in twenty minutes.

It almost sounds like this wouldn’t work. Kind of like being in an exam at school, you realise with twenty minutes left that there’s an extra question on the back and it’s worth 50% of the mark. We don’t know why they operate this way. In the band’s own words they say:

“Our songs are written and recorded in 20-30 minutes and are never longer than 2 minutes. Because that’s how we play.”

What we’re left with are a collection of songs that do come in short bursts. Give or take a few seconds that sound like they must have taken longer than twenty minutes to create. If they can work this quick, giving Japanese Pop Songs a week in a studio would see an output of about ten albums.

Our favourite song is one that Kerry Katona would quite likely applaud between a gobfull of chips and curry sauce. Called Bi Polar Love, the song title does seem quite literal. When listening to the song, it somehow deleted itself from the player and wouldn’t reappear. God knows how we broke it. But it is a good song, honest! Bands like Japanese Pop Songs make us smile – they are doing something different.

Next week; OAP prog rock. Ok, maybe that’s a little too different:

For more:

Japanese Pop Songs MySpace