Hatsune Kaidan @ Tusk Festival 2014

Looking to Japan from the UK, its not hard to find as many stark contracts as there are parallels in the love and creation of popular music. Here, the ubiquitous factory-produced plastic front people dominating the charts at least try to pretend that they’re not puppets, whereas in Japan their manipulation and downright disposability seems to be part of the appeal – commercially huge conceptual pop bands routinely have culls, all members disposed of and replaced, the outfit repeatedly regenerating like Dr W