Giant Robot Store and GR2 News

Remember Envy, one of the bands that I interviewed for the final issue of Giant Robot? The group from Japan is celebrating its twentieth anniversary with Invariable Will, Recurring Ebbs and Flows, a killer box set with fourteen LPs, two DVDs and a 100-Page book that contain absolutely everything, starting with its vicious hardcore roots and culminating with its cosmic post rock present. For this mother lode of amazing vinyl, I hit up singer Tetsu Fukagawa with some questions and pulled out Doug Kim’s photos from their 2010 stop at Santo’s Party House.

MW: You recently toured Japan to celebrate your 20th anniversary. What was that like? How did you model your set for the occasion?
TF: It was great. We only did three shows but lots of people showed up and the reactions have all been good. We played a lot of old songs so rehearsal was a bit hard, but we had a great time.

MW: What inspired the making of the new box set? Has it ended up as you expected or is it something different altogether?
FT: We didn’t really plan on doing anything initially but Jeremy from TRL came up with the idea of remastering all our songs, pressing vinyl, and putting it all together in a box set. We’re all really happy with how it turned out.

MW: It must have been a trip to look back to the beginnings of the band. Do you remember those days vividly or was revisiting the old songs like a time warp?
FT: There were some things we forgot about, and it was a really good experience for us to look back on all those years. Our old songs were fast and a lot of them were in English, so we haven’t played them at all recently. We’d forgotten about some really good songs we had! I think we’ll start playing them at shows from now on. 

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Remember Envy, one of the bands that I interviewed for the final issue of Giant Robot? The group from Japan is celebrating its twentieth anniversary with Invariable Will, Recurring Ebbs and Flows, a killer box set with fourteen LPs, two DVDs and a 100-Page book that contain absolutely everything, starting with its vicious hardcore roots and culminating with its cosmic post rock present. For this mother lode of amazing vinyl, I hit up singer Tetsu Fukagawa with some questions and pulled out Doug Kim’s photos from their 2010 stop at Santo’s Party House.

MW: You recently toured Japan to celebrate your 20th anniversary. What was that like? How did you model your set for the occasion?
TF: It was great. We only did three shows but lots of people showed up and the reactions have all been good. We played a lot of old songs so rehearsal was a bit hard, but we had a great time.

MW: What inspired the making of the new box set? Has it ended up as you expected or is it something different altogether?
FT: We didn’t really plan on doing anything initially but Jeremy from TRL came up with the idea of remastering all our songs, pressing vinyl, and putting it all together in a box set. We’re all really happy with how it turned out.

MW: It must have been a trip to look back to the beginnings of the band. Do you remember those days vividly or was revisiting the old songs like a time warp?
FT: There were some things we forgot about, and it was a really good experience for us to look back on all those years. Our old songs were fast and a lot of them were in English, so we haven’t played them at all recently. We’d forgotten about some really good songs we had! I think we’ll start playing them at shows from now on. 

Continue reading