Blow your mind, move your feet, with Setsubun space funk treatment! The UK's most intrepid trio explores Setsubun Carnival with Japanese guest musicians and dancers, direct from Tokyo, presenting a radical electronic reworking of traditional Japanese folk and contemporary rhythm, mixed with space funk, original compositions and live Japanese Bon Dance. SETSUBUN: traditional Japanese Spring Ceremony with demon-bashing bean-scattering.
"Oni-wa Soto! Fuku-wa Uchi! Goodbye Winter! Hallo Spring! Demons out! Happiness in!"
JOIN US AS WE BANISH THE DEMONS WITH HEAVY ELECTRONIC FUNK!
"unique, engaging and adventurous."
"the oddest pleasure you'll experience all year." [The Independent]
"some of the most unclassifiable and exhilarating contemporary music you've ever heard." [FROOTS]
"endlessly surprising and enjoyable.....perversely catchy" [Howard Male, The Independent on Sunday]
"the sort of album that will keep revealing hidden treasures on every single subsequent listen" [Boomkat]
"delightful...a diverse album filled with intriguing and inventive sounds" [FLY global music culture]
"Resounded Offbeat Gitarrenlicks, quäkende Bläser and jazz Jams dance together to constant impact things hissing and electronics humming." [Arno Raffeiner, INTRO.de, interpreted by Google Translate]
"This is unhinged, parallel-universe music, that could only have been made by musicians hell-bent on mischievously redefining exactly what jazz, Japanese folk, and leftfield pop are......I found myself coming back to it over and over again, and finding its daft, dreamy, and sometimes disturbing world more and more compelling with every listen. Each track has its own internal logic and contains enough ideas to sustain any lesser band for their whole career. Simultaneously demanding and undemanding; cerebral and disposable, it's fun and funky stuff." [Howard Male, Songlines October 2007]
"Repeated listening may cause brain implosions. But the happy kind..... A welcome addition to any slightly obscure and very esoteric record collection, especially if you’re either a toddler or an acid burnout. Either way, there will be smiles and silly dancing." MITCH ALEXANDER, Rave Magazine, Australia, November 2007
"On stage, among this nine-piece collective, Juckes is playing extended birth-inducing tuba solos, while drummer Flood is twitching and flailing like Ozzy Osbourne driving a clown car over a cattle grid. Meanwhile three women in full geisha dress are harmonising over a Dreadzone dub beat as played by The Egg. .... amongst all the papier-mâché dragons and robots there is a subtle, twisted genius at work in Setsubun Bean Unit’s culturally crosspollinating tracks like ‘Gujo Ondo’ and ‘Rettsu Kissu’. ...... the audience are showered in several tubfuls of dried blackeyed beans, most of which end up down my collar and going home with me in my pants." PAUL CARRERA, Nightshift Magazine, review of Oxford Carling Academy show.