I'm currently a writer and editor for Japanator, a Japanese culture blog (receiving 900,000 page views a month), having contributed 800 articles since my first day February 19th, 2007. I started there as a simple anything-goes contributor, covering anime and manga news as well as whatever odd cultural tid-bits I could dig up. Eventually I found my niche covering Japanese music almost exclusively. I've been a huge fan of Japanese music since the mid-1990s. In fact my favorite band of all time is the Japanese new-wave art-punk band Polysics.
From my rabid music coverage emerged Japanator Radio, an hour long weekly Japanese music podcast. It quickly gained a strong following, and currently receives an average of 2000 downloads a week.
My music coverage at Japanator has also led to the inclusion of my quotes on various official press releases, as well as several opportunities to interview Japanese bands touring America. Years ago as a college music DJ I had the chance to cut my teeth interviewing the likes of Moby and BT. I've built upon those experiences to craft what I hope have been interviews not only interesting to the readers, but the bands as well.
My giant list of band profiles and album reviews on Japanator eventually outgrew that venue and I built my own Japanese music blog, ZB's A-Z of J-Music. Because of the various limitations of the Japanator site, I wanted to make my ever growing number of band profiles and album reviews easier to access and browse. I set up the A-Z site on my own time, and it now contains almost 300 band profiles spanning tens of thousands of words. Many other sites have cited it as an excellent resource for insightful English language reviews of Japanese bands, some of which have little to no other English coverage. My emphasis is on underground and unknown bands, though I do cover everything from indie bands to mega idols. I have a love for just about every genre, from rock to pop to electro to metal to vis-kei to shibuya-kei, and treat them all as equals.
In June of 2008 I started writing for Otaku USA Magazine, the leading magazine in America covering all thing pop Japan. I took over almost all the music writing, producing four pages of album reviews and band interviews every issue. Again, this move also resulted in even more access to big name bands in the Japanese music scene.
In August of 2009, I was hired as something of a taste-maker for HearJapan, an on-line music store making Japanese music available outside of Japan. My weekly column "Explore the Unexplored" delves into the massive HearJapan catalog to find the hidden gems that might get lost of the avalanche of new music that constantly hits the site.
While it may seem like I had sprung out of nowhere and landed at Japanator, that isn't exactly the case. Prior to that I has started my short lived (though technically still alive) gaming blog called The Atari Thief. I was also a music reviewer for a local independent newspaper called The Ripsaw News. In addition to doing weekly album reviews I also worked as a graphic designer, building ads as well as doing general page layout.
While I was studying for my Graphic Design major, I re-discovered my passion for writing. At the time I never would have thought I'd be just as interested in writing about design as actually designing, but thanks to one professor I did just that. Looking back now I don't think it was so much the subject matter as it was the simple act of writing itself. This goes back to my days in high-school, junior high and even before that to grade school. I had simply forgotten that I enjoyed writing sometime in the in-between days. Once I re-discovered it in college I began blogging, until, at the risk of sounding melodramatic, Japanator changed my life. And on it goes.
Writer
Musician
I've been a drummer since seventh grade when I took my first band class. I remember nothing of why I wanted to be in band or play the drums, but there I was. That would have been around 1988.
I joined my first rock band in 1993. We were called Third Stone, in reference to a Jimi Hendrix song, and played mostly cover songs from various rock bands from the '60s to the '80s. I floated around in a few other bands before landing in Holiday with Abner. From there it was Omega 2000, then a rather long break while I pretended to be a DJ.
I was a Graphic Design student at the University of Minnesota, Duluth. While there I met up with some people who were DJs at KUMD, the school's public radio station. I was a great admirer of Tuesday Night Tod. He's the man most responsible for the slippery slope that got me up to my eye-balls in techo and gabber. I eventually took over his show (which was pretty amazing to me at the time) and kept the Techno Tuesday alive as The Shack of Xaq. (House of Tod, Shack of Xaq...get it?) From there I gradually became the RPM (that's industry speak for electronic music) director for the station. Talking to various record reps from across the country all day eventually got me a gig as the opening DJ for the St. Paul Moby and Hybrid show. Moby was a long time idol of mine, and in fact I had interviewed him in person a year or two before. Anyway, it was a minor dream come true, and soon after that I gave up the DJ thing. I was making my own music by then.
I started off doing my own recording in my mom's basement, using left over gear from band practice. I called myself Xero Products (because I hated the math classes I had to take at the time.) Most of the stuff I recorded was really bad, but it was fun and I really enjoyed making music from a bunch of nothing. Once I started DJing my music also morphed into tecnho and trance. Once I got tired of that, I started doing more experimental stuff as Dirty Knobs. My greatest success as DK was getting to work with a ton of local musicians doing remix work. I released a compilation CD titled Dirty Knobs vs. Duluth, Minnesota which actually sold a few copies. Probably because it featured Low, The Dames, If Thousands, Amy Abts and others. I went on to do some more work with Low, as well as Haley Bonar.
Somewhere in there I started drumming in a live band again. The band was Both, made up largely of people I had played with in the Omega 2000 days. The band eventually dissolved, and I joined up with Amy Abts. She had formed a band called The State Champs. Again, we had a good run, even signing up to Alan Sparhawk's Chairkickers Union record label. But in the end, it was not to be.
Around the same time I formed my own band called The Surfactants. Being a huge Polysics fan, I basically wanted to rip them off. Thankfully I didn't. Well, not totally. I'm the main songwriter, drummer, programmer and album making guy. The Surfactants are still in operation, currently working in a new singer and promoting our two albums.
That's the music thing in a very large nutshell.
