the sweet dark techno of 101A

101 - One Day . This band blew me away when I first heard them. A guaranteed Win for fans of anything remotely cool. This is their homepage.

noah (left) - vocals, guitar
the k (right) - bass, programming, voice

101A are a pretty obscure band. Not much is found on The Series of Tubes about them. They don’t exactly tear up the Oricon charts in their native Japan, either. So they truly are an ‘alternative’ band… As told by the thousand-word photo above, this is not happy music. Some of the songs (love less, sex slave), you can dance to — and thats what makes it ‘industrial.’ But the mood is not really conducive to dancing (unless someone invents a dance called the wrist-slitting doo-wop or something). Usually, there’s a persistent drum/bass line with dissonant harmonics and floaty vocals overtop. Sometimes, there is beautiful melody and chord progression. Heavy, distorted guitars also figure in strongly. But always, there is talented songwriting and performance. I consider One Day to be one of the top of the top albums of 2006. They’ve already completed a tour of Europe — here’s hoping they do North America soon!

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