MELT-BANANA is a two-piece band based in Tokyo, Japan. The members are YAKO (vo.) and AGATA (g.). To date, the band has released seven studio albums, two live albums, and two singles collections. They have been performing together for more than 25 years, and their range of work is pretty wide. They seem to be in so called underground scene in japan such as noise music scene or hard-core scene, and at the same time, they also played shows as support act for the Wire, Mr.Bungle, Fantomas, Tool, MGMT, Napalm Death etc. , or, they took part in a festival curated by the late Lou Reed at Opera House in Sydney, or they have friendship with various artists like Mike Patton, Shellac, Wire, Mogwai, Karl Hyde of Underworld etc ... it is almost kind of unidentified and quite bizarre for me. They are currently finishing up track down for a new album and hope to release it by the end of the year, MELT-BANANA did not have time to wait and decided to start the "3 + 5" tour. They are scheduled to tour in the U.S. starting in May, as well as in Europe and the U.K. by the end of the year.

babybaby_explores is the cited name of the providence art-rock project, “Baby; Baby: Explores the Reasons Why that Gum is Still on the Sidewalk”, created by three scrappy bffs Lids B-Day (effected Vox & sampler), Sam M-H (e. gtr.) & Ramona Cano-Daly (keys & rhythm) from the haunted clam chowder suburbia Warwick, RI. Utilizing guitar effects pedals to manipulate sounds they create dissonant and lighthearted simple structured danceable songs that pay homage to musique concrète, European underground synth punk of the late 70’s through the 80's, anthem music, dada, and the Providence DIY & noise scene. The project started out as a parody of sound, pseudo-concept project between Lids B-Day and Sam M-H in the winter of 2017. It was about turning the energy spent dealing with miso(gyni), ageism, and industry gatekeeping in the local art and music community into some kind of musically laughable, naive, & sharable whimsy. Sam and Lids grabbed the smallest, most affordable, and simplest equipment they could, lugged it across the icy used auto-lot, which was the “front-yard” of their dwelling place, and into Lid’s unheated wood panel adorned basement-bedroom (called the magic cabin) and began making songs. The setup was a painted casio keyboard, a loop pedal, a mini Squier guitar, and a microphone going through a delay pedal. The two would create and loop drum beats using the keyboard. The guitar Sam was using probably hadn’t been played in over ten years, they began writing songs in the very out of tune-tuning it had come to be in. (Every current song is still made and played in that tuning.) Lids would then add strange, beautiful and incoherent narrative melodies. In May of 2017, “Baby; Baby: Explores” played their first two shows as a duo..one was a queer porn screening at Psychic Readings (AS220), and the other at the Dirt Palace. Something like immediately following those performances, Ramona Cano-Daly entered the project––which is how it had to be. The three had been collaborating musically and breaking each other's hearts as it was since 2011. They began to play as many shows as possible, even though they only had four kind-of actual songs (Love Song, Anthem, Cheapo, and Leaf Bag). They would get together and make performance-specific songs or spontaneous sounds on the morning of an event. The more they played live, the more what initially was an experimental avant-garde noise group formed into a fully functioning improv organized and orchestrated...indie-rock band? Ramona would make a drum machine sequence or percussive loop and then the three would play at once, Lids using their voice, Sam playing guitar, and Ramona playing button bass, they would just play until some seed rendered. If the three didn’t all agree on an idea, it wouldn’t exist further. By 2019, they recorded their first collection of songs at Black Lace in Providence with Evin Huguenin. At the time the band was still under the impression that everything happened in the music industry by some uncalculated coincidence,,,so they didn’t  properly release what they created, but it is available on streaming sites and Bandcamp. On March 03. 2023, they released their album called, Food Near Me, Weather Tomorrow. It was recorded by Seth Manchester at Machines with Magnets and Mastered by Heba Kadry. The music was written in 2020 while trying to find joy despite feeling really really confused and scared. It was put out by the new label run by Angus Andrews called NO GOLD. In late May 2023 the group went on a North American Tour with the iconic Japanese rock band Buffalo Daughter, completed an North Eastern Tour with indie-rock legends Matt & Kim and opened for other icons like Of Montreal and Miho Hatori.   They will be releasing a new strange over the top and awkward album seperated into 3 Chapters in 2024. It will be called “I Am Not a Rock & Roll Man of the Future”. It was also written in March of 2020. It is music carved out of imagining scenes of strange hysterical scenarios and painted with hokey grandeur. The release of “Chapter 1: Questionable Personified Cheeseball” will be announced Winter 2024. They will be on tour with Tomato Flower in March! follow them on instagram to find out about their upcoming shows and announcements~~check out their bandcamp for merch~email them at emailbabybabymusic@gmail.com

The cosmic warriors of punk jazz/no wave/free death apocalypse noise! 1991 to the present, and still crushing normalcy