I’ve mentioned before that Otoboke Beaver, an all-female punk band from Kyoto, Japan, provided my favourite live music experience of all the gigs I attended in 2019. As things turned out, they achieved similar in 2020, albeit there were only around five live shows taken in prior to COVID leading to everything being closed down fourteen months ago…..
The band came together as far back as 2009, but releases have been, until recently, quite sporadic as nobody was a full-time musician. The UK-based indie label, Damnably Records signed the band in 2016, quickly issuing a compilation album that brought together the material released over the years on various Japanese labels along with a new song, released as a single-sided 7″ vinyl in Japan for Record Store Day 2016:-
mp3: Otoboke Beaver – Akimahenka
It’s 81 glorious seconds and a total earworm of a tune.
Believe it or not, an even faster version, lasting just 74 seconds, was re-recorded in 2019 and issued on the album Itekoma Hits, itself a magnificent bundle of noise and energy which offers up 14 songs in less than 27 minutes.
Here it is live, as performed in Kyoto in late 2015:-
I do hope it’s not too long before we all get the chance to enjoy live shows again, and that Otoboke Beaver are back on these shores in due course.
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 
That woke me up!
…and cleared out my ear canals! Great stuff!