In advance of two North American tours, including appearances at Maryland Deathfest in May and Wisconsin’s Eaux Claires Music & Arts Festival (curated by Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon and the National’s Aaron Dessner), Melt-Banana delivers their second compilation of singles and tracks from split releases.?! Originally released between 2000 and 2009, the collection includes covers of “Tintarella Di Luna,” by Italian singer Mina, Toots & the Maytals’ “Monkey Man,” DEVO’s “Uncontrollable Urge” and The Damned’s “Love Song.” TOUR DATES:Tour A5/6 – Phoenix, AZ5/8 – ABQ, NM5/9 – Norman, OK5/11 – St.?!
CD $12.00
05/12/2015
MP3 $9.90
05/12/2015
FLAC $11.99
05/12/2015
***BACK IN STOCK!!! Received a 7.8 rating from Pitchfork.?! From the whip-like crack of Yako’s signature staccato vocals and impossible-to-memorize lyrics to the relentless overdrive tempo of their one-of-a-kind prog-core, Melt-Banana have long resided in a cybertopia of their own devising where the limits of technology and human capability are old-world concerns as quaint and cumbersome as bartering with a blacksmith.?! The demos for Fetch, their first studio album since the severely fried pop-punk of 2007’s Bambi’s Dilemma, were completed in March 2011, but the Fukushima earthquake changed everything, including their ability to concentrate on recording.?! Which stopped completely.?! Once they felt ready to return to their music, they decided to approach the songs on a sound-by-sound basis, choosing each tone with meticulous attention to detail, affirming their personal connections, being themselves naturally and openly.?!
LP $16.00
11/05/2013
CD $12.00
10/01/2013
MP3 $9.90
10/01/2013
FLAC $11.99
10/01/2013
***Sweet black Tees.?! Printed on both front and back.?! Limited quantity available..?!
TSHIRT $15.00
12/13/2011
***Sweet black Tees.?! Printed on both front and back.?! Limited quantity available..?!
TSHIRT $15.00
12/13/2011
***Sweet black Tees.?! Printed on both front and back.?! Limited quantity available..?!
TSHIRT $15.00
12/13/2011
***Sweet black Tees.?! Printed on both front and back.?! Limited quantity available..?!
TSHIRT $15.00
12/13/2011
These days, Melt-Banana performs some of their shows under the name Melt-Banana Lite, and this album is a live recording of the new configuration.?! Melt-Banana Lite is not the usual Melt-Banana: there are drums and vocals, but no guitars--instead samplers and synth.?! It is different, but at the same time, one definitely feels Melt-Banana when one listens to it.?! It is like watching the ocean when diving, not when standing and watching from the land.?! Melt-Banana Lite shows another face of Melt-Banana, with more flexible, concentrated, and free minds.?! They have stepped forward, attempting to discover new possibilities for their music. Yako said to me, "There are as many things to do as there are interesting things, but the important thing is to figure out what I really want to do now.?! Life is short and we don't have enough time to get everything done, you know." Where are they heading?!
CD $12.00
11/03/2009
MP3 $9.90
11/03/2009
On their sixth full-length studio release Melt Banana exercise a hitherto undetected area of their musical musculature: the “rock” region.?! Summing up an entire album, and one as diverse as Bambi’s Dilemma, with such a pedestrian qualifier is risky business, agreed, but it seems to fit like never before. The band, of course, refuses to accommodate any such pigeonholing: “Maybe it is rock, but maybe not.?! We just make whatever we want.?! We just follow our own instincts!” The truth is MxBx makes music as they please, relying solely on their own maverick talent to get them where they need to be.?! Bambi’s Dilemma’s eighteen tracks careen from extreme, fast-blast attacks to more serene moments (usually reserved for non-album releases) to the band’s revolutionary new, guitar and bass-less “Theremin-core.” Look for them on tour throughout the US, May through June, 2007..?!
LP $16.00
04/24/2007
CD $12.00
04/24/2007
MP3 $9.90
04/24/2007
• 56 tracks from 13 different singles and splits • Highly sought after and long unavailable tracks • Huge fan base world-wide from near constant touring HEDGEHOG 7-INCH 1.?! Stick out 2.?! So unfilial Rule 3.?! Mind thief 4.?! Screw, loose 5.?! Scrubber 6.?! Pierced eye SPLIT 7-INCH WITH GOD IS MY CO-PILOT 7.?! Ketchup-Mess 8.?! First Defy 9.?! Iguana in Trouble IT’S IN THE PILLCASE7-INCH 10.?!
CD $12.00
05/17/2005
MP3 $9.90
05/17/2005
***A band who have justifiably been championed across the world, Tokyo’s Melt-Banana have been responsible for some of the most complex punk rock ever made … that far outshines ninety-nine percent of most other bands out there.?! The band once described their live show as “Shooting machine gun and laser beam, chaos in order.” And I think that pretty much sums them up.?! — Olli Siebelt, BBC No wave without the self-conscious pretension, avant garde composition compressed into one-minute-or-less bursts, urgency, intricate destruction, pure glorious abandon.?! Melt-Banana play the same way that Repulsion, Naked City, The Ruins, or The Boredoms all make you want to scream and dance and kill your neighbors.?! This is not music that we are conditioned to accept.?! This is you delirious with joy scraping your five senses off the floor.?! —Matthew Moyer, Ink19 Melt-Banana are in a league of their own.?!
LP $16.00
06/17/2003
CD $12.00
06/10/2004
MP3 $9.90
06/10/2004
***Produced by Melt-Banana and K.?! K.?! Null of Zeni Geva, engineered by Steve Albini, recorded in a Chicago basement, June 1994, the 24-track 30-minute Speak Squeak Creak was originally released in '94 by Null's Nux Organization label, was sporadically available throughout the decade, and is now reissued by the band's own label - on vinyl for the first time.?! The band for this recording consisted of Yasuko, Agata, Rika mm' and Sudoh.?! They have long been admired by everyone - from the highest brows within the ranks of the avant garde such as John Zorn and Mike Patton, to shorts-draggin' munters who need to carry their wallets on a leash - for their riotous cacophony in which free jazz, math-rock, speed-metal, and grindcore all enjoy equal opportunity employment.?! Vocalist/principal songwriter Yasuko regards Speak Squeak Creak as the band's "base camp.?! Everything started from this album.?!
CD $12.00
06/26/2001
MP3 $9.90
06/26/2001
***BACK IN PRINT!!! Another all-out spazztak of scream-and-careen mathified skree core from Tokyo’s most tightly wound springs.?! Fourteen tracks of mind altering, brain boggling, and spine crushing shrapnel punk with vocals that hit your head like high-pitched knives and music that bores through your flesh like some kind of new super drill.?! Sure they look nice enough, but don’t get your ears too close, these yaros bite.?! Like getting stabbed in the face and bragging about the conquest later.?! Embarking right this second on a trans-continental tour that will bring them perilously close to each and every one of you.?! Our advice, go see them you obviously haven’t been using those ears for any good purpose anyhow.?! Guest appearances from MR.?! BUNGLE, the THREE DOCTORS BAND, THE WINTERMITTENS, and members of DIESELHED.?! Posters and promotional match books are yours for the asking, go ahead, ask....?!
LP $16.00
01/08/2003
CD $12.00
01/08/2001
MP3 $9.90
01/08/2001
FLAC $11.99
01/08/2001
FROM THE VAULTS!!! Please specify size in order notes - Medium and Large only while supplies last..?!
TSHIRT $20.00
01/08/2001
***BLUE / GRAY MILKY VINYL, LIMITED TO JUST THIS PRESSING!!!Melt-Banana describe their third self-released album as "pop and nice," a claim to which numerous incredulous subscribers to the band's mailing list have replied, "No pop!" and "Extreme, please!" This angular Pythagorean-core HC quartet supposes that the words "pop" and "nice" have slightly different nuances those outside their native Japan are failing to see; perhaps they mean "pop" not in the Celine Dion sense, but in the Andy Warhol sense, "nice" not as in smashing a bunch of garbage together and expecting fans to swallow it out of habit, but as in well-crafted, hairball mania.?! Even as the band acknowledges that Teeny Shiny is punk, noisy, screeching, and fast, they steadfastly maintain that it is pop and nice for them.?!
LP $16.00
11/07/2000
CD $12.00
11/07/2000
MP3 $9.90
11/07/2000
FLAC $11.99
11/07/2000
*** An album from the morning hours of the Melt-Banana history, the second release on Melt-Banana's label was originally released in 1994 on cassette by Scottish label Chocolate Monk.?! More than half the extant copies were lost between the Chocolate Monk dubbing deck and the nearest post office, thanks in no small part to the bar located between the two; consequently, Cactuses Come in [the] Flocks has been heard by an extremely random sampling of extremely patient tape traders and hardly anyone else.?! The first half of Cactuses is a live recording from a 1992 improv festival that took place in a small room at Tokyo University; the second half is made up of four-track recordings created in mid-1994.?! As many voices from across the literacy rainbow are quick to point out, Melt-Banana is nothing if not a force to be reckoned with.?!
CD $12.00
09/21/1999
MP3 $9.90
09/21/2000