Sam GreenwoodIt’s been 6 years, but The Japanese Popstars are back with brand new music as ‘Checking Out’ launched over the weekend.
The Japanese Popstars return with their first single in six years, ‘Checking Out’, featuring Martin Corrigan of Alloy Mental, which is a powerful anthem for these incredible times. The single is accompanied by a striking video, both released on their new label, FightTheNight.
With ‘Checking Out’, the Northern Irish duo of Gary Curran and Gareth Donoghue unleash a blistering punk rock meets electro ode to the politics of negativity, inequality and segregation – much of which was as prevalent in 1970s/80s Northern Ireland as it remains worldwide in 2020.
Directed by Sean Curran, the bold and eye-catching video for the release touches upon many of 2020’s key themes centred around panic and fear – racial division, corruption, violence, infection – whilst cleverly filmed in a CCTV surveillance style.
From the guys themselves:
“Checking Out is a rejection of the notions that encourage conflict and stress within Society, built on a Jesus Lizard bassline and Public Enemy beat.
In the video, we wanted to highlight some of the ideas of conflict and segregation that we first experienced growing up in Northern Ireland in the eighties and that we see now at a global scale, driven by ideologies, no matter what they are religious, political, financial, racial, all of which seem to want to push people apart rather than bring us closer together.”
This is available to buy here, make sure to check it out.