eX-Girl | Profile Japan has long maintained a fascination with retrofuture, avant garde, and of course girls in cute outfits. So it's no surprise that the mind-bending eX-Girl were spawned by this country (unless you really believe their claims that they come from Planet Kero Kero). Channeling punk, Casiotone techno, tribal chanting, opera, pure pop, math rock, and pretty much everything else you can think of, eX-Girl has won over a sizable fan base through their eclectic releases and endless touring. When the band was formed in 1997, none of the three members - all female - knew how to play their instruments. Despite this, they were soon gigging around Japan, trading on their performance art aesthetic and skewed songcraft. In 1998, the band released its first album, entitled Heppoco Pou. Produced by legendary eccentric Hoppy Kamiyama (Pugs, Demi Semi Quaver, God Mountain Orchestra), the record featured wild vocal arrangements, hypnotically repetitive guitar tracks, and surreal lyrics, not to mention the full-on Ex-Girl treatment of James Brown's "Sex Machine". While the reception was lukewarm in Japan, several overseas indie radio stations gave the album airplay, spawning a small but rabid overseas fanbase. The band lugged their gigantic wigs, frog head masks, rayguns, and flower-power minidresses through Japan and the United States to tour the album the same year, picking up more fans along the way. In March 1999, the band released its second album Kero! Kero! Kero!, again produced by Kamiyama and expanding on their distinctive sound. Another US tour followed, including a well-received appearance at Japan Night at Austin's South by Southwest festival. Ex-Girl's third album, Big When Far, Small When Close, dropped in 2000. With Kamiyama again at the board, Big When Far, Small When Close saw the band in a-cappella mode, eschewing instruments completely on most of its songs. Including choral chants, operatic harmonies, banshee shrieks, and comical cartoon-style singing, the album showed, if nothing else, that eX-Girl had no fear about following their collective muse. After another overseas tour, the band released Back to the Mono Kero in 2001. More structured and melodic than its predecessors, Back to the Mono Kero also showed significant leaps in musicianship, making it considerably more accessible. The band again toured extensively in support of the album, including high profile festival dates in Europe and an opening slot for Siouxsie & The Banshees on the UK and Finland legs of their tour. In addition to Japan, Back to the Mono Kero would see overseas release in the United States (Ipecac), Finland (Levy-yhtio Records) and Australia (Valve Records) the following year. The band's fifth album, Endangered Species, was released on Jello Biafra's Alternative Tentacles imprint in the United States in 2004, and the band continues to tour extensively. by Bill Haw
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