Zazen Boys

Named after a form of Buddhist meditation, Zazen Boys first appeared as a side project of Japanese musician Mukai Shutoku, the guitarist/vocalist of alt-rock band Number Girl, as an opportunity for Mukai to express some of his more diverse and experimental musical urges at a time when his other band were riding the crest of their breakthrough into the mainstream. After Number Girl's demise he revived the project, taking them to new levels of critical and commercial success and proving a critical link between mainstream and underground music in Japan.
The original 2002 lineup of Zazen Boys featured Mukai backed by the experimental hip hop/funk band 54-71, although he undertook his immediate post-Number Girl activities under his own name and with a variety of musicians including avant-garde jazz/punk band Panicsmile (early contemporaries of Mukai's from his hometown of Fukuoka) and jazz musician Kikuchi Naruyoshi. In contrast to the Pixies-style alt-rock that had made Number Girl famous, these early shows mixed jazz, funk, rock and hip hop, and it was this collision of genres that formed the basis for what was to become the new Zazen Boys.
Fixing the new lineup around ex-Number Girl drummer Inazawa Ahito, former Art-School bass player Hinata Hidekazu and guitarist Yoshikane Sou from Kicking The Lion, Mukai started work on a self-titled debut album, Zazen Boys, which was released in 2004 and quickly followed up by a second, entitled Zazen Boys II in the same year. Both albums drew on and developed ideas mixing funk, rock and elements of traditional Japanese culture partially developed in Number Girl's final album, Num-Heavymetallic, as well as the more experimental work of the post-Number Girl live shows. The punk influences of his previous work give way to a new interest in heavy, crashing guitars reminiscent of Led Zeppelin. Other characteristic features are obvious dub, hip hop and soul influences, frequent changes in time signature and Mukai's rapidfire half-spoken vocals interspersed with sudden bursts of falsetto.
2005 saw the departure of Inazawa to form the more new wave-influenced Vola and the Oriental Machine and he was replaced by Matshshita Atsushi for the Himitsu Girl's Top Secret EP and 2006's uncompromising Zazen Boys III, which saw the band pushing their experimental tendencies still further.
2007 was greeted with another departure, this time of Hinata, who was replaced by Yoshida Ichiro of Nine Days Wonder. This was followed by the single, "I Don't Wanna Be With You", which bemused fans by overlaying a minimalist funk backdrop with a glossy, synth-led 1980s sheen. In spring 2008 the band decamped to the United States to record new material. ~ Ian Martin, All Music Guide