Dynamite Club

So this is what insanity sounds like…
Formed in 2001, the aptly-named Dynamite Club features guitarist and vocalist Kentaro Saito from Tokyo,
drummer and vocalist Mike Pride from Brooklyn, and current bassist (the band’s eighth!) Evan Lipson. This bi-
continental trio has forged an identity through the fires of the New York and Tokyo scenes to come out as one of
the most unique noise rock bands in recent memory.
Their latest release, Fusion Era, finds Dynamite Club launching into a preposterous 12-track set highlighted by
abnormal flashes of funk, bursts of noise, SOAD-esque rock segments, and intervallic sections of puzzling ex-
quisiteness.
Like most noise rock, it’s pretty senseless to divide it up into palatable segments. Fusion Era is not a record that
is scanned or divvied up into tracks for analysis, although there are many great moments worth highlighting. As
an album, it stands as a whole work of art. It may be a deafening, hectic, infuriating work of art, but Dynamite
Club has created something special here.
All but two of Fusion Era’s tracks run under the two-minute-mark, with several running under a minute. Bleats
of noise, strewn shards of rhythm, blasts of guitar, unstructured soloing, and warped bass suffuse each track
with madness. Saito’s shouts, screams, wails, and affectionate anarchy bring the fucking house down.
For many people, Fusion Era simply won’t work. Noise rock is a risky genre. I happen to love it, but many of
my friends simply can’t grasp what I find to be “beauty in chaos.”
Still, Dynamite Club is, at times, as undemanding as any other Japanese rock band.
Take the appropriate “Japanese Song” as an example. Saito begins singing over a standard J-pop set-up, but
quickly loses the grain of the song and meanders off into a distorted blend of fuzz, wrecked instruments, and
clattering percussion. Towards the end of the song, Saito and the rest of the Club picks up the beat again and
tries to round the song out. It all sounds riotously like a bad television performance.
For the most part, however, Fusion Era finds Dynamite Club making lots of jubilant noise. Deconstruction
works as a theme, as songs begin with eagerness but quickly overturn into psychosis (“Cow Fat”). Others take
the noise and convert it to something funky (“www.porno.net”). And still others take a windy, haunting road to
their final resting place (“Eye Like to Watch”).
Dynamite Club’s Fusion Era is an album that is as much about the deconstruction of sound as it is about the
construction of noise. Songs bray and lament over hard guitars and fucked-up vocals, giving things an exasper-
ating edge. Some, like me, will find beauty in the chaos. Others will simply sit, flabbergasted, and wait for the
blasted exercise in “art” to be over and done with. - BC Blogcritics Magazine Music, wriien by Jordan Richardson

Dance and scream: A bloody, messy, martial and masochistic musical melange
Okay, so Dynamite Club are neither the most eloquent, the most refined, the most tasteful nor the most beautiful
band around. When group members really take their time, tracks will be two-and-a half minutes long. If they
don’t, they’re half a minute long. Their songs are called “www.porn.net” or “Besame My Love” – we’ll leave the
details of lyrical content to your imagination.
To dig up a good old chliched proverb, however, the music is what counts and the Dynamites have quite a bit to
show for it. Their blend of Jazz, chilled-out Cocktail tunes, slapped Funk licks, Grindcore and Deathmetal is both
a bloody, messy, martial and masochistic musical melange as well as a trivial, twisted, technically virtuoso
tantrum and it is furiously fast and fericiously entertaining.
It is the combination of these different and divergent elements into a coherent and surreally charming cocktail
which turns “Fusion Era” into a welcome diversion from daily worries: Put it on, pull up your stereo to maximum
volume for twenty minutes and dance and scream on top of your lunges until everything makes sense again.
The pleasures of dabbling in deconstruction and mindblowing noise certainly enjoy priority above structural com-
plexity or smart, minutely fine-tweaked arrangements here. What counts is not how much food for thought may
be contained in these notes, but how much energy you can draw from them. Besides, in an interview, the band
have already made it be known that they care little for starting fully fleged theoretical debates in the press: “Don’t
know if our music is serious enough to warrant an offensive misunderstanding.”
By Tobias Fischer
Homepage: Dynamite Club
Homepage: Caminante Recordings
By Tobias Fischer, published 2008-09-12 - www.tokafi.com

With an extremely energetic and experimental sound, death metal growls, and a song with lyrics
that literally just spout off pi to at least the 50th decimal, Fusion Era falls just on the awesome side
of ridiculous. And with twelve songs in less than 20 minutes, the fat has been cut off, leaving you
with ample time to listen to shittier records.
RATING: THREE STARS - DYNAMITE CLUB – FUSION ERA (Caminante Recordings) October 2008

Dynamite Club makes irreverent, bizarre, and at times obscene or disturbing noisy rock. This is
along some of the same lines as early Boredoms hardcore with a splash of prog (guitar lines and
rhythms are at times pretty complex). The vocalist gives a distinctly ESL edge to the weird-out
lyrics.
Interesting: 3 (treatment of the reading of the digits of pi), 6 (a satirical prod at jazz fusion), 9
(longest - Mike Patton style disturbing spaz composition) - Dynamite Club - "Fusion Era" TUESDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2008

Dynamite Club goes through bassists like Spinal Tap goes through drummers. Though none of Dynamite's
bassists have died (the closest call being a fall off a cliff in Taiwan), Evan Lipson is the eighth in the trio's
seven-year history. He splits duties with Jesse Krakow (Number 7) on Fusion Era (Caminante). Founded by
drummer Mike Pride and guitarist Kentaro Saito, who split vocal duties, the group is a hardcore madcap,
veering recklessly between punk bashing, lounge-jazz pastiche, thrash-metal riffing and simple insanity.
—Shaun Brady
Sat., Nov. 1, 8 p.m., $10 ($8 w/ costume), with DMBQ, AIDS Wolf, Us Girls, Birds of Maya and Satanized,
Danger Danger Gallery, 5013 Baltimore Ave., myspace.com/dangerdangergallery. - Dynamite Club

January 14, 2009 by David Smith
Category: Albums (and EPs)
Dynamite Club crosses The Minutemen with Dazzling Killmen on the 20-minute Fusion Era, and the results will
either frustrate or delight you. Either way, you’ll have to appreciate the musicianship.
Members of the trio have been affiliated with John Zorn (no surprise), Fast n Bulbous (name presumably taken
from the Captain Beefheart song — again, no surprise), and MDC (OK, a little surprising). The spastic bursts of
mania that characterize Dynamite Club’s primal math-rock sound have predecessors going way back, but a lot of
those earlier bands took themselves more seriously than does this band. Then again, there are plenty of bands
who do what Dynamite Club does because they’ve gotten bored with music that’s predictable and they just have
to laugh. Music can be sarcastic without any lyrics.
These songs just go all over the place but center around tight drum/guitar synchronization. If a song has a few
seconds of funk or blues or near-metal, you have to wait only a few more seconds before it gets back to Hella riff-
ing where every guitar note gets a snare hit and a few cymbal smacks thrown in between runs. These guys
change tempo and time signature like they’ve forgotten their Ritalin.
The screaming and growling in the vocals don’t seem at all threatening — probably aren’t meant to, either. The
discernable lyrics seem to have more to do with parody than aggression, despite the tone. Bonus points also for
enlisting producer/engineer Don Fury, but maybe a few points off for the (again, sarcastic) CD artwork just be-
cause it hurts the eyes. But then I guess the point is to create a visual assault to go with the sonic assault,
maybe? - Dynamite Club - Fusion Era

This trio of New Yorkers: Mike Pride, Evan Lipson and Kentaro Saito respectively, joined forces to create Dynamite
Club, an extra spicy hot sauced taco filled with Noise rock madness, jazz arrangements and grindcore power. Invit-
ing noise rock legends such as John Zorn and Keiji Haino among others as guests, their work is a strange psyche-
delic and unstable preparation, so be cautious whenever you experience this. The cd lasts for just 19 minutes in a
row, so you may expect the typical grinding velocity in some of the songs like the introductory “Cow Fat” that start
with a punk-hard rock solidified intermezzo that explodes in a mad frenzied fuck wit grind noisy blast, more bizarre
than furious, full of grunts and rapid riffs that reminds from all those tongue in cheek grindcore acts from the mid
eighties.
“12 questions for the psychedelically impaired” takes a more hardcore approach, similar to Cryptic Slaughter in
sound, dried drums, fast raspy vocals blurting with twisted lyrics: “”do you have a pussy on your hands”, “Is your
feet flat?” in a relentless succession of chaotic madness. The work shows its more experimental side, exposing this
acid noise jazz side that characterize their sound in subsequent songs: “www.porno.net” starts as a jazzy jamming,
with groovy riffs that narrates the infinite orgasmic possibilities that the www can proportionate to its clients, what-
ever their means are. The crazy punk rant on “p” is another of this many personalities from this band, a continuous
enumeration of the numbers that constitute the p encapsulating sudden rhythm changes that jumps into jazzy inter-
ludes accompanied by weird single chorus repeating this dumb “lo-lo-lo”. Nevermind they are silly and crazy often,
maybe both.
Each of the songs gingerly preserves this acid feeling and schizoid rhythmic temporality, especially induced through
the guitar riffs and commanded by their rhythmic changes, the drums seconds them by speeding or applying the
brakes all of sudden, grabbing the listener from its hairs from their acidic blast off dirges to more melodic jazz based
outbursts so you better take your head firmly with your hands or you’ll lose it, beheaded by this funny madness. To
compare this jazz punky conformation and somehow identify his whereabouts we may cite that singular song from
the dead Kennedy’s “We got a bigger problem now” with its jazzy bass/guitar bend, slowed down and then proceed-
ing with riff acidifications and whipping the velocity through the drums (this aspect is especially noticeable in the
title song “Fusion Era”. Well, it is kind of similar, only more acid and grinding in the vocal section and less impli-
cated in logic plots too, lyrically and musically, as the guitar not necessarily follows rhythm pattern logic for the lis-
tener’s choice and the lyrics may leave you clueless with its psychotic rants.
The musical section is not dedicated to virtuosity, rather is a tongue in cheek fascination, uncompromised attitude
and fun. Lyrics although not discernible because of the often grind noisy pronunciation reminds as an incognito that
gets resolved whenever you read them in the booklet, they are weird, horny, perverted and simply foolish. As the
band labels theirselves this is Hyper dense, blast off noise rock with humorous attitude, humorous not ridiculous
though, as their lyrics and music have a quote of seriousness amidst the psychedelic and extravagant tongue in cheek
direction.
So one may believe Dynamite Club would be a band that just a few number of fans will take seriously, but they have
a huge fan base and are enough busy to not have a free agenda for three consecutive years! Touring with important
acts such Akimbo, and travelling half North America playing and partying through and with their music. Psychoti-
cally insane and unstable but unredeemable funny, their music stands as a non compromised commitment that we
should take seriously indeed as their entries can keep us entertained and to suggest more than one thing with their
mad innuendos.
Very imaginative lyrics are constructed on the never ending possibilities that jazz experimentation can give, they
will have enough time and future attempts to construct more of these schizoid pieces to entertain us. Weird to go! - Dynamite Club - Fusion Era Thursday, January 01 2009 @ 01:00 AM PST Contributed by: Jack The Rippe

Japan and New York team up for a noise rock jamboree courtesy of Dynamite Club and their latest 12-track so-
journ FUSION ERA. Channeling a slew of System of a Down, Frank Zappa and Mike Patton’s finest moments
while blessed with the capacity to turn delightful pop melodies into near death metal experiences at the drop of
a dime without sounding forced, FUSION ERA embraces the chaotic spirit of hardcore punk while remaining
heavily steeped in the freewheeling nature of the theatre of the absurd. Lyrics such as the ones found on “Eye
Like to Look” and “Besame My Love” are borderline disturbing when read, but add the calculated cacophony
and disjointed delivery audible from such gems as “12 Questions for the Psychedelically Impaired” to the equa-
tion and the ridiculousness not only matches beautifully but actually begins to make sense. Those not inclined
to take a trip to the more adventurous side will loathe this disc’s entire 19:33 runtime, but for those in need for a
quick fix of crazy, you can’t go wrong with the madness associated with FUSION ERA.
www.dynamiteclub.com -Mike SOS - www.gearsofrock.com