#highvision

Taking an electronic turn is, by now, something of a cliché for a certain kind of rock (usually indie rock, the product is known as ‘indietronica’ after all) band. But back in the very early 2000s the trope was decidedly much less worn, and these three Supercar albums typify just how exciting that time was. Here is a band on the brink of the unknown; on the hunt for methods of electrifying rock and rocking up electro – and not discounting anything from their vision.

Futurama, the first after Supercar’s shift, was a wide-angle sweep of the many, many potential futures open to indietronica. From enormous, pummelling dance-punk and sun-glazed alternative dance to Boredoms-esque electro-krautrock, the trio rather remarkably combined the most thrilling elements of Supercar’s first four albums – namely the band’s propensity for the stratospheric, their layers of sound, vast sonic heights and glorious climaxes – with all kinds of programmed percussion. Sure, Futurama was wildly overlong, but it was also sprawling, beautiful, captivating.

Follow-up Highvision was more focused. Less loose and exploratory, this time Supercar dialled up the sheer beauty of the band’s sound, bringing back the dense noisiness that had marked out their earliest records and moulding it into arcs of exceptional lavishness. While one could – and, one day, perhaps one shall – go into the mechanics of Highvision’s consistency and prettiness, I think it is most remarkable, for me, on an experiential level. In an omnipresent, landscape-defining sort of way, Highvision brings to mind things like suns swishing shadows across pavements, bird’s-eye views of snakelike trains criss-crossing a city, the cycles of birth and death in nature. Horizonal ambitions, executed phenomenally.

As you can likely guess from the cover, Answer, the final Supercar work, leant more heavily into psychedelia. Trancelike repetition here was the name of the game, from the hooks and basslines to the looping beats – but that isn’t to take away from the record’s other qualities. There’s more rhythmic and percussive variation on Answer than any previous Supercar work; it’s also likely the group’s most soulful effort, combining that with the band’s usual drive and detail. Answer is often overlooked in the Supercar discog, but it certainly shouldn’t be.

So how does one sum up a band like Supercar? From noisy power pop and shoegaze to indietronic pioneers, it is simply no wonder that this band has been held up like so few others among the current generation of Japanese musicians. And with influences like these, it’s no wonder Japan’s indie scene is so diverse and exciting.