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Indian Ink on Paper - 760x570mm - 2016

I started to have a serious go at getting good at drawing about 8 years ago and mostly taught myself how to draw by drawing frogs. Along the way my best friend Blake introduced me to the bands Effigy and Axewield, it’s not an understatement to say I have listened to those bands for nearly every drawing I’ve done since the introduction.

In 2014 when I went to Japan I booked 2 months to try and find Axewield to show them my drawings, I found out on my first day in Japan that the band had split. I spent my time in Japan bouncing around looking for records and gigs, I would use my drawings as a way to introduce myself to the local punks. Given that they often didn’t speak a lot of English and my Japanese is shit house. I would usually start by showing my drawings on my phone, doing a gesture of listening to music, saying Effigy and Axewield, then doing a gesture of drawing. It worked quite well as a means of getting my message across that I love Japanese punk.

At the beginning of my trip I had gotten to meet the ex-drummer from Effigy/Axewield, Kaku-chan, who now plays in Disturd. I met him at a show in Kobe called ‘From The Darkness…’ that Disturd were hosting. I gave him a sketch and that led to me getting to draw artwork for Disturd but I’ll write about that for the actual post of the artwork. I’ll mention at that show, Disturd, Assembrage, Organism, Demolition and C played. I’ll also post the whole story behind that gig because it became a fulcrum point for my adventure in 2014.

Just outside of Nagoya is a record shop\live house named Vortex in Yokkaichi. I was in Nagoya to see a band called Demolition play for the second time (holy shit definitely see Demolition play live, when I saw them in 2014 they blew my mind several times over). I had a bit of time to kill before the show so I went to find Vortex.

As I was going to walk in Vortex I heard someone call my name. I turned around to my surprise and blurted out ‘oh shit So!’. It was a friendly fellow by the name of Souichirou. He plays guitar in Assembrage and we met at the From the Darkness gig in Kobe, he started speaking to me in English and I was so hyped – at the time of the Kobe gig I had been in Japan for like 5 days and was still shy as fuck. Such a nice dude. Anyways we were having a chat and drinking some beers outside Vortex when a dude named Junkichi started talking to me. Also in English! I’m so fucken stoked! Junkichi is the vocalist for Assembrage. I forgot to mention that Assembrage were playing a show at Vortex on the day I visited. What fucken good luck I have!

Junkichi and I started talking about Amebix (I was wearing my Amebix – Winter shirt). Then I started showing my drawings and named dropping Effigy and Axewield. Turns out Junkichi is good friends with Masuda – bass player and vocals form both bands, now playing in Ulcer. He said he would get Masuda to screen me an Effigy shirt. Things just keep getting better! Unfortunately I had to leave to attend the Demolition show. But Junkichi added me on Facebook.

Towards the very end of my trip I decided I wanted to spend my last week in Osaka getting drunk at Bar Konton (best bar in the world). Not having many people to hang out with I sent a message to Junkichi asking if he would like to have dinner.

During the dinner Junkichi asked me if I would like to go on a 3-day road trip with him to visit Masuda and then Hiro (from Disclose/The Cranks/Insane Youth/Aggression). Fuck yeah I did! I’ll leave the full story of meeting Masuda for a separate post as this is already getting too long.

To summarise, Masuda was fucken awesome and asked me to draw artwork for his new band Ulcer, and when I returned in 2015 to Japan he asked me to draw the banner for Ulcer (Ulcer fucken rock by the way).

To have a dude from my favourite bands ask me to draw a banner is probably one of the most life affirming things that could happen to me and makes me so happy. So here it is, life is so fucken awesome. Thank you Junkichi, Masuda, Blake and Punk.

Oh and thanks to Souichirou for saying hello to me that first time! A lot of the craziness above sort of spawned from that moment.