Just like regular music, only free.

An Essex boy in Kyushu releasing albums in Japan through a Northern Irish home-grown record label; Chris Jack’s story could be a case study for a textbook chapter on ‘technology and globalization’.

His band, The Routes, released their debut album almost exactly a year ago, first in the UK and Europe and then in Japan. When asked about sales, he answers that he doesn't really know: “Not bad, not great” is his eventual guess. He is certainly not waiting to break the Top 40 and be signed by a big label, stating that he has no major aspirations; having a CD released at all was enough. They are not really making money from their music, and are not expecting to, or they’d, “…play hip-hop to be commercially successful”. So how does a musician with a voice described as, “having gravel lodged in his larynx,” go about getting a garage rock CD released in the land of SMAP and Morning Musume?

Chris was originally into indie music in the UK, but his tastes changed when he began playing in Oita Prefecture. Originally making punk music (ironically, there was more of a punk influence in the Japanese music scene than back in England), and always having been into 60’s music, his early Japanese sound was what he terms “Garage Punk”, shaped by “frustration at living in Hita”, a large-ish town on the border of Oita and Fukuoka Prefectures. Local bands at the two local live venues when he arrived in 2003 were either playing the ‘obvious’ Clash and Sex Pistols covers, or sub-par Green Day impressions in the popular melocore (melodic hardcore) genre popular at the time, which he so eloquently summed up as ‘dogshit’.

2 years ago, typical of the 21st century technological revolution, The Routes’ were discovered on MySpace by Andy McGibbon, manager of self-created label Motor Sounds Records based in Belfast, Northern Island. After two offers had fallen through from other labels, they were asked to release their debut album and given full artistic freedom, which allowed them to release the ultra-lo fi Left My Mind, recorded on a 4-track tape recorder to give it an authentically live feel. Motor Sounds Records paid for the pressing of 1,000 copies of the CD, released them in the UK and Europe and, most importantly, arranged distribution deals thanks to a track being featured on the label’s compilation Blood on the Scratchplate ‘65, which also launched the label.

With a label based in the UK, The Routes needed to find a distributor for their newly-pressed album in Japan. Garage punk/rock being quite a niche sound, Chris was hopeful that one of the big, independent Japanese distributors would help them to get their album in the shops, but after months of getting no response he turned to Sazanami in Tokyo, a specialist label, sending them MP3s and a request for advice. They were so impressed with what they heard, they took one track for an upcoming compilation and promoted them to distributors themselves, leading to Left My Mind now being available at Tower Records, HMV and 7-11.

Living up to his reputation as a hard-working self-promoter - his label manager Andy describes him always, “…out there hustling, trying to get his record sold - he and another band member spent a week banging out 200 CDs on their laptops to send to Tokyo for promotion to potential promoters. Once the deal was sealed, the original CDs had to be flown over from the UK. Naturally, Sazanami took a cut of profits for their role in the promotional chain.

Chris feels they were extremely lucky to have found support from Sazanami; without them, options would have been limited. They could have established their own branch of MSR, Japan, but it would have taken a probative amount of both time and money. Unfortunately, Chris pines, distributors won’t touch a label’s product until it has had 15-20 releases, and it’s not possible to release CDs without a distributor. It's a vicious circle which keeps the distributors betting on the same old tried and trusted acts, and makes it extremely difficult for new artists to break through. Despite seeing and hearing the same few acts on TV and in record shops, this isn’t merely a Japanese problem, according to Chris, but a worldwide problem with the current music industry.

However, the technology which allowed their band (and others, such as 2005’s global success story the Arctic Monkeys) to be discovered on social network websites such as MySpace may also be sparking a revolutionary change in the artist–label-distributor chain. With the quality of music required for a major release not permitting bands to merely burn CDs on computers and photocopy album covers, labels were originally needed due to the probative costs of bands pressing their own CDs. In 2005, it cost 300,000 yen to press 1,000 CDs - beyond the means of the average indie band. In the past two years, however, the price has dropped by a third, meaning you can create your own circle of silver for a mere 100 yen per disc.

Whilst distributors will still be needed to physically get those discs into shops and onto shelves, the ability to make your own albums, aided by the technological revolution of being able to instantly get your music out to a wide audience through the internet, means that labels are getting into trouble; when more bands begin printing and promoting themselves, as now world-famous Scottish combo Belle & Sebastian did in the 1990’s, there will be less and less need for major labels.

The difficulties in finding a distributor in Japan wasn't a case of good-old fashioned discrimination, Chris feels. It was not a gaijin problem, but a musical one, the situation here being echoed by his own early efforts to get his music heard. Back in Essex, England, in 1997 he pressed a 7-inch single which was never distributed, merely sold at gigs and a local record shop. Indeed, it is through local music events, especially the vibrant Fukuoka Rockabilly scene, that Chris feels most at home, enjoying being ‘cult’ with his predominantly Japanese fan-base more than he would being a household name.

Chris says he can't imagine not playing music, and that he feels better playing than not; it is simply something he feels he has to do, like watching football for a football fan, “a complete addiction”. Indeed, with his band-mates often finding that work limits their ability to play events, Chris has taken to filling promoters’ requests with a new One Man Band show (which, with typical self-depreciating rye humour, he was considering calling ‘Jack Shit – One Man Band’), which he has been asked to release on his home label. When asked whether he also has plans to release any of the solo material here in Japan, his answer sums up the difficulties and frustrations involved in getting music out to the public – “It’s not worth the bother!”

Find out more about Chris Jack and The Routes at www.theroutesjapan.com.