Nisennenmondai

A Tokyo-based all-female instrumental trio that make equally raw and danceable music, Nisennenmondai formed in the late '90s and took their name from the Japanese translation of the then-current phrase "Y2K bug." Guitarist Masako Takada, bassist Yuri Zaikawa, and drummer Sayaka Himeno met at a club near their university and formed the band soon after, taking as much inspiration from the cool kids at school as they did from experimentalists like This Heat, Pop Group, Sonic Youth, DNA, and Neu! The band's first album, Rokuon, appeared in 2006, but it wasn't until 2008 that Nisennenmondai's increasingly large body of work would be distributed outside of Japan. ~ Heather Phares