Credit: Found On Internet

The Automatic’s first trip to Japan has been a great success. While they may be a Top10 act at home in Britain, the Welshmen were an unknown quantity here until last week. And now? Now it is proven: Japan loves The Automatic. Going loopy for the band at their gigs at the Fuji Rock Festival and here in Tokyo, the crowd make it very clear that hits such as ‘Monster’ are becoming firm favourites in Neonland.

And The Automatic love them right back; so much so that synth-player Alex Pennie asks to move in with Music Towers correspondent Daniel Robson, who chats with him and drummer Iwan Griffiths after their Tokyo show.

Tell us about your first trip to Japan then, boys.
Iwan: “It’s been really fun. It’s different from how we expected it to be, and better. We’re really chuffed about the crowds. We didn’t know if anyone would come to see us. The album’s out here but we didn’t really know whether anyone was buying it. This is our first time here, so it was cool to see people in the crowd singing along to our songs.”

Does it feel different to play out here?
Iwan: “Not really. Everything’s the same apart from the language. Everyone’s much more polite, they have so much respect. You have to be careful about the way you act. But I’m surprised how similar it is to Britain. It feels like London in a different language, and squared”

Pennie: “It’s almost like an advanced London in a way. Everything seems so much bigger and neater, and there are all these vending machines. It’s crazy how tolerant they must be of all these Western people not bowing correctly, mispronouncing every single part of their language, being loud – they’re not loud people at all unless they’re very drunk and doing karaoke or something. That’s their place to be loud. Even at gigs, they’re really subdued and behaved. When you finish a song, they’re quietly waiting to hear what you have to say.”

You played a great cover of Kanye West’s ‘Gold Digger’ tonight. Whose idea was that?
Iwan: “We recently did Jo Whiley’s ‘Live Lounge’; bands do two acoustic songs, and one of them has to be a cover of a recent song. It seemed like a really obvious track but no one had done it before. And now we’ve started playing it on tour cos people have been asking for it since we did it on the radio. It’s good fun actually, everyone gets involved. Like tonight, everyone was swinging their arms like at a proper hip hop gig.”