C.A.R. has been quiet lately because I’ve been busy with the gruelling twin tasks of making a drunken nuisance of myself at other people’s after-parties and assembling a mammoth 21-song compilation album of Wire covers by Japanese underground artists.

The concept of the album is to take Wire’s debut album Pink Flag and cover the whole thing, track for track. I’ll talk more about my reasons for deciding to do this at a later date, perhaps when people will have a chance to listen to it and decide for themselves whether it succeeds or not.

The album is close to completion now and JASRAC (the Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers) has apparently confirmed the compilation’s legal right to exist pending receipt of a large and as yet undisclosed amount of money, so I figured it was worth tempting fate and putting word out in the open.

The album will be called "Post Flag" and the track listing should run as follows:

1. "Reuters" by Tacobonds
2. "Field Day for the Sundays" by Tiala
3. "Three Girl Rhumba" –by Cottonioo
4. "Ex Lion Tamer" by Totsuzen Danball
5. "Lowdown" by Groundcover
6. "Start to Move" by Bossston Cruizing Mania
7. "Brazil" by Agolay Culkin
8. "It’s So Obvious" by Worst Taste
9. "Surgeon’s Girl" by Hyacca
10. "Pink Flag" by Yolz In The Sky
11. "The Commercial" by Electric Coma Trio
12. "Straight Line" by Fluid
13. "106 Beats That" by Harukazedou
14. "Mr. Suit" by And About Hers
15. "Strange" by Panicsmile
16. "Fragile" by Eiko Ishibashi
17. "Mannequin" by Mir
18. "Different to Me" by Umibachi
19. "Champs" by Her
20. "Feeling Called Love" by Accidents In Too Large Field
21. "1 2 X U" by Saladabar

Someone who goes to the trouble of trawling through all those band links will notice that Worst Taste and Fluid have uploaded Wire covers onto their Myspace pages already. Others might follow in the future, and I’ll certainly put one or two on here, perhaps on a rotating basis, once the whole thing is mastered and ready.

I’m listening to the raw mixes of the tracks that I have (still waiting for a few to come in from the bands) and there’s a lot of variety, ranging from bands who have taken a pretty straight approach to the cover to bands who have flown off on wild tangents from the original song. This suits me fine as a huge fan of Wire and as someone who wants to provide a platform for the creativity and diversity of modern Japanese underground music, and hopefully it will make the album an interesting listen for people other than me as well.

As I said, more on this as the release draws closer.