The inimitable travel mavens at Rough Guides are not offering your average travel fare, and their counterparts in music are also looking for the unusual and the undercovered. This guide to Japanese music sidesteps the obvious shakuachis, kodo drums, and No theater music in favor of taiko-rap, ondo-funk, Okinawa-pop, and some forms yet to be hyphenated, let alone explained. It runs the gamut, from the mediocre pop of Kawachiya Kikusuimaru (toss-off synths and drum machines) to the brilliant avant-garde biwa (lute) and accordion of Yukihiro Goto and the minimalist koto quartet Koto Vortex. Humor abounds in the Surf Champlers' weird Tokyo take on the James Bond movies' theme. Fuzzy electric blues meets Okinawa in the music of An-Chang Project, fronted by the emotive vocals of Yasuba Jun. The set has it all, great, good, bad, and awful in pretty equal amounts, but for the good and great alone it's worth the price, and the bad and awful are certainly enlightening and entertaining. --Louis Gibson

$14.98