App Review: Japanese Smash Girls

How you could you resist an app that promises to keep you up to date with the Japanese indie scene, lets you watch Japanese grrl rock stars smashing guitars and simulates you smashing a guitar by buzzing your iPhone and making painful screechy noises. I certainly couldn't - but, though fun it is too good to be true.. Review below.

The concept:
It's a collaboration between Japanese music distributor "monstar.fm" and guitar-makers K's Japan. Instead of just playing you music, it sets the to films of Japan's top female indie acts smashing guitars up. It's a push to get you to buy music though with each song cutting out about 30 seconds in.

The design:
Flip through 12 artists with a song each, click Info to learn more about the artist, go to their website, purchase their music on iTunes, or find out what they like and err, what blood type they are.

Click play to get a 30 second clip of one of 12 songs. Shake you phone during the song and the artist stops and starts smashing her guitar in, shake your phone while she's smashing and you get the noise too. The song cuts out when you get them to smash though, which is a pity.

The wow-factor:
love the idea - it makes a library of 12 songs you've never heard before into something really fun but getting prompted to buy stuff every minute is annoying and I really hate it when songs cut out. On the other hand music videos shot specifically for iPHone look quite good.

Conclusion: great idea but it's a bit of a tease - can someone do one that's more generous with the music please?

The price: £0.59 on iTunes