INNITやIdleMoments等のイベントが象徴しているように、大阪のビート・シーンは非常に大盛況。Magical Mistakesの渦巻くようなサウンドや、Seihoの実験的なビートは、とてもユニークなのと同時にグルーブ感もあります。でも、”Alder”はそのような曲がブラックホールに吸い込まれたかのような印象。IdleMomentsをオーガナイズするEadonmmによるこのトラックは、極めてテンポを抑えた、スローな楽曲。ゆったりと始まり、アンビエントな空気感を堪能しているその時に、ピークを迎えます。シンセサイザーによる壁のようなレイヤーが左右にパンし、異なるテンポのボーカルが、それぞれ違うピッチで奇妙なデュエットを奏でます。ダンスフロアには不向きかもしれませんが、それ以上に、独特な音世界を堪能する事が可能。試聴は以下から。
Pure neon sounds here. Tokyo’s Alloapm has labeled this a “summer version,” but really this is a song designed for the night, preferably while cruising through the city, potentially while holding onto some ~feels~. It is, sonically, a relatively simple number – a flurry of synths, a beat, bass and some Vocder-ized singing propelling the…
Hey, summer going a little too well for you? Having too much fun in the warm weather? Welp, Kansai indie-pop outfit It Happens have the perfect bummer jam to make you wistful. “Track And Field” is an extremely lonely song, just some guitar strumming and downtrodden singing that’s near impossible to understand due to how…
Three songs to take you into the weekend (oh thank goodness it is here!). Let’s get into it: – Kobe’s tofubeats had a really busy 2013, and he appears to not be slowing down as the calendar turned over. “CHNGEYRHRT” though finds him stepping away from the nearly all-original sounds that dotted his music last…
関西のロックバンド、NOKIES!がデビューフルアルバム、”Between The Blinks”をFlake Recordsとタワーレコードからリリースしました。Los Campesinos!のようなインディーポップが特徴的な彼等でしたが、今作品では良い意味で幅広い層から好かれそうな雰囲気。タワーレコードからのリリースも違和感なく、これからバンドはどんどんメインストリームなロックバンドとして成長していきそうですが、ボーカルのクメユウスケはそのような方向性とは違ったものをYouth Genius(Youth LagoonとPerfume Geniusの融合みたいな感じかな？）として表現しています。 Soundcloudには、”All of the songs is inspired by peculiar atomosphere created by the streets and youth of Kyoto city,”(京都の若者やストリートが持つ独特な空気感が楽曲に影響を与えている。)と書かれているのですが、その通り京都の若者達は個性的なスタイルを表現していて、Youth Lagoonは少しばかりのエレクトロ要素を持つインディーポップと、跳ねるようなファンクを融合していて、哀愁とワイルドさのバランスを上手く保っています。”Explains”は直球勝負なインディーポップで、センターに配置されたキーボードがとても良い存在感。”Behind You”と”Stay Above The Clouds”は多くの打ち込みが使われていて、今年に国内でリリースされたインディーポップの中でも特に目立っています。そして”We Keep Kissing”はクラブ的アノラックサウンドが、The Brixton Academyが本気を出してダンサブルな楽曲を作ったかのような印象。Youth Geniusみたいなプロジェクトがあることで、NOKIES!の方向性もどんどん進化していきそうですね。
This song isn’t introducing anything novel to the Japanese independent music landscape – producers pitch-shifting a vocal sample or two and building a song around it were all over the place in 2012, highlighted by the likes of Taquwami and Seiho. Yet Winona Hyper’s “Promise” does a solid job of this style, taking only a…
This month’s edition of the Music Alliance Pact is out now! Among the 30-plus acts from around the world on display below, we’ve highlighted Nagano’s Boe Oakner and her barely-there wonder “Cherenkov.” Check it and everything else in MAP below! Click the play button icon to listen to individual songs, right-click on the song…
As the image above indicates, “The Hidden Secrets” also doubles as the name for Tokyo indie-pop outfit BOYISH’s newest EP, one which was slated to come out on July 25 but as of 11:18 P.M. on that day isn’t anywhere to be seen (I guess check for an update if it appears by the time this posts). Still, BOYISH have served up a preview in the form of the title track. BOYISH tend to have two modes of twee – they either sound sorta explosive in their ennui or downtrodden and muffled. “The Hidden Secrets” is the latter, as the vocals sound mumbled and have been recorded as to me nearly unintelligible. The guitars and the beat, though, dash ahead and do an excellent imitation of 80’s indie-pop, which is what this group does oh so well anyway. Listen below.
Update: Now you can hear the whole EP below.
Intend keeps things soft on “Kyu Ji,” but doesn’t get too quiet over the course of the song. This number, featuring a sparse piano-accented beat, approaches whisper rap, but the MC at the center of it makes sure to prop up her words with a blast of energy to avoid letting it get overly sleepy….
When you need a little burst of energy during a busy day, Osaka’s Satanicpornocultshop always comes through. The juke-leaning collective’s new Green Papaya EP zeroes in on percussion, with nearly every track here interlaying different beats over one another to create shuffling rhythm tracks. It runs from the sparse, skin-tingling wooden sounds of “Mouthwash” to…
Osaka’s The Neon City explores blurriness from two different angles on her newest pair of songs. “Chinatown” (above) revels in wooziness, voices layered over one another a la A Sunny Day In Glasgow, with the end result sounding like a drunken skip down the street, every good thing spinning around together. It is far different…
[youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiZF3sgiHo4″] Remember last week when I wondered aloud about The Mirraz ability to swallow sounds up like Kirby and imitate them pretty well? Now they’ve gone and released another video for the title track of their just-in-stores album and…hypothesis proved, I guess. “We Are The Fuck’N World” trades in the stadium-rock ambitions of their last…
This year has found Snail’s House pushing his sound in all sorts of directions, for better or for worse. The ever-prolific creator joined other electronic producers in Japan (or those abroad playing with Japanese imagery) in shying away from what has been described as a “kawaii” sound, best summed up as a busy overload of…
Endless Summer gathers a handful of previously released songs from chillwave disciple Takeaki Oda and also introduces a few new ones to the mix too. I’ve written about many of the numbers that make a repeat appearance on Endless Summer, and they remain nice replications of chillwave wooze built for zoning out (and maybe…just maybe…at…