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Category Archives: Music @ja

New White Wear: “White Six Strings”

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Here is White Wear at his most stripped down to date, and quite possibly the most minimalist any track to emerge from the shadows of CUZ ME PAIN has ever been. “White Six Strings” is White Wear armed with only a guitar…and save for a few edits here and there (a hiccup at the start, what sounds like some pitched-up notes near the end), this is just dude playing the guitar. What he records is a surprisingly melancholy, very bare thing that’s intriguing. This comes off of his new album Black Strings, due out in September. Listen below.

New Teen Runnings: “Sightseeing” (Demo)

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For most of their existence, Teen Runnings (formerly Friends) coated their surf-rock in feedback and distortion, an intentional move meant to fracture what was otherwise warm nostalgia for a time the group never lived through. New demo track “Sightseeing” initially offers up a bit of a departure for the group – it sounds super clear. The drums come through without any sonic obstruction, and the guitars are “Kokomo” smooth. Lead singer Syouta Kaneko even sounds unmuffled.

Turns out the unease lining their more dissonant work shifted to the lyrics. Teen Runnings’ words have always been a mix of bright-eyed innocence and unease – “yesterday I met you/I think I love you” is puppy-dog naive, but also kinda creepy. “Sightseeing” is about traveling and, well, sightseeing, but it isn’t totally upbeat. Our protagonist wants to meet new people, but one line hints at the fact they don’t seem to have many chums in their hometown. A line like “Though memories will disappear in 2 weeks and even forget the names of the buildings we’ve been to” hints at the futility of travel, while the main character’s mother even shows up to sort of look at the proposition of travel funny. Yet, like the music, brightness still breaks through. The whole thing can best be summed up in the best line – “See the towns, see their darker sides. There’s no paradise that you hope to be/Now feel the sun, see those birds flying. Don’t get butterflies, that’s the world for you.” Listen below.

All In The Voice: YeYe’s “Parade”

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“Parade” is a perfectly pleasant pop song, young singer YeYe handling her vocals well over the peppy music, the sort of thing that could be easily rejiggered into the backing sounds of a Broadway musical. It’s good…but what makes it interesting (and, disclosure, gets it a post here) is the backing vocals. Few songs this year have benefited so much from a single sonic detail, but man “Parade” gets so much better when YeYe’s voice is trailing off in the background, bringing to mind the breathless female vocals of Dirty Projectors or even the drippy voices in a A Sunny Day In Glasgow track. I could listen to that voice for quite some time…and it is a critical inclusion in “Parade.”

Tear ‘Em Up: Yusaku Harada

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There will come a day where Japan’s electronic music scene will be a little too full. It’s already starting to happen, as with each new FOGPAK compilation…and with it a longer playtime…it becomes clear that, even though there are lots of young producers worth listening to, there are also a lot who just don’t have that many fresh ideas. One of the outposts that have been consistently good at releasing some of Japan’s best electronic music has been Day Tripper Records, the Osaka label founded by Seiho. They haven’t released masterpiece after masterpiece, but they put out quality music at a better clip than most.

They recently put out a tape by Yusaku Harada, and once again Day Tripper have highlighted an electronic artist worth focusing on. A cursory listen to Harada’s work to date…he first popped up on a FOGPAK comp…finds him doing something a lot of Japanese electronic artists are doing right now – building fidgety songs out of spliced-up vocal samples. His newest song, “Kessler Syndrome,” is an especially good demonstration of this. It also highlights everything that makes Harada stand out…whereas so many songs seemingly take one song’s vocals and chops them up, Harada’s ingredients sound like they come from 20 different songs. The music is just as rapid fire, jumping between steely bass and piano keys. This collage-like approach…very different than what Seiho does, as he tends to show off each sound, while Harada lets them tumble over one another…makes for a heck of a listen.

Explore the rest of his music too…he makes it work on stuff like the crowded-but-catchy “Tape Tape Tape.”

New Perfume: “1mm”

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I’m melting over here. Let’s put biases out front shall we…Perfume are my favorite musical entity ever, and I’ll always find some light even in their worst moments (I see you “Mirai No Museum,” what’s up “Toki No Hari”) because I’m fully entranced by what Yasutaka Nakata does. OK, we clear on that? “1mm” is, on a few initial listens, great. Since last summer’s trifecta of “Spending All My Time”/”Point”/”Hurly Burly,” Perfume’s singles have been a bit more hit or miss, at their best being catchy albeit a bit safe for them (“Magic Of Love” springs to mind). This, though, features an immediately satisfying chorus (punctuated by some airy “ah-ah-ahhhhhhs”) and one of Nakata’s less darty creations sonically in quite some time. It slowly builds up, practically rumbling. I probably should listen to a bunch of dance records to see where Nakata is pulling from…but dang, this is great. Listen below (or click the picture!)