Seiho just put out a (fantastic) full-length album…but here he is, already releasing new material into the wilds of the Internet. Dude is prolific. Anyway, ignore me and just dive right into “Chang Before You Have To,” which you can download for free by clicking the photo above. Otherwise, listen to the minimal, pitch-shifted wonder below.
I’m not going to make any sort of “best of 2013…so far!” list because let’s just wait until December comes along and we can see what really stuck (plus, I took part in this). Kobe-born producer tofubeats’ Lost Decade, though, will probably appear somewhere on that list, because it’s a heck of an album, a total display of the dude’s production skills. To remind you of how nice it is, here is the new video for “No.1,” featuring vocals courtesy of G.RINA. It’s one of Lost Decade’s more easygoing moments – it gets pretty bonkers – and a very easy-breezy track peppered by tofubeats’ boogie-inducing touches.
The “list a bunch of your favorite acts” trick is a classic approach to songwriting – some folks who have indulged in it include Daft Punk, The Tough Alliance, LCD Soundsystem, Daft Punk again (sorta). Tokyo’s Alloapm pulls this card on the opening track to their new EP Wavepop. Over an upbeat assortment of synths, they spend the duration of “Talking To My Radio” giving approving shout-outs to the likes of Whitney Houston, Giorgio Moroder and Hall & Oates among others. As the lyrical heart of an uptempo dance-pop number…one featuring electro-manipulated singing…it works wonders, and is a heck of a way to start a very nice EP.
The rest of Wavepop is less worried about honoring the past and more focused on the floor. “Midnight Cake” struts along, despite being a downtrodden number, the sort of track designed not for a club but a midnight walk around downtown Shibuya. On the more light-hearted side is “Malibu Club,” featuring Kai Lavatai handling vocals. Of the three original tracks here (also included…a remix of “Talking To My Radio”) it’s the most dance-worthy and also the one most indebted to antiquated sounds…it is very ’80s, for better and worse. Yet, like the whole EP, it’s pretty darn enjoyable. Alloapm clearly paid attention to their heroes. Listen below.
Too much good music has popped up online over the last few days…better round it all up, fast.
– The ever-productive i-fls has a new album out soon, but for now enjoy a song that won’t be on his latest full-length, the “Tanabata greeting track” “You Made A Constellation.” It shimmers and whirs, i-fls capturing a whole lot of wonder and nerves in just over two minutes.
– Yoshino Yoshikawa deals in what he calls “ultra pop,” which is a sort of hi-definition, always-buzzing take on pop. It’s pretty glorious if you are into music being broadcast in high definition (I am), and he’s got a great new song called “I Feel You, I Love You” to check out. It’s high-energy fun, complete with manipulated singing.
– Want something a little more crushing? Welp, here comes Nagoya’s House Of Tapes with a new track that feels like being caught in that trash crusher from Star Wars. One interesting development though – between all those bone-shattering beats, he’s added in vocals, which somehow make the whole track even more unnerving.
Last, Osaka’s Talking City 1994 have a pleasant, bouncy new track for you to listen to. The strings that pop up at the end are an especially nice touch for them.
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This last year has seen a handful of electronic-heavy acts, outfits unafraid to mess around with vocals and tempo to create something that a few have labelled “future pop” because of how left-field it sounds for something capable of topping charts. English acts like AlunaGeorge and Disclosure, Scotland’s Chvrches and Canada’s Purity Ring have been at the forefront of this, but as of late a lot of Japanese producers have been flexing their skills at this sort of sound. Like pretty much every one on Day Tripper Records, especially label head Seiho. Or someone like Carpainter. Or PARKGOLF, a Sapporo artist who has been getting a bit more attention as of late. His new album Cat Walk, out on Maltine Records, cements him as one of the brightest young producers in Japan today at this hyper style.
The bulk of this album is built on synths that speed by and pitch-shifted vocals that are often just a single syllable. The whole album finds PARKGOLF fitting in as much as he can into each song – the title track teases the hip-hop-inspired style of TNGHT but ends up zooming out of that duo’s gravity. What sounds like the album’s most calm cut, “Dream Goes On Forever,” morphs into a footwork-ish number a little over the halfway point. Footwork’s tendency to slice up vocals is a clear inspiration for PARKGOLF, but he hasn’t constructed something that could be slotted next to Picnic Women or Foodman or Paisley Parks. Rather, it’s one detail that makes already fidgety tracks even more jittery, like the neon-soaked “Metropolitan Neapolitan.” This rapid-fire style can sometimes be a bit much in album form…you need some time to breathe, too…but individually, these tracks are lovely hyper-pop. Get it here.