Hideo Naksako hails from Osaka, which over the last few years has become the central hub for Japan’s burgeoning beat-music scene. That city – along with the surrounding Kansai region – has been home to many producers putting their own stamp on the beat style, plus a community helping one another out in making music…
Man, these four sure have grown in over a year. Back in 2012, they were just another indie-pop band in a very crowded field. Now, they are one of the few to break through and land on a decently known indie label (Second Royal) and their music has gotten tighter and better. They have a…
On the surface level, Canata Records seems like a pretty rigid netlabel sonically. “We believe that freedom is pop,” goes one of the slogans on their Bandcamp page, and a cursory look at the artist names, album and song titles indicate the label deals mostly in twee. Yet what has made them one of the…
The titles of i-fls’ albums always seem like clues to what’s going on, but strangely enough his latest throws me for a loop. It has a title within a title – he is referring to a cassette named “Awareness To The Winter,” although I have no idea what that really means. Actual relic of the…
My image of Tokyo long ago became demystified, even before I got a room in a sleepy corner of the city and decided to call Japan’s capital my current home. It’s just a sprawling place to me, one mixing glassy skyscrapers with drab apartment complexes disrupted by the occasional park or shrine. It is nothing…