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Category Archives: Music @ja

Taquwami Makes A Mix For SSENSE, Includes New Song “Hate Winter”

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It’s a nice occurrence that Tokyo producer Taquwami’s mix for the website SSENSE, featuring a new song called “Hate Winter,” dropped during a weekend that featured Spring-like temperatures in Japan’s capital. “Hate Winter” closes out his almost-40-minute mix and is a lovely comedown, a slowly unfolding track full of layered vocal samples and some nice electronic touches. It’s one of the more meditative pieces Taquwami has done following the often fast-paced Blurrywonder album last year. It’s also a great ending for a really strong mix featuring the likes of Arca, Oneothrix Point Never and Dntel(the latter artist’s song totally brought me back to high school, oh man). Listen to it here, or below…and below that, just here Taquwami’s new song.

Glory Days: i-fls Residential Town Loneliness

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Two years ago, when I lived not in the hyper-speed metropolis of Tokyo but rather in the semi-rural mountains of Mie prefecture, I brought a friend from America who was on vacation to my then home. We spent a lot of time in my quaint city, population 80,000. We had spent nearly a week in Tokyo, and it was jarring for the both of us to come to this place, where the constant noise of the capital was replaced by a mid-summer silence, the scenery going from never-ending storefronts to space punctured only by the occasional chain store. One day, we were walking to the supermarket – because that’s what you do when you are bored in this place – and my friend said:

“This is like the Flint, Michigan of Japan, huh?”

Though I wouldn’t go as far as to compare my former home to an economically ravaged city like Flint, I would not deny that it was a place defined by an odd sense of suburban loneliness, of being cut off from the greater world and being given cruddy trains and McDonald’s instead. It’s a feeling bedroom-producer i-fls captures wonderfully on the aptly titled Residential Town Loneliness, his newest album and first for the American label Zoom Lens. The titles of the songs here set the scene – “Monorail,” “Used Bookstore Chains,” “After School,” “Local Line At Twilight.” i-fls himself only uses synth and beats here, yet from these minimal tools he creates songs that sound comforting but also always looking for something bigger. A healthy dose of adolescent nostalgia seemingly went into this recording – one pictures a high school student in the middle of class, staring out the window wondering what exists beyond here – but the subject matter (small town ennui) is universal, something millions of people experience or have experienced. Residential Town Loneliness firmly puts i-fls in the same category as Lullatone, another Japanese outfit known for simplistic music carrying heavy emotional weight. Yet that duo creates twinkling songs meant to evoke childhood, whereas i-fls pokes around the teenage years. This is a wonderful little album that takes the boredom of residential life and finds the richness underneath. Get it here.

Glowing Corners: Sakasa’s Coin Bender EP

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Tokyo might be an urban labyrinth, but the Kansai region of Japan hides just as many nooks. Most tend to define this part of western Japan by the cities of Osaka and Kyoto, both of which have seen a boom in electronic music over the past two years. Right near those two, though, sits Nara, an ancient capital for the country and currently best known as a place to see a giant Buddha and feed some lovely deer. Musically, the sleepy city has produced a few solid acts, but not much in terms of electronic-dance music. Now, hailing from Nara, comes Sakasa with the Coin Bender EP, three songs of forward-thinking beats and noise. “Let your body dance, and let your brain dance more,” the description for this brief release states, and Coin Bender bares a lot of similarities with Nagoya’s House Of Tapes, whose work also focuses on the physical and mental. The opening title track especially makes the comparison apt, as Sakasa builds a maximalist beat out of some body-shaking sounds…including what might be a dentist drill. It’s crushing, but also easy to get swept up into. “Pond,” meanwhile, approaches things a bit more serenely, Sakasa letting several synths glide over one another while the beat builds up, the song turning into a twinkling number that works as both something to reflect to or move to. Get it here.

Fogpak #5: Featuring Picnic Women, OKLobby, PNDR PSLY, CRZKNY And So Many More

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Late last year, the electronic-music-from-all-across-Japan compilation Fogpak #4 came out, and it was a fantastic collection of digital music from all over this fine country. At 21 tracks, though, it could feel a little daunting, regardless of how much great music the folks behind crammed into it.

Welp, Fogpak #5 dropped over the weekend and it has upped the ante – the latest installment in what is becoming one of the most important electronic compilations in Japan features 32 tracks, and goes on way longer than any previous Fogpak. This might be the most cohesive document of Japan’s contemporary electronic scene to date, a hugely ambitious release that can be a challenge to listen to straight through but houses some excellent music. Choosing highlights is a tough choice, though familiar names can always be trusted. Picnic Women gets jazzy on the subdued juke number “Another Night,” while OKLobby’s twinkling “Cryptid” is actually one of the best tunes they’ve ever done, and better than a fair chunk of their most recently released album (which is pretty good!). And Hiroshima’s CRZKNY back at making shiver-inducing stuff presumably about the futility of conflict on the steel “Cold Winter Warfare.”

A few other quick-hit highlights: Hokkaido-based producer PARKGOLF starts the whole comp off strong with the colorful “DON’T SLEEP…,” which really takes off when a electro muffled voice appears underneath the cyberfunk organ. I’m pretty sure Doopiio samples Drake on “33rd Sadly,” while Ninja Drinks Wine teams up with Yusaku Harada and…not making this up…Nintendo to create a rap song that features some relaxed bass and samples taken from Mario video games. Licaxxx integrates a female singing voice into her “Repeat” and crafts something with a distinct human side to it. And PNDR PSLY, who is one of the major players in putting these Fogpak’s together, also shines as a producer on the whimsical stomp of “Spinning Ouroboros.”

The real joy of Fogpak #5 though is that, with so much here, there is bound to be something for everyone who downloads this thing. It can be take in all at once, but it’s essential that it be this big. Get it here.

New Talking City 1994: Roll Dance She Take EP

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Late last week, we wrote about how Osaka’s Talking City 1994 had a new song called “Shine” available on their SoundCloud page. Turns out “Shine” was a preview of a new EP the off-kilter released over the weekend, called Roll Dance She Take. It’s only three songs long, but the tracks here do show the band setting off in new directions. As hinted at by “Shine,” Talking City 1994 are trying to sound more locked-in, more capable of creating something borderline funky. The title track is one of the tightest things Talking City 1994 have ever done, the bass lines being especially prominent and the vocals less frantic than on everything they put out in 2012. They haven’t turned into masters of sonic fidelity – the synths still sound endearingly cheap, especially the ones opening up “Shine” – but Roll Dance She Take finds them edging to something more polished. Listen here.