The label compilation serves as a great way to broadcast a mission statement for an imprint – here are the groups support, and this is who we are. Dead Funny Records have put out some excellent materials by the likes of Osaka’s The Paella’s, Saitama’s Fancy Books and Tokyo’s Jappers, but with their first official…
This seemed to have been the week when a bunch of really talented Japanese artists went and released great new music all at once. Keeping up with all of it could be tough, but for the most part we touched on everything we wanted to. Except for the following three songs, two from acts we’ve…
That Nagoya’s House Of Tapes’ debut album Trip Science is an enjoyable experience at all is a small miracle. That sounds harsh, the darkest shade one could throw, but I don’t mean that in a dismissive or ironically surprised way. House Of Tapes’ music has always sounded like a sonic endurance test, the dance-music equivalent…
“Noctilucent Cloud” starts the same way a lot of electronic songs made by independent producers in Japan do – a minimalist beat and some clicking, ominous background noise and what sounds like giant drips of water hitting the bottom of a sink. Nothing wrong with this approach to production, but it would have left Metome…
Ahhh Picnic Women, that jokester. The title to his latest collection of juke cuts comes off like the punchline to what he pulls off the title track, “II Women.” On that song, Picnic Women takes Mariah Carey’s and Boyz II Men’s “One Sweet Day,” specifically the vocals from Boyz II Men, and pitches them both…