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Category Archives: Music @ja

Not Lethargic: Head On The Sofa

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I went to the recently renovated Tower Records in Shibuya the other day – looks good, even with a goofy cafe occupying the entire second floor! – and saw a bunch of new CDs that looked interested. After giving them a few preview spins, I was ready to load up on fresh music…until I looked at the price tags. The cheapest…a four-song single…went for 1000 yen, while the proper albums got as high as 2500 yen. These are not reasonable prices, and probably one of the reasons music sales continue falling in Japan. It also doesn’t help that bands like Head On The Sofa can release EPs on sites like Bandcamp for free – EPs that happen to be very good and only a MediaFire-download away.

Head On The Sofa’s latest freebie, the Memai EP, features five guitar-centric songs with catchy melodies along for the ride. Opener “Stay With Me” teases shoegaze with its slightly buzzy guitars and drawn out vocals, but never gets caught in a swirl, instead the band always moving forward. Even more forceful is “Through Your Ways,” which hops ahead unstopped saved for some half-second hiccups that, while a bit distracting, never halt momentum. Head On The Sofa even shred a bit on the Dinosaur-Jr-like instrumental “Veranda.” It’s a solid collection of songs, and it isn’t their only available one. Listen (for free) here.

New Cold Name (Nobuyuki Sakuma Of Jesse Ruins): “She’s Filled With Secrets”

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The music Jesse Ruins – and, to some extent, every act associated with Tokyo’s CUZ ME PAIN label – has always been vaguely unsettling, but that trio’s songs also always added a glimpse of light to the shadowy sounds, whether it just be a dance beat or a particularly pretty vocal. Jesse Ruins’ head Nobuyuki Sakuma’s new solo project Cold Name – he originally posted an industrial-leaning mix a few weeks ago – has just posted his first song under that moniker, and it is among the most directly creepy he’s ever recorded. “She’s Filled With Secrets” is more skeletal than anything Jesse Ruins has released as of late, nothing more than a beat and some whispy synth. And some samples, taken from the (still popular with Japanese musicians!) David Lynch’s Twin Peaks. The best part, though, comes late, when Cold Name introduces a piano to the mix, which manages to be both lovely but still tingle-inducing. Listen below.

Eccy Remixes Purity Ring’s “Belispeak”

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Tokyo producer Eccy’s remix of Canadian duo Purity Ring’s “Belispeak” downplays the very sonic trick that those two used to become one of 2012’s most buzzed about new groups, and it’s a good move on Eccy’s part. Whereas the original song features manipulated vocals piling up on one another over a hip-hop-inspired beat, Eccy gives his remix a little more air and only showcases the rush-of-vocals technique a few times. This places Megan James’ unsettling fantasy lyrics to the forefront, with only the chorus showing any signs of maximalism. It’s a nice rework, one interested in exploring the minimalist side of an originally packed number. Listen below.

Sapphire Slows Teams Up With Magic Touch For “Just Wanna Feel”

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The video teaser for “Just Wanna Feel” – click the image above to watch it – spends most of its time focusing on Tokyo’s Sapphire Slows. She stares at the camera and is usually in the center of the frame, a departure from her more shadowy image from 2011 where she played with a mysterious identity. She’s come a long way since the video for “Animal Dreams,” where she spent a large chunk of the clip moving away from the camera, clear shots of her tending to get blurry quickly.

The actual song, while not as big a development as a video-genic Sapphire Slows, also finds her in new terrain. It’s a collaboration with fellow 100% Silk artist Magic Touch, a Los Angeles-based producer who focuses on house music. “Just Wanna Feel” appropriately takes most of its cues from that genre, Magic Touch crafting a bouncy electronic song that subtly morphs over its five-and-a-half-minute play time. Slows provides the vocals, letting her voice glide over Magic Touch’s music and proving to be a more-than-serviceable house diva. She’s stepped out from the layer of digital fog that has thus far hung over her solo work – though her singing here never reveals too much – and she sounds good out in the open. Listen below.

New Moscow Club: “And The Moon Be Still As Bright”

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This year, Tokyo’s Moscow Club have been balancing precariously between electronic goodness and cheesy gloop. They haven’t abandoned the indie-pop sound that grabbed some attention last year – see the lovely “Radio Vietnam” – but their 2012 output has relied heavily on synths and keyboards, the band conjuring up a spacey, 80’s new wave vibe that’s more outright pop than anything they’ve done before (if SoundCloud tags can be trusted, this is “nerdwave”). Plenty of other Japanese bands go down this same path too, armed with dated keyboard sounds and nostalgia – and the end results tend to be pretty bad, bands more concerned with capturing the sound of a specific era than making something that sounds good today. Moscow Club’s “And The Moon Be Still As Bright,” like a lot of the material they’ve put out this year, isn’t that different, but they manage to make it work somehow. Well, “somehow” is a bit misleading…this works because the singing sounds so great over the twinkling backdrop, the group’s vocalist unafraid to risk sounding human whereas so many others in Japan either try to play it cool or mask their vocals in Vocoder. “Fahrenheit 451” remains their high point in 2012, but “And The Moon” shows they know how to work this style just right. Listen below.