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Category Archives: Music @ja

New It Happens: “Going Outside”

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First off, apologies to It Happens, as I will take one paragraph to vent a little, distracting from this perfectly serviceable indie-pop song.

It has only been one month into 2014, but already I’m wondering what has gone wrong with this year. I have gotten extremely cynical about music of all types, and even moreso burned out by the discussions around music. January might have just been kind of a shitty month – it was! – but I’m finding it tough to generate any real excitement over new songs or artists. This will surely change – just wait until the first great album I hear after this slump, that one will probably get overrate quite a bit! – but for now I sort of just want to zone out completely.

This listening slump hurts tracks like “Going Outside” the most, the sort of number I would have heard two years ago and been bouncy about. Even then, it wouldn’t be the sort of song that would burrow into my head and change everything. Rather, it’s a nice jolt for now, a mid-tempo twee skipper that’s part catchy and party mumbly (those vocals). It’s perfectly fine, and the sort of song that won’t change your world but worth it for at least two minutes and 18 seconds. Listen below.

Electro Crush: Exoskeletone’s “Chimera”

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There are words on Tokyo electronic artist Exoskeletone’s “Chimera” – in fact, the above video features them – but it’s best to not pay much attention to them. They work better as texture than lyrics, the digi-mumble at the center of this song the closest thing to a sweet escape from the walls-closing-in-feel of the rest of the track. Exoskeletone himself has been doing this sort of electro crush for a while now, but this is an example of an artist’s sonic idea turning solid, this being especially claustrophobic (cheered on by the little details that make this all the more gasping, like the inverted-scream ending some of the verses and the muffled dialogue lurking in the middle of the track. Listen above.

Okadada Teams Up With Skirt For Special Song: “Kaisou”

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I’m not sure whether Diorama Books are a bookstore or an independent book publisher (or…both!), but they have somehow made a collaboration between Kansai producer Okadada and the lead singer of the band Skirt a reality. It’s a nice bit of 80s-indebted pop, Okadada giving the song a warped electronic feel courtesy of his keyboards, while Skirt’s lead singer handles the guitar and bass, keeping the song focused while also fitting in a few show-offy (but good in context) guitar solos. The pair work well together – I’ve only seen Skirt once live, but I was pretty bored during the set, the band hemming towards mid-tempo pop bordering on the ballad. This gives the group’s lead singer…who has a good voice, but in Skirt chooses to use it in a very straightforward way…a funky backdrop, the music doing the moving, allowing his vocals to just skate over them. Thanks Diorama Books. Listen below.

New Eadonmm: “Gothic Anamnesis”

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At long last, my most anticipated album of 2013 is out. Kyoto’s Eadonmm has been the Kansai beat-music scene’s resident shadow lurker, eschewing the spacey and frantic sounds favored by most of the other prominent electronic music producers rising up in the region right now, instead creating spacious drone-leaning numbers that are as unsettling as they are intriguing. His debut, Aqonis, is out via Day Tripper Records, and to celebrate Eadonmm’s unveiled a new song from his first full-length, “Gothic Anamnesis.” This, the second song on the album, is especially heavy on the space, Eadonmm letting every sound and muffled sample drift over the sparse beat like mist. It’s a song that seems to be hiding something just out of sight. Listen above.

Gigandect, Yoshino Yoshikawa And mus.hiba Remix Meishi Smile

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Los Angeles’ Meishi Smile is one of Make Believe Melodies’ favorite artists who technically falls outside our area of coverage (though when Maltine Records released a collection from him, we broke the rules because…why not?), and you should definitely get a copy of his album Lust, out this week via Attack The Music (it’s a great album, buy it!). And this album contains two remixes of Meishi Smile’s music courtesy Japanese artists…which means no guilt in covering it! The first comes from frantic chiptuner Gigandect, last seen teaming up with a member of Tokyo Girls’ Style for a wonderful little song called “Kawaii Rave.” His remix of “Honey” is relatively straightforward – in the sense that he’s transformed the original into a much more maximalist 8-bit number. Listen below.

Also tackling “Honey” is Yoshino Yoshikawa, who puts a little bit more of a dance-floor focus (though without abandoning all of those emotions surging through the original). Listen below.

Last (which I noticed before I finalized this post), a remix from mus.hiba! Listen below.