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Category Archives: Music @ja

New Old Lacy Bed: “Coastlands”

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Old Lacy Bed – Coastlands from Old Lacy Bed on Vimeo.

“Coastlands” has been out in the wild in a different form for about a year now, but Old Lacy Bed recently posted a new video for featuring a fresh take on the darty song. You can watch the indie-pop-lifestyle clip above. Weirdly enough, “Coastlands” feels like a throwback as 2014 kicks off. Japan’s indie-pop scene is still janglin’ away, yet it seemed a lot more active back when “Coastlands” first emerged. Simply put, everything got oversaturated and the field filled up with hit-or-miss acts. Plenty of outfits that excel at this throwback sound exist, but they aren’t releasing much at the moment. “Coastlands” is a whistle-happy song that actually highlights a band that can do it well, and a reminder of the promise this sonic world contains.

New Batman Winks Featuring Gloomy: “✝ (Sacred Song)”

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Batman Winks (formally Atlanta Girl) has been all about confrontation on the small amount of music he’s released over the past couple of years. Obviously taking cues from LA pop weirdo Ariel Pink (and not shy about declaring his love for the dude), his songs have often deliberately been hard to listen to or, at times, just bad. Even when he stumbles across a good riff, he has to drop in a panicked scream. He stumbles across a great pop melody, and he warps it with a jittery chorus and spoken-word sample. It has been his angle, and he’s done it well so far.

On new track “✝ (Sacred Song),” though, Batman Winks finds a way to make his easiest-on-the-ears song yet…while still making it a touch unsettling. For all the weird noises and yells on earlier Batman Winks’ songs, the strangest sound was always the lead vocals – dude just does not have a polished voice (even more challenging than Ariel Pink). But here, he’s recruited Tokyo artist Gloomy to handle the main singing parts and…she actually sounds really good. Batman Winks himself isn’t out of the mix entirely – his singing pops up a bit deeper in the mix later – but its placement makes for a far better and creepier vibe…especially when coupled with the coily guitar. Every bit as strange as before, but now at least a little easier to dive into. Listen above.

Canoooopy Teams Up With Sima Kim: “Tragicomical Sandstorm”

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Here’s a nice bit of international cooperation. Japanese producer Canoooopy has teamed up with South Korean music maker Sima Kim for the moody “Tragicomical Sandstorm.” The track starts out subdued enough – just some finger-snapping percussion, some barely there voices and wisps of synths going by. Yet what seems like a just-drifting-by work suddenly blooms into something that gets pretty big quickly – everything grows in intensity, and then the pair break out what sounds like an opera singer doing her thing, giving “Tragicomical Sandstorm” a powerful ending that makes the relative quiet of the first half all the better. Here’s hoping the two keep working together. Listen below.

New Hideo Nakasako: Tiny Place

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Osaka’s Hideo Nakasako has let some time pass since last year’s great Time Passes album, but he’s posted a three-song EP to SoundCloud that makes all the months that came before it worth it. The highlight is the opening track “Groove Me,” which opens with sea-sick synths reminiscent of what Tokyo’s mus.hiba deals with on the regular. Instead of Vocaloids dissolving into the sound, Nakasako uses those sounds more as a jumping off point for a skittery beat, funkier electric squiggles and a hiccuping vocal sample. “Groove Me” strikes a balance between the spacey ambient work that made Time Passes a strong listen and more feet-moving fare, Nakasako finding just the right balance. “Affection” is a bit more reserved than “Groove Me,” pleasant enough but ultimately a touch too slight. The title track, though, goes in a far more abstract direction, rejecting both dance banger and ambient in favor of something closer to trippy jazz. Listen below.

New Kindan No Tasuketsu: “Manatsu No Boyfriend”

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J-Pop doesn’t need to be torn down and built back up. There are lots of bad projects selling lots of albums – this week, Kanjani8 moved more than 200,000 copies of a song, making it the highest-selling single of 2014 thus far – but plenty of great stuff appears on the charts too…and even just outside of it, on the prominent displays in music retailers and on the bills of big music festivals. No, what J-Pop needs is to have its borders expanded, because only a handful of acts are racking in impressive sales and (more importantly) appearing on festival posters. Basically, more acts should be sought out and given a chance…if nothing else, Bump Of Chicken can take a month off in the summer.

Kindan No Tasuketsu has been one of Japan’s best pop-music performers of the last year, releasing a flurry of fantastic songs (some hyper upbeat, other meditative) and a full-length album at the end of 2013. Her first new track for this year, “Manatsu No Boyfriend,” is a pumped-up electronic number featuring her familiar nursery-school-sing-song delivery and a big ecstatic chorus. It’s not quite as punch as some of her other dance-inspired cuts from last year…tough to keep that energy going for over five minutes…but still a very strong. And the video (below) is being pushed by TV station Space Shower TV. Here’s hoping this is an opening up.