The Vegetablets’ latest album was a charming and at-times strange bit of indie-pop, a highlight of 2018. Now, they’ve shared a compilation gathering songs recorded between 2003 and 2012, as the title suggests serving as an intro into their history leading up to the sound of The Vegetablets. Removed from this context, Road To The…
Indie-pop label Sailyard has become one of the stronger destinations in Japan for all things melancholy and summery in the last few years. Just in time for their marquee season, they have two big releases on the horizon. The first comes from their central act Pictured Resort, a Kansai band that deserves to be slotted…
A lot of artists in recent memory have tried to sound uneasy as a way to stand out from the often-clean sound of mainstream Japanese music, but Utae’s “Supersonic” really makes the wobbly touches worth it. It starts with twinkles and a heavily filtered voice, before letting in a slightly more inviting set of vocals…
This EP is more about gathering together what’s already out there into one place, but for a project that previously just shared single songs as it coalesced together, that’s perfectly fine. Kosmo Kat and HVNS’ iivvyy found the perfect middle ground between both artist’s sounds, creating a liquid-metal techno accessorized by pitch-shifted vocal samples that…
Tokyo’s Johnnivan move forward on frantic energy, there songs all twitchy and fidgety in how they play out. “I Think I Know You” is a particularly strong example of their inability of how to sit still…and how it benefits the band. They take cues from late ’70s / early ’80s new wave groups — Talking…