Idol unit Happy Kuru Kuru have tried out a variety of producers over their young career, though a trend among the trackmakers they work with has certainly emerged. The pair often sing over high-energy music merging future bass with cuddlier touches — Yunomi’s roughneck playhouse being a common setting, with appearances by the likes of…
Kamisama Club turn the uncomfortable into joy on “Submarine.” The duo have always been pop fiddlers, creating bouncy numbers out of weirder sounds, but here’s the first time where they really pull off a whirlwind rush of sounds that borders on collapse…but just holds together to be among the year’s most fidgety joys. An instructional-tape-ready…
Been a second since writing about the hazy indie rap scene starting to emerge (or at least become more clear) in Japan, but that’s more because the artists in it are branching out to platforms not as friendly towards our brand of blogging. If you have access to a streaming music site, go seek out…
Here’s a nice case of a circle coming together. The past two years have made it clear that a new generation of artists are coming up in Japan’s electronic underground, and that they appear to have spent at least some time digging into Maltine Record’s catalog (not to mention tofubeat’s work). So Mecanika putting out…
Everything seems normal enough at first — a side-to-side beat backed by a little extra percussion, slowly gaining new elements as it motors on. So far, so normal for project Hypnotic Inc.’s “Cheap Flutes.” But then the synthesizer creeps in, and then the songs shifts to something more unnerving. An ominous cloud of noise hangs…