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Category Archives: Music

New Boys Age: “Forlorn Beach”

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This is both the liveliest sounding Boys Age song and the most downtrodden. The bedroom rock project has gotten jangly at times in the past, but “Forlorn Beach” deploys a jaunty drum beat that practically skips ahead, adding an energy rarely found in the group’s music. And it works well in conjunction with the guitar playing, creating a slightly zoned-out melody that just bounces forward. Yet compounding all of this are the vocals, which sound buried down under the music even for a home-recording project known for unique approaches to singing. But here they add a sadness to “Forlorn Beach,” one offering some tension compared with the relatively skippy music. Get it here, or listen below.

New Mom: “Skirt”

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Man, Mom is feeling themselves right now. Following the topsy-turvy, post-net-label funhouse of Baby Like A Paperdriver, the Saitama artist has gotten a little more sweet, first with the chipper “That Girl” and now “Skirt.” It’s a little lighter, powered by a stroll of a beat and some fat keyboard notes — accented by video game sound effects. What’s slightly different about Mom’s output post album has been that these new songs feel a little more like fully formed rap numbers, giving Mom plenty of space to rhyme about…eat-in spaces and coffee, among other topics. Mom flows over it all well, and the music gets knottier as it goes along — those final guitars! Listen above.

Dream Machine: MSS Sound System Featuring Shiroro’s Time Warp Love

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It’s tough to make music that manages to be emotionally evocative and barrier pushing, but producer MSS Sound System and Shiroro pull it off on Time Warp Love, one of the year’s best collaborations to date and a sorta-outta-nowhere contender for best Japanese album of 2018. MSS Sound System has been making music for a while now, most active in Japan’s Vocaloid community. Last year, they shared Secret, which revolved around the digi-voice of UTAU Yufu Sekka. While that one has some sterling moments — see the strobed-out “Emotion Blue — it’s ultimately more interesting than anything else, lacking something a lot of Vocaloid music does (not helped by the fact that same voice has been deployed much better this decade).

Time Warp Love stands as a big jump forward because of the presence of Shiroro, who adds a human warmth to MSS Sound System’s music. That’s immediate from the jump, with Shiroro’s voice adding a sweetness to the hazy-day dream of opener “Walk,” her singing moving from syllable smoke rings to fully formed words creeping into frame. She meshes well with MSS Sound System’s music itself, whether on the melancholic synth bounce of “Satellite” or on “While my footwork gently weeps,” a juke number that manages to work in a swift pop vocal without feeling like a novelty combo (you got Chicago dance music in my J-pop!). Most clearly, she elevates the bleepy number “Milky Way” to a much higher place than where it was when emerging on Secret last year (though, to their credit MSS Sound System tweaks the music so it is a little less 8-bit and more delirious). MSS Sound System has always dabbled in a variety of styles, and Time Warp Love goes all over the place, but Shiroro serves as a constant, and the team create an always-compelling bit of electro-pop. Get it here, or listen below.

New HoneyComeBear: Intro And Outro

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Think of this more like one solid mini-album rather than two EPs teased as bookends (collecting and polishing up older songs from them). Duo HoneyComeBear have been one of the better projects in Japan at merging the business of “future bass” with an emotional delivery that often feels two clicks away from J-pop proper. Their best songs tightrope this just right, including the sweet and sputtering “Sneaker,” one of their finest pop-and-bass hybrids to date (the robo-vocals backing up the main singing at the chorus!). Some artists can go overboard in one direction and come out OK, but HoneyComeBear succeed here because they keep themselves in check — they let bell chimes and bass drops creep in, but they are always weighted by untouched singing that give busy numbers such as “Natsuzora” and “Defy” a pop sheen. Get Intro and Outro here, or listen below.

Urban Strut: Gimgigam’s Cities In Glass

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It’s incredible how even the slightest change to an expected formula can re-invigorate a sound that once seemed completely mined clean. Japanese producer Gimgigam’s Cities In Glass comes via Elemental 95, a label dabbling in all sorts of genre but which is most associated with vaporwave, a niche that feels pretty drained in 2018, unless they discover some new Greek ruins in the near future. But Cities In Glass moves in a far slinkier style, using samples (and it appears guitar) in a more energetic way and treating them like livelier beats. It’s kind of a midpoint between vaporwave and future funk’s ’80s sheen, and the lo-fi hip-hop beats for studying channels. “VOU” straight-up struts out the gate, not hiding behind any distortion but rather zeroing in on some particularly funky sounds and letting them work their magic. Though the disorienting details can go a long way — “Glass Beret” ripples up its laid-back atmosphere with a distorted vocal sample that adds some sadness to the surrounding glitz, while the clipped voices running through “Turquoise” adds a nice roughness you can still bop along to. It burns itself out by the end — “Plastic Poem” chooses a really annoying string arrangement and pop vocal to loop into the ground — but after all the energy before it, who can blame it? Get it here, or listen below.