Kyoto’s Emerald Four have always let themselves drift, but earlier releases from the duo felt lost in space, marked by synthesizer and echo-grazed vocals. New song “Marigold” brings them down to earth, though the spaced-out vibe remains. It’s a sparse song, featuring guitar and a simple drum beat (and eventually some keyboard) wrapped in a package of slight feedback. That leaves the space remaining for the vocals to hover overhead, unfolding slowly and sounding like every syllable is thought over deeply. It’s the most indie-pop Emerald Four have ever sounded, yet they still manage to make “Marigold” sound like it belongs in their orbit. Listen above.
Category Archives: Music
Yuzame Label Soak It Up With Meister, Invite Yunomi, Nyankobrq And More To Relax
The M3 offerings roll on, and this one especially jumps out. The Meister compilation finds Yuzame Label teaming up with Tokyo Sento — a site devoted to providing information about public baths in the capital — for a bath-themed set of songs. As far as tie-ups go, this is one I can get behind. The music here touches on a variety of sounds, from Yunomi’s bubbly collaboration with Rollergirl to a more mid-tempo number from the usually high-energy Nyankobrq that features a heavy layer of Auto-tune singing. The highlight, though, goes to Kiseki’s “Hagoromo Fuze.” The project is a collaboration between Foodman and Bo Ningen’s Taigen Kawabe, and the song is a steam-covered pop number that finds both artists trading verses — including raps — over a beat built for a sauna. Perfect for lightheaded sessions in a hot bath. Get it here, or listen below.
Yukiyanagi Provides Energy With Bright Green
This week has started off sluggishly (well, for me anyway), so an injection of energy is more than welcome. Thankfully, this past weekend saw the Spring 2018 edition of the M3 event happen, which means a lot of internet-centric artists created new albums and compilations for the gathering…most of which are on the up-tempo side of things. The early standout from the releases available online comes from Yukiyanagi, which features pulsing dance tracks from the titular project along with a handful of other producers. The title track zooms out of the gate, backed by speedy synthesizer bursts and sliced-up vocal samples, while Riku’s “Heartbeat” goes full-on emotional rave. Also worth highlighting is Kotonohouse’s “Monochrome,” which features some lovely woodwind touches that give way to rumbling bass lines. Get it here, or listen below.
New Cero: “Sakana No Hone Tori No Hane”
What happens when you set a movement in motion, but end up not getting the most of it? Tokyo’s cero ushered in the current wave of laid-back, city-centric rock music thanks to “Summer Soul,” a song so potent it got them on SMAP X SMAP. But a bunch of other bands have passed them in that time in terms of mainstream attention — Suchmos is probably the biggest, but the fact Yogee New Waves or Lucky Tapes have been able to wrangle the spotlight since Obscure Ride came out is sort of shocking, given how forgettable the songs from those outfits have been largely been. Yet still, they’ve benefitted…while cero have just been waiting in the wings. Maybe that’s just how it goes for pioneers of certain movements.
But now here they come with “Sakana No Hone Tori No Hane.” And it’s a reminder that cero are far more experimental than other groups dabbling in city-centric cool. This song features a laid-back vibe, but one punctuated by sudden tempo shifts and the feeling that the whole song could collapse in on itself at any second. It’s this sense of impending collapse that gives the song an edge not found in most other mainstream Japanese rock songs treading similar ground. It’s great to see them going this way…here’s hoping the mainstream comes along once again. Listen above.
Simple And Right: The Vegetablets’ The Vegetablets
In one of those weird bits of timing, I had a chance to write about a song from The Vegetablets new compilation album for Pitchfork around the same time I was planning on putting up a post about it here. I’d recommend checking out that track review here, as it touches on most of the big-picture themes surrounding this Aichi-area duo (and focuses on probably the wackiest number included in that set). The rest of the album isn’t quite as loose-limbed as that one song, with the pair penning more familiar indie-pop fare throughout. But they add a sense of freedom and silliness to almost every song here, letting the edges get a little rough in a way that feels fitting for the genre they are focused on. Get it here, or listen below.