It has been an exceptionally strong week for new Japanese music, and one of our recommendations would be Half Mile Beach Club’s Hasta La Vista, which takes the laid-back funk stylings that I think you could fairly call a contemporary Kanagawa sound (hey, Suchmos get to do NHK’s soccer theme song this year!) and takes it to an alien place, loaded up with Auto-tune dabs and backtracking. It’s a weird and wonderful interpretation of urban chilling, and joins Paellas’ recent body of work in offering a counter to the totally laid back. “Blue Moon” features one of the more outright rock-centric passages on the album, featuring tumbling percussion and electric guitar. But then the strange touches appear, such as the warped vocals or the spoken word bits. Listen above.
Category Archives: Music
New Kosmo Kat: Rose
Kosmo Kat didn’t vanish, exactly — the Tokyo-based electronic artist collaborated with fellow producer HVNS as iivvyy, resulting in some really fantastic music — but output from their main project certainly slowed over the last year. Rose serves as a fresh start. “Releasing these finally to start a new page,” Kosmo Kat writes, and Rose finds a balance between the bubbly electro-pop of earlier releases and the wonkier techno hinted at via iivvyy. Opener “Pink” and “Jus P Frens” use finely sliced vocal samples to create dizzy tracks that get a cartoon boost from the synths around them, maybe a bit less bouncy than the pop-inspired cuts of past Kosmo Kat EPs, but not far off. Then you have the previously shared “LAE” and the marshy “Lover 420” featuring Yeule, which push Kosmo Kat’s sound into something more dramatic (while still working in loopy twists and turns, along with big-screen ’80s beats). Excited to see where Kosmo Kat goes next, but Rose shows whichever direction will be a blast. Get it here, or listen below.
New AOTQ: E-muzak
The influence of vaporwave is starting to become clear. The internet-based niche genre of electronic music that turned into a visual aesthetic has recently started being visually adopted by legit mainstream artists in the West, while musically more producers are taking cues from it — or at least being inspired by it. Japan, more so than most places, has been finding intriguing new twists to the style since it started, probably because vaporwave borrowed (and sampled) so heavily from Japanese pop culture and music. Producer AOTQ cites vaporwave and the worldview it creates as a major inspiration in the music they’ve made since 2016, but with E-muzak, they write that they are trying to capture things that niche style just couldn’t. And the end result is a welcome mutation, playing around with the idea of “Muzak” but creating something far more interesting from a sparse selection of sounds.
A preview of sorts of what to expect came last month, via AOTQ’s contribution to the Local Vision’s kick-off compilation. Now, bring the tempo down. E-muzak luxuriates in fat West Coast synthesizer and machine beats, creating these slow-motion numbers that are lava-lamp like…to the point one song here is called “Lava Lamp.” Cuts like “Free Software” and “Air Conditioner” certainly have a all-our-operators-are-busy-please-stand-by vibe to it, but AOTQ creates them using sounds not associated with late-stage capitalism or whatever people say. This isn’t a lame nostalgia honeypot, but a very modern merger of bedroom electronic, funk and certain corners of the web (and, in its focus on sound textures, imagining Cornelius’ Point made for a mall) and featuring moments where the tranquility bends. See the wobbly pace of “Home Escalator” or the little ripples in “Anime Girl” disrupting the fluttery feeling. And the decision to use a different sonic palette gives us something like “Plastic Island,” full of slow-burning warmth that makes the most of its runtime. E-muzak takes ideas inspired by vaporwave but pushes them into something different, with some past touches but firmly pointed forward. Get it here, or listen below.
New Broken Haze: “RX-7”
I’m not one for air punching, but when “RX-7” opens up and the beat just starts pulverizing away…well, my arms just get going, and I just hope I’m far enough from my computer screen. This is what Broken Haze does so well in his music, and “RX-7” (from a forthcoming release, premiered today at Insert) continues to highlight the producer’s sleek but piston-like approach to dance music. What has always separated Broken Haze from other contemporary electronic artists dabbling in heavier styles is how well he uses space. “RX-7,” even at its busiest, focuses on individual sounds, and let’s every detail get full attention even while they are crashing into one another. And the little gaps between, say, a spray of fuzzed-out bass notes or a particularly swift beat passage make the impact all the more memorable. Listen above.
New Palecore: “Weak End”
High on my “must-do list 2018” is catch duo Palecore live sometime soon, as they’ve been one of the more intriguing new groups to emerge in Japan over the last year…and it would be great to see what they are up to after seeing them last November. “Weak End” serves as a solid reminder of why that is so. It’s a swift number loaded up with woozy electronic notes and, eventually, delicate piano melodies that counteract the rush guiding it forward. It’s an exercise in energy. Listen above.