Ayumiko has popped up on several songs by electronic artists that we’ve covered in recent times, but “Dancing Darkness” seems like a good entry point into her own sound. The melancholy atmosphere and her use of anime visuals puts her in similar territory to young artists such as Sleet Mage and Gokou Kuyt, but she doesn’t really rap here, but rather sings in a whispery style that reminds me of an artist like Canopies And Drapes. Yet let’s not get too caught up in comparisons, because Ayumiko’s greatest skill here — besides creating a tense mood — is matching music with vocal delivery, her muffled singing sliding just right alongside the beat. Listen above.
Category Archives: Music
New Half Mile Beach Club: “Olives”
Kanagawa prefecture has been having a moment. Many of the most buzzed-about young artists of the last few years have hailed from the area just south of Tokyo. Thank demographic shifts for that, but it’s given a lot of Japanese music a relaxed, coastal vibe reflecting a growing interest in…well, relaxed, semi-coastal living. Not every artist from Kanagawa plays into this, but that atmosphere has gone far.
Half Mile Beach Club (formerly Group) hail a little further south, from Zushi, a beach town that has seen visitors drop in recent years. It’s a backdrop that could easily lead to more fun-in-the-sun rock tunes, but the project aims for something more uneasy, something a bit stranger. “Olives,” the first taste of their forthcoming new EP, features coastal percussion and a spoken-word intro not far removed from the sort of things Suchmos get up to. Yet “Olives” feels dislocated, the synthesizer line running through it giving it a bleary-eyed feel while the vocals get run through a layer of Auto-tune. Other voices — often distorted — come in like lost radio signals. If Paellas create darker songs using familiar sounds for the urban set, Half Mile Beach Club capture the sound of Kanagawa, and warp it into something all their own. Listen above.
Nozomu Matsumoto Teams Up With Toiret Status: “Mimic”
Just a couple days ago, we were looking at how Toiret Status explored more space on their newest album. That is not the case on “Mimic,” a collaborative number done with Nozomu Matsumoto. This one’s busy from the get-go, full of hiccuping vocal samples, stretched-out syllables, Pachinko-worthy bursts of electronic noise and more, smashing into one another. That’s just the first minute! Then “Mimic” enters a section slightly more reflective…slightly…before revving up one last time. Here’s one for the maximalist fans out there. Get it here, or listen below.
Woozed Out: Supercream’s “Hide In Plain Sight”
Look, sometimes I try to be cute with these intros…talking about the weather, current events, a pun!…but today I’ll just say that I’m sick and have been out of it since whatever time I woke up. I’ve only done a passing breeze through my usual music sources and wasn’t really focusing on much. This song, by Tokyo’s Supercream, was the only thing that left an impression, because of the woozy feeling permeating its edges. There is a weird tension between how the singing and music move forward together, everything just off as intensity slowly builds (and the two voices behind the project become more pronounced). And it all builds to this delirium that sounds particularly great after downing a lot of cold medicine. Listen above.
New Toiret Status: Toiret Statue
This is the first Toiret Status release that doesn’t overwhelm, but benefits from a close listening. This hasn’t been the case before, and that was a pretty great thing in regards to Omaru or Nyoi Plunger, albums that felt like dozens of different sounds criss-crossing like broken TV signals into a pattern that made something inviting. Toilet Statue doesn’t quite reach those heights, partially because of a slight fatigue (it wasn’t that far off since we had their last album!) but more so because the best moments here find Toiret Status exploring the space within their music. Several numbers here approach the structure — though definitely not texture — of rap beats, from the ice-cream-truck lurch of “#55” to the piano-accented bounce of “#56.” Many of the songs give themselves more space to breathe or develop slower, resulting in some stunning moments (the mini-epic “#58,” curveball closer “#0.02” with its delicate keyboard playing and satisfying final flush) but also a handful of meandering cuts. That shouldn’t be a word deployed for an artist so unpredictable as this one, but Statue comes off as a n artist exploring their approach and seeing what they can do with it, even if it doesn’t all hit. Get it here, or listen below.