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Category Archives: Music

New Nariaki Obukuro Featuring Hikaru Utada: “Lonely One”

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Few artists can point to a co-sign from Hikaru Utada ahead of their major-label solo debut, but Nariaki Obukuro has got it. And if more artists like this are going to creep closer to the spotlight, the widening of the J-pop industry is only proving fruitful. Obukuro co-founded Tokyo Recordings and has worked under the name OBKR (taking part in the best GAP ad I’ve seen since Daft Punk was in one), and guested on Utada’s Fantome. “Lonely One” acts as the advance single to his April debut, and is a chilly R&B number putting his voice — sometimes multi-tracked to sound like some sort of digi-frayed thing, adding a nice weirdness to the song. It crackles and fizzes, letting little moments of release come in, but never actually letting them stick around long, keeping everything flowing nicely. And then it transforms into something else entirely completely in its final stretch (sounding…kind of like Megumi Wata?), with piano, strings and horns. Hey, when you have that Sony budget, go for it.

Oh, and Utada stops by for a guest verse. Craziest of all? This is the best she’s sounded since coming back in 2016. Fantome is a flawed but fascinating personal album, while the singles that have come after have felt a bit too straightforward (that one was a soundtrack for water is pretty telling). But she just kills it here, with a brief but powerful little injection which finds her pushing towards her upper register and breaking into a fast-paced delivery bordering on a rap. It adds this emotional dynamite to “Lonely One,” and instantly pushes Obukuro’s debut album near the top of the year’s most anticipated.

One hitch…you can only hear it on streaming services! So jump on Apple Music or Spotify, fire up a VPN maybe? and enjoy.

Sunny Daze: Falsettos’ “6”

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Tokyo’s Falsettos have been kicking around the city’s rock scene for a few years now, but they’ll drop their first album on February 2. The first impression they push forward from their self-titled is a sunny, reflective number called “6.” Plenty of Japanese bands at the moments are leaning towards more mellow sounds, but Falsettos let a little fuzz come in via the guitars, adding an edge to a song that mostly sprawls itself out in the rays. It’s a small dash of tension, but just enough to give it a spiky border. Listen above.

New Frasco Featuring Poolside: “Wave”

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Duo Frasco’s music has always been relatively laid back, avoiding easy city-pop-revival trappings in favor of something a bit more out there (but still limber). So this group — which describe themselves as a “meta pop project?” I don’t remember that from last year, is this a commentary on…something? — creating a smoothed-out beat for a rap outfit isn’t too surprising. “Wave” finds them teaming up with Poolside, laying down an early afternoon groove allowing them to bob over. The best part, though, comes from Frasco’s own voices, as the hook that comes afterwards ends up being the song’s stickiest moment. Listen above.

New Karen Felixx: Scarlet EP

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Producer Karen Felixx wastes no time messing with one’s head. The Scarlet EP comes after a pretty solid year from her, where she used pounding at at times haywire sounds to create some wonderfully jarring electronic music. On her latest, opener “Jasmine Jam” teases something relatively straightforward, before feedback creeps in and everything slows to a molasses crawl. Then everything spills out and it turns into a barbed dance track, messy but moving. And that’s Karen Felixx’s approach, warping the meditative synths opening “Dawn Drowning” into a distorted rumbler accented by vocal samples, and just pummeling away on the constricting “Rolling Stroll.” It’s far from pretty, but that’s where the charm lies. Get it here, or listen below.

And Now For Something Completely Different: Sumire Uesaka’s “Pop Team Epic”

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If I have one huge glaring weakness when it comes to covering Japanese music and pop culture, it’s the fact I don’t watch much anime. I’d like to blame this on a lack of time, but that would be a lie — I managed to watch Paddington for the second time ever last night. I don’t know why! I always catch bits and pieces of new shows, and mostly put everything together via the internet. Anyway, I’m always behind on that (highly vital) section of pop culture, and it’s something I’m constantly trying to fix.

I did start watching Pop Team Epic when it landed on streaming services a couple weeks back, and it’s great. Some people call it “the dankmemes anime,” but really it’s a flurry of pop-culture references gone wild, with an element of trolling worked in. It’s a blast, and just as good is “Pop Team Epic,” the opening theme by Sumire Uesaka. It’s a slice of electro-pop throwback, channeling the buzzy days of 2008 when it looked like this whole digi-saturated style would take over. It didn’t, but leave it to the theme song of a referential anime to do a damn good interpretation for folks who like the sound of a human voice imagined by a computer more than actual human voices. It even comes complete with a harsher passage that would make the people who put Beautiful Techno together smile. Listen above.