The Japanese juke scene moves quickly — it’s really a testament to its continued strength that one of the cornerstone outfits of the scene, Paisley Parks, could go a couple years without releasing a new collection and the community as a whole feels just as vibrant. Still…it’s nice to have a new Paisley Parks album…
We spent the weekend at Summer Sonic, and are still catching up on new music. Here are three notable uploads from the last few days. — Pavilion Xool caught our attention thanks to “I Still Smoke,” a number featuring an appearance by Osaka’s Yunovation. But the Tokyo producer mostly works solo, and “At 2am” highlights…
Nara’s Ex Confusion opts for sparseness. This is partially due to recording surroundings — he makes bedroom music, the sort where the sound of the (literal) outside world sneaks into the music and disrupts the dreamlike atmosphere he conjures up. Yet it’s also simply what he wants to do, driven home via a release on…
Zushi outfit Half Mile Beach Club has always let a certain darkness creep into their music — distorted vocals turned a tropical breezer like “Yankee” into something alien, while numbers like the still-spell-binding “Twilight” sounded lonely thanks to a late-fall-at-a-resort feel. “Bee Line” finds them getting a bit more direct with their grittiness. It opens…
The vision surrounding a Boys Age album tends to be more unexpected than the music itself. New World Pregnancy, a long gestating full length, comes billed as “an imagined soundtrack” to a story one half of the Saitama rock duo wrote. It gets pretty detailed…a machine goes sentient…and stands as the most ambitious bit of…