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Category Archives: Music

New Paisley Parks: Coffin #1

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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 drop, especially one as fun as Coffin #1. The group has always been fond of injecting humor into their dance tracks, and Coffin #1 features dog barks (“Mardas”) and literal laughing as centerpiece (“LOL”). “Paisleysoul” is built around some joyous screaming. Yet they’ve always been just at good at hitting on great grooves, and here listeners get frantic takes on classic audio workouts (“Popcorn”) and skeletal shufflers (“Memoryyy”). Glad to see ’em back. Get it here, or listen below.

Electronic Round-Up: Pavilion Xool, AVV And House Of Tapes

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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 his more beat-minded headspace. What elevates it above backdrop-in-waiting is the way Pavilion Xool develops the track, going from smoky vocal-anchored thing to something a bit more complicated, letting the number slowly morph…including spacious passages. Listen above.

— AVV (And Vice Versa) keeps busy, and latest number “Taking You” shows off his more active side. Recent track by the Osaka artist have been a bit headier — a bit cloudier, with fogged-over vocals — but “Taking You” is relatively direct, featuring bass squelches, a rumbling beat and pretty clear samples pushed up front. Listen below.

— Now this is some classic claustrophobic House Of Tapes! The Nagoya producer goes back to the heavy stuff on “Dystopia,” which blah blah blah something about reality blah blah. The key though is this is just a great bit of crushing sound. Listen below.

Fleeting Thoughts: Ex Confusion’s Tears

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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 Orchid Tapes and a haunting little album last year. Tears is the latest installment in the Ex Confusion story, and is one of the most vulnerable releases from an already stripped-down artist. As the title hints at, this is an especially pained collection — the title track hides strings under a synthesizer sheet, giving the song a ghostly quality, while even something with a persistent beat such as “Relaxology” sounds disoriented, working in barely audible snippets of dialogue to ground the song in reality. There’s a lot of pain lurking in these skeletal numbers. Get it here, or listen below.

New Half Mile Beach Club: “Bee Line”

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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 with a famous bit of dialogue from Taxi Driver — “You talking to me?” — which immediately establishes a setting. This is a New York song, or at least a crew living by the ocean a couple hours outside of Tokyo imagining a quick-moving and slightly worn down city that possibly doesn’t exist anymore. Yet this potentially dream version of the city sure sounds nice in their hands, the band laying down a swift groove accented by saxophone blurts and upright bass notes. It’s appropriately cinematic in scope, and inviting in its far-off image. Listen above.

New Boys Age: New World Pregnancy

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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 storytelling the pair have indulge in yet.

The music, though, finds them in their comfort zone. New World Pregnancy is the eyelid-sagging rock Boys Age have been doing extremely well for a few years now, highlighted by Muppet-esque singing that adds a charm The lyrics are definitely in narrative form, but this group has always been about vibe, creating an atmosphere that in any other country would be tagged as “stoned” but in Japan might just be a result of living in Saitama. Songs are never in a rush — opener “Mother’s Lullaby” is a woozy synth drifter, while highlights such as “Binary Field” and “Cobblestone” are mid-temp meditations that let the singing add all the tension. They do slip in some weirder moments, such as the sampled announcements bookending the (surprisingly rubbery funk!) of “Maetel.” Yet New World Pregnancy is ultimately a reminder of what makes them some of the finer oddballs in Japan. Get it here, or listen below.