Few groups in Japan…or anywhere else, really, at a time when pop music is suffocatingly serious (save for hip-hop)…balance humor with longing as well as Kindan No Tasuketsu. “Goodbye My Cinderella (Kindan Ver.)” isn’t the song to use as a jumping off point into a deeper discussion of this, because last year’s “Chasing The Eurobeat” served that purpose both visually and musically. “Goodbye My Cinderella” just continues that path, kicking off with a rap section and featuring a video set against all sorts of Tumblr artifacts (it originally emerged in April, but undergoes a slight remake here). But from there, new group member Monico steps up and delivers melancholy singing over neon synthesizer notes, going from something sweet to something urgent as the music increases in pace, like a nervous heartbeat. Whatever goofy marble busts shooting lasers out of their eyes you see in the video, the song delivers a very real feeling. Listen above.
Category Archives: Music
New TamakiRoy: “Harari”
The mid point of…pretty much any year means I’m desperately trying to catch up on all the music I’ve fallen behind on hearing from the past six months. 2017 has been particularly backlogged, and I’ve been trying to just go hogwild through my list of “probably check this out” albums. So far, the highlight has been a collection that only dropped a few weeks back, but which I had no idea was coming —- rapper TamakiRoy’s Nagi, his first full-length in four years. The clue-in should have been that Nagi features his collaboration with OBKR and Taquwami, one of the weirdest numbers to ever soundtrack a clothes ad. Yet this was not an outlier — all of Nagi exists in an off-kilter zone, featuring air-tight beats and a lot of pitched vocals, making for an otherworldly listen and one of the most interesting rap releases to come from a Japanese performer in quite some time (look what happens when you don’t just imitate Atlanta trends in a way that makes you wanna just listen to Future!).
Highlights abound, but recently released number “Harari” feels like a good gateway in. It’s a spacious number, one featuring a chorus built on the titular repeated over and over again, until it turns into vapor, and which finds TamakiRoy just vibing along, his words sounding like sudden thoughts rather than punchlines. Strings enter, electronics squiggle off in the distance and rapping wraps around it all — it isn’t that it’s somehow brainier than other Japanese rap (though, it is) but it’s just far more interesting, exploring sonic ground rarely touched on by MCs. Listen above.
New The Neon City: “Sunset Drive”
Osaka-born dream-pop-maker The Neon City shares a lot of demos online, so it’s nice to see her drop one without that word, hinting that this is more solid than the presumed sketches she’s posted before. “Sunset Drive” is a bit of a throwback tune, built around some of the brightest synthesizer notes she’s laid down on a track yet. The core of the song, though, remains the distance between her voice and the smudged music — her singing is obscured, practically covered in a cloud while the neon-bright melody goes right to the front (and it’s worth noting, it’s a catchy little melody). It works though, driving home the haziness of the song. Listen above.
New Toyohirakumin: Aurora Town
Vaporwave — or things that can easily be tagged as such — is a tricky thing. The bulk of it, especially in the last three years, is disposable, slowed down songs and jingles poorly imitating the artists who were the first to get the genre going. What they are lacking is emotional resonance — a slowed down ’80s number or elevator filler doesn’t mean anything unless you can pinpoint something human in those smooth melodies. Japan’s Toyohirakumin — possibly because, as an actual Japanese artist, they aren’t engaging it from an ironic or aesthetic-only angle — has done great at finding the sweetness lurking in half-speed music, honing in on a sweet nostalgia lurking within. The producer’s latest, Aurora Town, is a wistful set from front to back, opening with the longing of “Dancer,” which turns simple keyboard playing and guitar notes into recollection. All of Aurora Town unfolds in a daze, lending numbers such as the dreary-eyed “Colombo” extra sweetness and the high-stepping of “4 Choome Plaza” all the flashier. The key is, Aurora Town is a lovely one to just melt into. Get it here, or listen below.
New Homecomings: “Play Yard Symphony”
Kyoto’s Homecomings have excelled at turning the heartbreaks of daily life into big musical fireworks over their last two albums, and through two major-label releases have subtly expanded on this mid-tempo approach. There’s nothing wrong with an artist choosing to explore consistency over radical artistic swings, and for the most part you know what to expect from a Homecomings’ song. Yet “Play Yard Symphony,” the first song from their new Symphony EP out this week, shows they are always adding new elements. It still features the same slob, guitar-centered build to a big, longing chorus featuring detail-rich lyrics (one about “a basketball bouncing down the basement stairs” being a highlight) but now they are buffed out by violins, upping the drama at the center of the song even more. And when that stretch vanishes, it leads to one of the best guitar solos the band has ever laid down, a segment capturing the ennui just as well as the words. Listen above.