I’ve been waiting for the actual album to drop, but Boys Age’s “Dēmiourgos” is so pretty and fragile that, hey, might as well wait a little bit until New World Pregnancy emerges. It has been a while since checking in on the group, and true to their spirit, Boys Age remain adept at introducing strange,…
One of Snail’s House’s biggest skills on Ordinary Songs #3 is making intricacy sound so laid back. The five songs here unfurl at a mid-tempo bop, getting crowded at times (the springy “Bouquet” being a good example) but offering far more room to breathe than other contemporary producers in Japan. This is an album bound…
Electronic artist Tominaga highlights two sides of her sound on a pair of albums that came out at the end of May. Limbus gathers several of her ambient, often wordless, creations from 2016 to now, highlighting her approach to constructing sound exclusively. The revelation is she’s capable of squeezing a lot of feelings out of…
Madame_nhu describes themselves as a “dream artist,” which on first brush simply conjures up images of shoegaze bands occupying space in a cramped Tokyo club. Yet “Spacy” offers up a bit of a surprise, at least to those made slightly cynical by Japan’s eternal love of My Bloody Valentine…it’s more blurry than anything else, Madame_nhu’s…
Ano(t)raks is probably best known for being a destination for new Japanese indie-pop (or, if the term fits for you, city-pop inspired cuts), but the netlabel-turned-physical-label also has a long history of highlighting electronic music, ranging from Kai Takahashi’s 80s-brushed numbers (which eventually morphed into the lounge pop of Lucky Tapes) to the minimalism of…