Duo ELLEH have been on a good roll recently ahead of their first EP — capped off with a very nice, very fun live show in Tokyo this past weekend. “New To This” adds to the streak, moving at the fastest pace of any of the songs they’ve put out as to date, and featuring shifty piano lines and a hint of acid house pulsing through it. It also happens to be the most dramatic song they’ve shared yet. It features the same reflecting over the past over music one mostly turns to escape, but here is a multi-layered story full revealing details. The ending, though, just ends in release. Listen above.
Category Archives: Music
New Fuji Chao: The Virgin
There are many things I’m just never going to connect with in a truly direct way, and plenty more things I will never come close to understanding at all. I’m, frankly, too old. That’s not meant as some “lolz oldz get out the way” sort of thing, but rather an acknowledgement that certain things just hit harder for younger people. I’ve lived through too much, and the things that stir me up are not the same things that will hit someone five, ten, fifteen and so on years younger than me. I can hear a song about teenage pain and feel something, but it’s just an echo of the past. For someone else, that pain is direct, real and now.
This has always been the tension I personally feel with the music of Fuji Chao, and it feels even more prevalent listening to The Virgin, her most complete and compelling work yet. Part of that praise comes from a musical place. The music the bedroom producer has put out thus far have either been has either been sets of sketches featuring her near-whispered voice, or collections veering closer to beat tapes. The Virgin builds a bridge between the two approaches, resulting in swift instrumental numbers featuring a few mumbled words, slow-burning techno tracks with anime samples piercing through them, and “Secret,” a muffled number that bursts into thumping pop. This is a young artist exploring new musical territory, trying out a lot of different noises and seeing how she can fit in them. Musically, this is already her most compelling release.
Yet what makes The Virgin an album I’ve been revisiting again and again over the last week is the direct emotion in every number. This isn’t a new development for Fuji Chao, whose earlier albums felt like journal entries from young adulthood and all the pain that comes with that. But The Virgin goes even further. Songs such as “Fallen Angel” and the title track still feature spoken word vocals reminiscent of “poem core” artists, delivered in a quiet, feels-like-a-secret manner. Yet then there are the moments of more violent outbursts — the crying and apologizing of “Shoujo ver. 2,” the extremely uncomfortable samples anchoring “Raaka.” Right in the middle is “Rose Quartz,” a five-minute sound collage featuring one of the niftiest mid-song flips around, built entirely from dialogue taken from the TV show Steven Universe.
And it’s moments like that which make me realize I’ll never really get the emotions at the center of The Virgin, as it’s an album built from pieces of teen-life in the 2010’s and features the life-or-death feelings you can only really experience when you are still young enough to make them feel so dramatic. I think anyone can listen to this album and come away enjoying it, or being like me and penciling it in for a top-ten spot later this year. But I also know the way it hits me is not nearly as strong as it could be. And that reminds me that, for someone, it hits really, really hard. Get it here or listen below.
New Kyary Pamyu Pamyu: “Todoke Punch”
I do not come to defend Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, nor try to find any redemption outside of Easter sales campaigns for “Easta.” It is a forgettable single, as have the bulk of her singles since “Mondai Girl.” Blame it on overbooked schedules for her or producer Yasutaka Nakata, blame it on the necessity to do more commercial tie-ups faster, or blame it on general complacency…nobody should really try to counter you on it.
Yet this singles slump has also resulted in some Kyary Revisionism that I can’t stand. Look, I get it — this is pop music, and nobody is rational or parsing themselves for past hypocrisy. Pop thrives on immediacy, and pop criticism comes from the same instant place. Three years ago Taylor Swift inspired thousands of teary-eyed Tumblr posts, now she’s one of history’s greatest monsters. J-Pop has the same thing, and Kyary Pamyu Pamyu’s musical output does warrant cynicism. But that’s also no reason to pretend she (and Nakata) are behind one of the wonkier debut J-Pop albums of this decade, or one of the most emotionally complex (and catchy) sophomore full-lengths. Or that her songs being tied to products is somehow a sign of instant rankness, despite this being how Japanese pop music has functioned for four decades now.
Which is all a long-winded way of saying…wow, b-side “Todoke Punch” is the best song she’s done in a long time! It moves away from the playroom twinkles that have dominated her music, and returns to a style Nakata has provided her before (Pamyu Pamyu Revolution’s closing number), a synth-heavy throwback to ’80s pop. It still shimmers, but just stands out from what has become Kyary’s go-to sound. Most unexpectedly, it even gets the most out of her voice, an element that has never been a strong point in her music. Yet “Todoke Punch” constructs a melody that gets her voice rising up and even stretching beyond its usual sober zone. It’s one hell of a crosscheck against cynicism. Listen above.
New Foodman: “Kusa”
Foodman has transformed into one of those productive types of artists who I have no idea what to do with anymore. Albums and EPs, sure, write those up! But he also just puts out so many interesting, captivating and weird loosies, that this could turn into the Internet’s number-one destination for Foodman news if I really thought that would be the proper way to re-brand. “Kusa” is the latest mind-twister from an artist who excels at bending sounds into tiny whirlwinds, voices and percussion and tape hiss tumbling over one another, but everything clicking…somehow, someway. As meaning continues to feel more and more meaningless in 2017, it’s nice to hear something that just revels in sound. Listen above.
New DYGL: “Let It Out”
When Ykiki Beat called it a day, something interesting happened to DYGL. The prior group featured many of the same numbers, and was sort of placed as the mainstream rock effort…whereas DYGL was given space to be more messy around the edges, more garage. But now, with one band done, DYGL takes the spotlight role too, and with their debut album out next week, it will be interesting how they adjust. “Let It Out” hints at what might be. It is a fine bit of rock in the U.K. style the group has always been turned to, and it moves at a steady pace. The anger and energy that once pulsed through their work is toned back for something more reflective, something more emotional (whatever political readings you could glean from older songs is replaced with navigating complicated inner workings). I think the older mode DYGL gravitated too still comes across on other songs, but “Let It Out” is the one with the video, so it seems like it is the one that needs to be seen by people. And it’s different. Good, but different. Listen above.