Suiyoubi No Campanella’s ascent in 2016 shows no signs of slowing down, an outfit once hovering around the Shinjuku Loft scene now popping up on SMAP X SMAP (uhh, R.I.P?) and scoring tie-up campaigns with Toyota. The latter — repping for the Prius — has generated her latest song, “Matsuo Basho,” and like many acts…
Watching Snail’s House (aka Ujico) develop in the past year — from middle-of-the-road “kawaii bass” producer to an artist showing off a lot of stylistic depth, both electronically and with more classical piano compositions — has been exciting, and the young trackmaker has a new EP out further highlighting his ever improving style. Love Story…
The Sub Account are one of those outfits that seem so prolific that writing about everything they do seems silly. I joke about how much Yunomi has done in 2016, but this duo have probably been busy three times over, with remixes of songs (mainly numbers from anime) and no shortage of live shows (also,…
The Tsutaya chain of CD rental shops…yes, this concept exists in Japan, and yes, people still wonder why CD sales are down when you can rent five for a 1/3rd the price of one…puts out special albums every once in a while, and the just-out Cocolo Color Comp finds a handful of colorful artists…from electro-pop…
Anybody can invent a genre, but Mukuchi’s use of “seagazer” to describe “Hikidashi” stands as a rare moment when a made-up category to describe music actually works pretty well. “Hikidashi” is a mid-afternoon daydream of a song, a slightly faded set of guitars, light percussion and singing in no rush to get anywhere. It’s a…