The biggest flaw with the current “city pop revival” is how it fails to match the feeling of living in a city today. A lot has changed since the ’80s, when city pop matched the opulence of the times, and at its absolute best pushed past urban decadence and nailed the feeling of possibility that…
There can be sweetness in hyperactivity. Producer 3tos’ latest collection Hen3 Ke3 Ai4 features four songs loaded up with squishy synthesizer, pitch-shifted vocals and samples. It sounds very much like something that would emerge from the internet…uptempo, bouncy, constantly shifting gears but held together just right. Yet 3tos, for all his sonic restlessness, make sure…
The line between stupidity and genius can often be very close, and lord does For My Homiez jump-rope between the two. This is an album of songs mostly constructed from samples of SMAP songs, with some tracks warping Johnny’s favorite cash cow into goofy trap numbers over which people rap about…SMAP, and Johnny Kitagawa. As…
The compilation album is where indie-pop netlabel Ano(t)raks shines brightest, gathering artists from all over the country to share a song highlighting their take on one of the most overpopulated genres in the country. Yet, critically, the label knows how to spot diamonds, and Azur features a strong set of indie-pop, from straight-up guitar numbers…
1. Imagining “The Life Of Pablo is an exploration of digital-age contradictions. Its genesis — Kyoto producer Toyomu couldn’t listen to Kanye West’s The Life Of Pablo because Tidal isn’t available in Japan (and, if Toyomu is anything like me, hunting down pirated files is just too much work in 2016), so he imagined his…