The latest from Lulu details a scene that sounds lovely, but delivered in a way hinting at how even the best times are bound to slip away at some point. “Hot” features lyrics about pools and warm nights, but delivered over a sparse beat marked by faint keyboard notes that mostly put the focus on Lulu’s voice. She’s not melancholy or anything, but her delivery coupled with the relatively downcast beat behind her adds a sense of temporality to “Hot” that at least lets the shadow behind the fun be a little more present. Listen above.
Category Archives: Music
New Y.a.M.A: BOOOOM!! EP
“Pow.” “Whomp.” “Ka-Boom.” The tracks on footwork producer Y.a.M.A’s latest play out like comic book injections, and the accompanying songs deliver the same kind of frantic energy that really begs for movement rather than words. “Pow” leads off with squiggly synth stabs dancing around the skittery beat, going for constant movement over all else. “Glug” approaches Foodman territory in how it uses vocal snippets as texture, although this one still gets nudged forward by a needly beat and some energetic “ehhhs!” in the back. And it all spills over with the one-two punch of closers “Splat” and “Whomp,” busy numbers focused on just making contact. Get it here, or listen below.
A New Normal?: Kubotakai’s 305
It’s going to be a month straight of simultaneous looking back and gazing forward now that we have an era name in hand. Eventually it will feel exhausting the way all discourse gets in the internet age, but there is something charming right now about it, being in this weird lame-duck time where time just blends together all weird (not to mention…the actual announcement of Reiwa was fun! Rare are moments everyone comes together for something that isn’t calamity).
Kubotakai’s 305 works as a good soundtrack for this moment, as it’s an album every bit lost in time, though maybe pointing towards a new normal. The young artist exists in the same category as Mom or Native Rapper or Lulu, Japanese musicians coming up in a digital age where borders barely exist, this reality reflected in their music. 305 opens with a song where city-pop-revival-adjacent sounds collide with laid-back rapping, and gets followed up by “Heisei Shojo,” a woozier rap number about being the last adolescent of the previous era (the other path this album blazes…and one where I feel more like a tourist on…is a reflection of youth in Japan in 2019, with references to late nights out and fancy Starbucks orders and longing). Like many other young indie artists in Japan, Kubotakai doesn’t let ideas of what something should sound like stop them from just blurring everything together to create something far more interesting than usual pastiche efforts. And it will sound lovely in April. Get it here, or listen below.
Haru Nemuri Teams Up With China’s Prune Deer For “Return”
Haru Nemuri — responsible for our favorite album of 2018 — recently wrapped up a tour of China. While there, she met up with Chinese instrumental rock band Prune Deer to collaborate on a song called “Return.” The group provides an initially lumbering backdrop, a sort of post-rock adjacent lurch that Nemuri hasn’t really tackled before. But her sing-speak — about the depravity and ugliness of modern life, including a line about Jesus Christ not actually dying for your sings — fits in well here, and it allows her an opportunity to show off her vocal tempo as Prune Deer’s music mutates all around her. These are two artists who do drama extremely well meshing just right, and delivering a burner. Listen above.
New Universe Nekoko: “Like A Raspberry”
Sometimes its the moment not happening that ends up being the most memorable. Universe Nekoko’s “Like A Raspberry” goes for something more delicate, more spacious than some of the band’s more outright shoegaze material. Everything feels near whispered, while the music itself feels barely there, like a light wind grazing over someone walking in the early morning. It constantly feels close to tipping over into something — but it never does, always righting itself back to a stroll. It’s sweet but tense, something heavy lurking beneath all that room. Listen above.