One of the more interesting trends in Japanese indie music this year as been the influence of anime in various songs. We’ve already talked about a pair of artists who create Ghibli-like wonderlands, but other musicians have been literally summoning old Japanese cartoons in their tracks. From the submerged beauty of Shortcake Collage Tape to…
About two weeks ago, Tokyo’s Shortcake Collage Tape posted a song called “Polaroid Full Of Kisses” that ended up being a far more craftly bit of indie-pop to pin down than the name implied. It was a fuzzy memory of a song, vocals ripped from anime and sampled flute dropped into a woozy downtempo gunk….
What makes Tokyo project LLLL stand out from a very crowded music scene in the metropolis is the refusal to shy away from pop. Others involved in the city’s indie scene tend to avoid mainstream pop music, especially J-Pop, and some even seem antagonistic to it (this blog has been called “the one that has…
This might be face-palm obvious, but the music media moves in cycles. Genre A might be popular this month, but give it some time and Genre B will be the one suddenly being upped by Diplo and written about by the New York Times. Funny thing is, the same applies to the contemporary music media…
In an effort to reflect the dominant trends in Japanese indie music, we chose Osaka indie-pop outfit Wallflower to appear in the May 2012 edition of the Music Alliance Pact. There “Cure Your Heart” is one of the peppiest songs with twee DNA to pop out of the country this year…and there have been many….