Before last year’s 8Eight8, Kaela Kimura’s strength was absorbing popular sounds (ranging from Perfume’s techno-pop to whatever the fuck you call Mika’s music) and turning them into singles that managed to not be straight rip-offs, Kimura usually balanced on the right side of the fence. Yet then came 8Eight8, an album where Kimura certainly still…
[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/40973377 w=500&h=375] Here in Japan, today isn’t just an ordinary Friday full of people grinning and bearing one more day of work so they can get to the sweet, sweet weekend. Next week is Golden Week, a time of the year featuring three national holidays, meaning a lot of vacation time for a lot…
Synergy! Today in The Japan Times, I reviewed Turbo Town, the new album from rock-dance duo 80Kidz. Read it here. The nitty gritty of it – Turbo Town is a very good album with occasional great moments, but it’s also an album where 80Kidz end up sabotaging themselves by not being confident enough to do…
Kyoto producer Madegg releases new song so quickly that writing about them all as they come out would be a fool’s errand. Sure, it would make my job a little easier, but would be a bit of overkill even coming from one of the best young beat makers in Japan today. Instead, I’ve resorted to…
Lets talk about that Moscow Club compilation again for a second. By titling it something an insert-character away from being the same as the famous NME C86 tape, dudes pretty much gave the impression that the music within would lean towards indie-pop. For the most part, it does, but with a few diversions into electronic…