tofubeats’ has a knack for building songs up, though it isn’t always the musical mode pushed to the forefront. Most of his major-label singles opt for pure pop pleasure with little wait. Yet he’s also skilled at the slow burn, hinted at by numbers such as “What You Got” and “Don’t Stop The Music.” But…
No group has been more influential this decade than Sotaisei Riron. That outfit’s mix of Showa-derived pop melodies and lead singer Etsuko Yakushimaru’s surreal sing-speak ended up leaving a mark on pop and rock in Japan across the past ten years, ranging from out-right imitation to blueprints towards the mainstream to stranger creations. If you…
“Kawaii” music in Japan tends to embrace a sugary maximalism, aided by bells and whistles…literally. It’s a hit or miss approach, and one extending beyond SoundCloud producers who love anime girls as art — when it works, it’s a dizzying mutation on modern electronic music, but when it misses it gets really cloying. TsubusareBozz avoids the…
Nagoya’s House Of Tapes has tried out a lot over his career — and now comes something resembling a tone poem. “I Can Not Say Goodbye To You” finds the producer sing-speaking a melancholy set of lyrics against a discombobulated (but never overwhelming) electronic backdrop. While it isn’t as suffocating as their older material, their…
Oh what a wonderful way to close out the remaining days of summer. The ever-reliable commune310 shared two compilations of summer material recently, and A gets off to a hot start, with Bamboo’s “I Can Feel It’ delivering some loose-limbed funk before Yuzen’s eight-minute-plus “Yourself” delivers a slow-burning blast of tropical delight, loaded up with…