Last year, we devoted one week of the year to covering music somehow overlooked by the purveyors of this blog. Over the course of seven days, we rushed out reviews of albums and songs that caught our attention but either slipped by or required us to spend a lot of time thinking about. Or we…
The Salyu X Salyu project, a collaborative effort between J-Pop belter Salyu and future-savvy producer Cornelius, showcases one of the rarest forms of the “superstar musicians team up” trope. The duo’s album S(o)un(d)beams neither consolidates one another’s strengths into a unified style…see Madvillainy or to a lesser degree the work of Gnarls Barkley…nor do they…
The other week I paid a visit to Osaka to do some music shopping. This excursion via the Kintetsu railway used to be a common part of my life, the sort of thing I’d mentally pencil into my weekend plans if nothing else of interest materialized. Which, turned out, happened a lot. Yet my forays…
J-Pop artist Miwa recently made Japanese music history when her debut album Guitarissimo reached the number one spot on the Oricon album charts. The 20 year old became the first Heisei period-born singer (this period started in 1989) to climb to the top of that list. This feat coupled with a movie-worthy climb to musical…
Discussing pop music usually ends up being less a slippery slope and more like hiking up a waterfall. The act of just identifying “pop” can quickly turn into something contentious, one individual decrying the “vapid” works of Katy Perry before reminiscing about Green Day’s glory days. “Pop,” to many people, has become a bad word…