Controlled Karaoke: An Intro To Japanese Roots Music
Japan Probe posted a small write-up about Japanese roots music. It’s a nice little introduction to the type of music (one I’m woefully ignorant of, so this is especially great), so give it a read.
Japan Probe posted a small write-up about Japanese roots music. It’s a nice little introduction to the type of music (one I’m woefully ignorant of, so this is especially great), so give it a read.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbAccdZDKik&hl=en_US&fs=1&] SCANDAL’s songs aren’t growers: they either hook you right off the bat or end up unchecked in iTunes. Last year’s singles compilation BEST★SCANDAL highlighted this perfectly, the best numbers (“Koi Moyou,” “SAKURA Goodbye”) firing off from the get-go and pulling listeners far in enough to hit them with the band’s best skill – the…
Long-running Osaka outfit Satanicpornocultshop’s latest release, the Snack EP, features a strict unifying sonic theme — the group samples African funk tracks from the 1970s and turns them into wobbly juke numbers. The source material — warm, guitar-centered music — gives Snack an overall brighter atmosphere than many of the outfit’s previous juke releases (and…
For some reason, I’ve never written about Frontier Backyard before despite the fact I’ve seen their name all over the place during my time in Japan. FB can easily be compared to Cubismo Grafico Five, but a bit more reeled in. Basically, Frontier Backyard come off as more focused, a group capable of writing really…
Boys Age get a lot of inspiration from video games. Last year’s fantastic Calm Time drew inspiration from a psychological horror game, while their latest The Red draws inspiration from Rule Of Rose. The music itself…what has been posted so far…exists mainly in the laid-back zone they’ve been exploring for some time, though on a…
If you require official releases, whether they be digital packages or physical units, it would seem like Japanese producer Taquwami has been pretty quite for some time though. But actually, he’s just been sending music out either onto SoundCloud for, like, a day or dropping songs in other corners of the Internet…like file-sharing site Mediafire….
Japanese netlabels have a slight reputation for putting out busy, zig-zagging music. Oftentimes, that’s true! But I’m always struck how mellow Sabacan Records output over the last two years has been. The latest to come out from the digital destination, producer Stones Taro’s “Don’t Be Afraid,” adds another example to fuel this suspicion. The song…