Days Of Homemade J-Pop: Hisamokuden-Kow’s A Desktop Museum

Rare are the times when you stumble across a SoundCloud or Bandcamp page unironically tagging itself as J-Pop. Even rarer…finding an earnest stab at the outright poppy through these sites that isn’t terrible. There are certainly exceptions – everything on Maltine that goes by that, mostly – but try spending some time with that tag. Tochigi-based artist Hisamokuden-Kow falls into the category of making the good stuff. His debut EP A Desktop Museum is a bubbly, bright collection of songs unafraid to be as colorful as possible. Opener “Holland” sets the pace, and pretty much presents the case for or against liking Hisamokuden-Kow from the start. His actual music is chirpy electronics and drum machines tumbling over one another, sounding cheap but still energetic. The vocals, meanwhile, are a bit rougher, but he isn’t afraid to push himself…and he does cover his voice up with Auto-tune later in the track, which ends up sounding even better (shades of Yoshino Yoshikawa there).

It isn’t flawless – the third song, despite its buzzy background noise, veers too closely to J-Pop ballad territory. But then you listen to the stutter-stepping “Bass Basic,” and just how electric it is. EP highlight “Our Song” stands out because it is the one song here where Hisamokuden-Kow just completely lets technology run over his words, everything synthesizing perfectly into a hi-fi bit of pop. It is unabashed pop, and I dig it. Get it here, or listen below.