This one works better as a study in musical styles colliding than as a fully formed song, though the sections where “Feel Me” just goes off are really something. Yackle, a name associated with Tokyo Recordings and who just dropped a new album called Frank Throw yesterday, teams up with De De Mouse and singer/songwriter…
[youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5ocpERse14″] Kinda a mixed bag here. STAR GUiTAR (aside: when did that “i” get lowercased?) sound fine, laying down a pulsing club beat that isn’t particularly complex but definitely serves its function. Alone, the music would pass for OK club stuff. Problem comes with the vocals courtesy of CICO. The shouts of “tonight” in the…
The past few months have already seen the CUZ ME PAIN project Jesse Ruins go from a mysterious little thing lurking in the shadows to an artist responsible for one of the better halves of a cassette tape this year to a blog darling. “Sofija” is the latest in a string of great releases from…
Someone out there in Twitter’s hyper-short content wasteland decided to make an account for Jandek, the Texas recluse who has spent 30 years recording music from his house in Houston. The accounts a fake, but one that serves as a nice reminder of how much the musical world has changed in a dozen years. Jandek…
Despite being their most zonked out number lyrically to date, Yurufuwa Gang’s “Fresh All Day” manages to avoid falling into the ether. That’s not a bad spot for the pair — last year’s “Palm Tree” being a strong argument for just letting the void devour you entirely — but this one works because Ryan Hemsworth’s…
Egotistical Gabber Death by sumitomo (Programming note: site is currently going through a lot of technical difficulties, and actually writing posts is a massive challenge. Might be a bit more inconsistent for the next few…uhhhh, days, I hope? Stay tuned) Look, we all get stressed out, and we need to deal with it in our…
Tokyo’s Ningen OK are a group that demand to be seen live. I lucked my way into seeing them this past weekend, knowing nothing about them, but leaving thinking this duo put on one of the better live sets I’ve seen recently. They play surrounded by what appear to be homemade white pyramids. Guitarist Takurou Yamashita stands in front of a board littered with effects pedals, while Ken-ichi Sakaguchi looms over a drum kit which he soon hammers away at. They play very precise, wordless rock that always seems an inch away from tumbling into chaos, but always manages to hold together. Between songs, Sakaguchi leans towards a Vocoder and creates trippy segues featuring his robo-tized voice. Then they launch off again. It’s captivating stuff.
Their music manages to still sound good away from a live house – “Taion No Yukue” highlights Ningen OK’s precision-centric nature while also introducing elements of chaos (listen to that radio feedback). Listen to that below. It comes off their recently released first album of the same name, which is also probably full of good moments. Still, Ningen OK seem like a live band first, one that you should certainly make time for. Bookmark this page.
This one announces itself really well…after a few seconds of pulsating electronics courtesy of Kobe’s Cosmosman, a woman’s voice cheerfully says “Welcome to the future!” And then “Radio Menthol,” the first song off of Ananga Ranga turns into a bouncy cartoon number that seems like it should be soundtracking videos of dancing fire hydrants or…
Time for the Music Alliance Pact! This is 2013’s last installment of MAP, where more than 30 blogs from all over the world share one song with everyone else. This month, Make Believe Melodies highlights Coffee And TV’s Prefab-Sprout-sample-boasting “Guess What? Summer’s Arrived.” Listen to it and a lot more below! Click the play button…
The vocals found on Elen Never Sleeps’ songs are always an interesting confrontation – they are not traditionally “good” but the relatively ragged delivery are charming in their own way. They are pushed further than ever before on new EP Rum which finds Elen Never Sleep crafting his most vocally daring collection yet. It opens…
Bits and pieces from this, CUZ ME PAIN project White Wear’s debut album, have been popping up over the last few months. Yet the final product, Black Strings, has been only available in stores in Japan since its release. Now, though, White Wear has uploaded the whole thing to SoundCloud so everyone can enjoy the…
Look, I don’t want to take anything away from Izumi Makuro. She sounds just fine here, rapping in a relaxed way that sounds effortless and certainly isn’t as, shall we say, acquired as other pop-rap outfits in Japan. If anything, it is easily compared to Her Ghost Friend, except with a more hip-hop bend. It’s…
