The duo of PinkyLab and Jam Boy came together to form the project PeachJam last year, releasing one fantastic song in November called “Suisai Boy,” a electro-pop bouncer anchored by digi-smudged vocals. From one song — well, plus a short intro — now comes a slightly juicier release featuring six original songs, which hop around…
Look, if a former Especia member does something musically, this blog will almost certainly cover it. If parts of this HALLCA release lean in on nostalgia for Especia, Monari Wakita’s solo career has been an effort to take similar ideas and turn them into livelier numbers that seem to be a bit more focused on…
Despite “Things We Missed Week” having ended last Friday, one review remains to go up. It’s for bedroom artist She Talks Silence debut album…released back in April and an absolute pain to find…Noise And Novels. It will be an extremely glowing review. While you wait, here’s a new STS track called “Dead Romance.” Like the…
[youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iv4gUdn6Lcc”] The fact this didn’t go even more viral is a sign society needs to be reset and we should all start over. Amazing on at least four levels.
I have been staring out a window facing a countryside neighborhood for the past six hours. It’s a wonderful view…nice weather means the sky is a perfect blue, and there is a mountain covered in trees only a few miles away…and I’d stare at it endlessly if I could, except I’m sitting here working. Niigata’s…
Any band saying they drew heavy inspiration from Hotel Mexico has my attention, as did Tokyo quartet Cairo in a recent piece by Ryotaro Aoki over at The Japan Times. And listening to the three songs they’ve shared online — all from the recently released Same As Before, out via Magniph — makes it clear…
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.
THE CHALLENGE: Can Lullatone make the author of this blog feel good thoughts about winter, his least favorite season? THE PARTICIPANTS: Nagoya duo responsible for sweet, nostalgia-glazed music that sometimes leans towards the whimsical. On the other side, some blogger who hates winter. THE MUSIC: Lullatone have been celebrating the seasons over the past six…
For Tracy Hyde has expanded a bit – they’ve grown in number of members, which I saw at a live show they played recently. Despite a rise in the number of folks in the band, new song “Small Town, Summer Rain” still sounds like For Tracy Hyde. It’s a peppy indie-pop song…crucially, sang in Japanese…accented…
Kindan No Tasuketsu is pretty darn prolific…she’s released a bunch of great music in 2013, and now she’s back with another song AND a really cool video. “Sun Comes Up” is a bouncy bit of electro-pop, maybe the most straightforward pop song she’s made so far this year. It features a really lovely chorus complete…
There are a few new few twists to be found over at Ano(t)raks, the online label specializing in Japanese indie-pop. The Upwards And Onwards EP, the follow-up compilation to last year’s excellent Soon collection, features sounds just outside of the collective’s usual twee leanings. Tokyo’s Canopies And Drapes shows up with her bouncy, Night On…
Slow Beach are a Japanese indie-pop supergroup of sorts – they feature Kai Takahashi and Twangy Twagny (a.k.a. Dai Ogasawara), but find both of them making surf-leaning music (see – the name). They’ve released their first album, called Lover Lover and you can get it for free here. Go do that! I’ll write more on…
One of the weirder things to happen…or, more appropriately, not happen…in the realm of Japanese music is the near lack of music relating to the 3/11 earthquake and tsunami or the Fukushima nuclear incident following it (and still going as strong as ever). I’m not talking about outright political songs addressing the government or TEPCO…
