Cleverly named house artists HARUOSEVEN’s new track “Feel It On” easily could have been just another bubbly jam floating around on the Internet. That wouldn’t have been a terrible thing, as “Feel It On” boasts big multi-colored blasts of keyboard surrounding an appropriate vocal sample. Cherryboy Function released an EP knocking out similarly dizzy wooshes…
Lovely Summer Chan makes her major label debut today, with the song “Fly Fly Fly.” Moving to a bigger company comes with some tricky baggage — check the video above, which transforms into a commercial midway through, straight from the Hoshino Gen playbook — but her music sounds unchanged, built on driving guitars and her…
The ongoing “city pop” revival online tends to place an emphasis on the funk and disco-indebted tunes emerging out of Bubble era Japan. Yet every bit as central to it were genres seen as far less cool in 2019 — jazz, AOR, fusion, the stuff your dad might listen to (give that dad some credit,…
Sound project Yunomi seems like a constant presence on SoundCloud, mainly because every day it seems like someone went and remixed one of their earlier songs. So what a delight that a new number, “Mentai Cosmic,” appeared online instead of the 18th pitch-shifted take on a song released in the spring. Yunomi — which relies…
Nagoya’s House Of Tapes is usually responsible for pounding, crushing electronic music, but on “I Die In A Beautiful World,” he’s stepped back from the destructive sounds in favor of something more reflective. Chaos hides in the corners, as it tends to always do, via a few warped electronic and rougher elements, but the bulk…
#10 In The Blue Shirt Cyanotype And Sensation Of Blueness Across these two brief but busy releases, Osaka’s In The Blue Shirt transmogrified the familiar into alien forms. His approach to music remains the same — grab a line or a few from a song, whether it be an obscure cut or a global smash…
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.
Indie-poppish outfit The Insect Kids realize that one song just isn’t enough in this buys, music-stuffed world of ours. So here they are dropping two new tracks – in the form of one big night-cruising video – for your listening pleasure. It has been a wild since Make Believe Melodies checked in with The Insect…
The titles of i-fls’ albums always seem like clues to what’s going on, but strangely enough his latest throws me for a loop. It has a title within a title – he is referring to a cassette named “Awareness To The Winter,” although I have no idea what that really means. Actual relic of the…
“Soft As Snow (But Warm Inside)”は1988年にリリースされたMy Bloody Valentineのデビュー作、”Isn’t Anything”のオープニング曲。そんな名前を持つバンドが登場しました。シューゲイザーを連想せずにはいられなかったのですが、ボーカルがミックスの奥に配置されている事以外、ケヴィン・シールズのバンドとはあまり共通点は見受けられません。デュオの記念すべき一曲目、”Vogue”では、そんなSoft As Snow But Warm Insideの個性が発揮されています。ギターは陰に潜み、代わりに幻想性を持つシンセや、ハードなドラムマシーンの音色が目立ちます。ボーカルも美しく、”one fine day, 1969/I said goodbye to all the world”という歌詞や、宇宙飛行士の喋りがサンプルに使われている事からもわかるように、宇宙旅行がテーマになっています。Soft As Snow But Warm Insideはバンド名ゆえの期待感を上手く裏切り、誰を真似する訳でなく、独自な世界観を表現しています。視聴は以下から。 Vogue EP by Soft As Snow But Warm Inside
Miila “Santa Baby” Well, this is definitely putting your own personal stamp on a Christmas classic. Miila, stepping away from the Geeks for this bit of yuletide joy, covers “Santa Baby” by playing a version built around molasses-slow guitar and some simple-but-ominous drum. Miila herself sings it pretty straightforward, but her voice sounds slightly muffled…
This morning, Perfume announced a forthcoming album titled Level 3. This put me in an excellent mood, and made me want to listen to some gooey pop music. I jump over to SoundCloud, spirits high, and see a new song from producer Yoshino Yoshikawa called “Kawaii Candy.” It’s labelled as “ULTRAPOP.” Bless your soul Yoshikawa….
Not going to lie – footwork-maker Weezy’s new album On Nukes caught my attention from the rows of new Bandcamp releases because of the title. The general lack of socially aware music in Japan…especially on the always hot-button issue of nuclear energy/weapons, a topic that became relevant once again earlier this month following North Korea’s…
