The first time I ever saw Seiho play — and talked to him at all — came at the very end of 2011, at an EDM party in Osaka. He wasn’t making bass-heavy whiplash music, though, but rather cosmic-leaning stuff that would have slid in well within the LA beat scene. Since, he’s explored many…
She’s the one on the left of what appears to be a sandwich board Joining other kid’s TV show legends turned musicians like Oscar The Grouch and Steve from Blue’s Clues (seriously, he’s pals with the Flaming Lips) will soon be one of the characters on Japanese English-centric educational jam Eigo De Asobo, Jenny aka…
Link for video viewable outside of Japan here Well here’s an unlikely collaboration. Chvrches capped off a recent swing through Japan for the Fuji Rock Festival by sharing a new song featuring…Suiyoubi No Campanella (I mean…just KOM_I? Kenmochi Hidefumi involved, because it sure sounds like Chvrches). Hey, now that’s a nice profile raiser. The song…
I won’t dwell on my workload anymore, but…this extremely busy and active cut from producer Fellsius, released via Trekkie Trax, is welcome at a time when I could use all the energy I can get. The 18-year-old producer based in Tokyo loads up his take on house with as much detail as he can, from…
Rap from Asia feels like one of those constantly percolating trends in Western media, frequently written about but never going that next step…always stuck in “four artists ready to break!” lists territory. Japanese artists have been in the same cycle too (although probably less than other artists across the continent, which is a different conversation),…
Recently, I went to a music conference in Shibuya that was heavy on seminars focused on China. Turns out the Chinese market…it’s a big one, guys! Anyway, one of the presentations talked about how Japanese music can get over to China, and one of the most popular styles with listeners was listed as “indie pop…
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 guiding principal behind Make Believe Melodies, ever since I founded it all the way back in 2009, was to focus exclusively on music from Japan. Truth is, though, I have certainly broken that guiding principal every once in awhile – I’ve written about Japanese artists who currently reside in other countries, and have even…
Everyone seems to be in a summer mood as of late…yesterday, POP-OFFICE were brooding about the end of summer, and now Yucca are getting all melancholy thinking about the season. “Summer Emotion” is a sparse tune that sorta just hangs in the air – I’m surprised this lasts only three minutes and 45 seconds. The…
Madegg is a tough one to pin down. The Kyoto producer has been one of the most prolific electronic artists of the last few years, to the point where keeping track of everything he’s done has become a real challenge (shouts out to whoever is keeping tabs on that for the Madegg box set). One…
Azusa Suga, who already released one of the year’s best albums with his solo project Shortcake Collage Tape’s Spirited Summer, returns in time for the spring with a new EP titled Satellite Lovers from his indie-pop band For Tracy Hyde. In advance, he’s posted a new video for the song “Another Sunny Daze,” which appears…
Initially, it looked like netlabel Ano(t)raks was going to define itself as a destination for indie-pop music. Which it still very much does – the bulk of the artists appearing on their compilation albums over the past few months certainly skew towards the twee. Yet with latest various-artists collection World Awake, the fledgling label has…
Let’s start the week with something we dropped the ball on totally. This new song from Occult You (a side-project from one of Japan’s finest music makers today Taquwami) came out nearly two weeks ago, and is a solid groover. It takes cues from a song the Occult You project released a couple years back,…
