Omoide Label has a knack for putting together wonderfully energetic compilations, whether they be focused on juke or otherwise. Their latest various-artists get-together veers towards the latter, though Your Sound sounds a bit more energetic. Budding producer Nyankobrq serves up a squiggly bit of electro-dance that seems descended from the DJ Newtwon school of production…
As I recover from four days at Fuji Rock – which have left my legs tight and my eyes baggy with sleep – I’ve been scrolling through my various music feeds trying to catch up…and look here, producer Lidly made a song called “Fuji,” described as “waiting time beat at Fujirock.” Hey, caught my attention….
[youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpYS1VElGoc”] It still amazes me that my introduction to HNC and Moe (of Miila And The Geeks) was through their twee-crunk project Love And Hates. Back in the halcyon days of 2009, I never would have guessed the two women rapping over cat noises while wearing mis-matched leg warmers and what might have been Burger…
I will not bore you with the details of how I missed last week’s Anthem event at ageHa (but if you must know…not finding buses in time and having my socks ruined by rain). But I did, and it was a personal low point for 2017 (which, all things considered, isn’t too bad). Thankfully, Picnic…
This isn’t the first time Osaka’s Luka Uemura has teamed up with the artist Affable Noise…back in May, the two teamed up to record a brief album of improvisations which you can hear this way. Now here they are, together again, presenting the world with a lovely late-August present mysteriously titled “If She Had Waved…
Just like the song list, I intend to share 25 albums almost surely overlooked by the West that I really enjoyed in the past year. Of course, I missed just as many great albums and a year from now I’ll probably regret/want to expand this. Yet these 25 albums definitely deserve your attention. 25. Hideki…
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.
In case you didn’t know, Make Believe Melodies also has a Tumblr, where I write a bit more about J-Pop and non-Japanese music. A few weeks ago, I wrote about Desire, the new album from Los-Angeles-based artist spazzkid. Read that here. For those who aren’t going to click it – Desire has jumped up to…
“Patrick, I thought you had nothing new to say about Japanese indie-pop?” “I probably don’t, but that’s not going to stop me from highlighting this new song from Homecomings.” “Huh? I don’t follow.” “Well, Homecomings don’t do anything particularly new, especially in the ever-crowded field of Japanese indie-pop. It has been, what, three years since…
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….
The video teaser for “Just Wanna Feel” – click the image above to watch it – spends most of its time focusing on Tokyo’s Sapphire Slows. She stares at the camera and is usually in the center of the frame, a departure from her more shadowy image from 2011 where she played with a mysterious…
Nagoya’s Noah already has teamed up with one American artist (Sela) for her first release of the year, and now for number two (which…is named TWO) she’s hooked up with Houston rapper/vaporwave producer Siddiq. Whereas her first 2013 release was a split, this finds the two musicians working together, Noah presumably providing the beats while…
I’ve gotten way too old for nights out. A couple years ago, the idea of going to a club and getting silly until the sun came out sounded like a thrilling prospect, a chance for who-knows-what to happen. Nowadays, I’d much rather get eight hours of sleep and wake up with enough time to cook…
