[youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrjCQ1eyjxs”] Describing music as “sexy” can often be a critical gambit, the sort of adjective that can project the wrong message if deployed without caution. A lot of times, “sexy” turns into shorthand for “look how hot the members of this particular musical outfit are,” which isn’t how anyone should be writing about music –…
Impose Magazine let Erik Luebs…who records as Magical Mistakes, based in Japan…write about the blossoming Osaka electronic scene, and it is definitely a good read, so check that out first. It also comes with a new song from Magical Mistakes called “With Love,” and it at first sounds like typical goodness from the Shiga-based producer….
Rap duo Chelmico are back just in time for the summer, and to celebrate the start of the season they’ve shared the bouncy “Love Is Over.” This one finds the duo of MCs Rachel and Mamiko joining up with production team Mikeneko Homeless for a deceptively sparse number, one veering away from the sax-backed struts…
Duo Kamisama Club have a mini-album on the way via Purre Goohn, and “Sugarhead No Koibito” shows they are only getting trippier with their music. “Sugarhead” plays out like a distant cousin of “kawaii bass” fare, zipping ahead on a stuttering beat and featuring all sorts of loopy details in the mix — pitched-up voices,…
Nagoya’s House Of Tapes has recently been exploring the softer side of his sound, moving a bit away from the punishing four-on-the-floor beats and tar-pit synths marking his early works in favor of brighter sounds. “Twinkle Colors” marks one of his bigger shift into this neon-bright direction yet, if the title didn’t give it away…
The voices and artists LLLL pulls into their songs tend to be perfect fits for the sounds surrounding them. Smany makes sense to join the Tokyo producer on new song “Nebula” — she’s spent the decade creating spacious electronic songs wherein her voice adds necessary human tension. “Nebula” moves at a swifter pace and features…
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-pop outfit Fandaze have a new EP called Balloon Songs out on October 26, and here is a peek at what to expect. A quick, not particularly strong Google search indicates there are no other indie-pop songs to be named “Kinda Sad,” which is surprising since that (or, I guess, kinda happy) would be the…
1. Man, Especia better be breakout J-Pop stars in 2014 or I will be hyper sad. 2. LUVRAW is one half of LUVRAW & BTB, a goofy rap duo that coat their rhymes in copious amounts of talk box. They have, for me at least, always been too cheesy, the vocal manipulation coming off as…
I’m writing up this post on a day where the Internet…or at least major pockets of it…went wild over a couple of big pop-music releases that hit the web today. First was the video for Ciara’s “Body Party” (which we can’t even watch in Japan) and then a new single by Janelle Monáe. And even…
It took some time, but Nagoya’s House Of Tapes has been starting to push himself into more interesting sonic directions as of late. The project started out as a noisy thing taking conventional dance-music structures and seeing just how heavy he could make his take on floor-filling stuff. This meant a lot of four-on-the-floor beats…
日本でもネットレーベルが定着しつつありますね。今年の五月に創立したエレクトロ系レーベルのTrekkie Traxはご存知でしょうか？素晴らしいコンピをリリースしているので、是非お聴きあれ。八曲収録されたこのXYZというアルバムには日本中からアーティストが集められています。東京からはMiiiが参加していて、”Far Away (About Three Kilometers)”を提供しているのですが、これが非常に良い。Hudson-Mohawkeぽいシンセからモッシュが可能なダブステップまで広く影響を感じさせる曲は、単調になる事無く、聴く耳を離しません。XYZには他にもSeimei And Taimeiの”Drub The Floor” 、Carpainterの”Kick Back”とIsagenの”+o”がオススメです。ダウンロードはこちらから.
