Time for MAP, this month featuring the dreamy sounds of Einsteins. Listen to it…and much more…below. Click the play button icon to listen to individual songs, right-click on the song title to download an mp3, or grab a zip file of the full 20-track compilation through Dropbox here. JAPAN: Make Believe Melodies Einsteins – Hypnotism…
The Draping series, which finds three of the most influential juke makers in Japan offering up new tracks every month, continues on in December with the fifth installment. What makes this time stand out is an emphasis on simplicity and seeing just how far it can be stretched out. CRZKNY leads the way with his…
The environment duo Lo-shi conjure up on their new album Moro-Q isn’t quite desolate, but the French-born pair’s music certainly captures a place that is empty and somewhat unnerving. That’s established right away, on foggy opener “Daniel Auteuil,” featuring warped voices shrouded by an electronic hiss, new elements emerging out gradually and adding to the…
Mark this down – first new Madegg track of 2012. The prolific and prodigious producer rolls into the new year with not just one new song, but a cassette release on Daytripper records. “Glance” makes up half of the Sea tape, the song continuing the Kyoto artist’s fascination with jazz and pianos that started sometime…
Kyoto’s Toxxies get a touch slower on newest song “Satellite,” a drifting number highlighting the duo at a different tempo than usual. Similar to their hometown’s Emerald Four, “Satellite” floats along and isn’t afraid to let some space surround the song, with the verses featuring the slightest synth and beat, which allows the digi-dusted vocals…
I’ve been seeing this band a lot of places recently…primarily, on MySpace banner ads and the covers of magazines. Dismissing Kinocohotel based on their fashion wouldn’t be a radical decision, seeing as this four-piece dresses up as sexy hotel workers employed at a Sgt. Pepper’s themed resort. But there newest single “もえつきたいの” actually allows one…
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.
Seiho loves R&B…catch him live, or just listen to any of the tracks he’s released in the past year and that becomes clear pretty fast. This is him putting that interest right into the spotlight. His remix of Janet Jackson’s “Someone To Call My Lover” easily could have been another Seiho track utilizing a vocal…
One of my grand theories…the sort you start scribbling notes on in Tumblr before being like “nah, gotta develop this a bit more” before hitting the big ol’ “X” in the corner…is that Yasutaka Nakata is secretly one of the major influences of contemporary EDM. One day, I’ll actually write that, but for now we…
Time for the Music Alliance Pact! This month’s MAP features Hideo Nakasako’s fantastic “Groove Me.” Listen to it…and a lot more great music…below. Click the play button icon to listen to individual songs, right-click on the song title to download an mp3, or grab a zip file of the full 26-track compilation through Ge.tt here….
東京のデュオ、LLLLの新しいビデオ”Because Of My Eyes”は、まるで週末に夜遊びしているかのような光景。眩しいライトやビデオエフェクトは酔っぱらっているような気持ちにさせてくれます。全て白黒で撮影されていているこの作品では、街を散歩したりクラブで踊ったり、気づけば女性がこちらを眺めていたり。J-Popからの影響が強いものの、LLLLらしい少しダークな雰囲気で日本のパーティーライフを体験できます。ビデオは上から。
Suburbia had its moment a few years ago, at least when you look back at the shape of the North American rock scene (limiting, but it was still a thing). Exclamation-pointed by Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs, this interest in the communities outside major cities was also propelled by acts like Real Estate, Ducktails and Titus…
This year, Tokyo’s Moscow Club have been balancing precariously between electronic goodness and cheesy gloop. They haven’t abandoned the indie-pop sound that grabbed some attention last year – see the lovely “Radio Vietnam” – but their 2012 output has relied heavily on synths and keyboards, the band conjuring up a spacey, 80’s new wave vibe…
