Fukuoka’s C.I.T.Y. has made relatively chilled-out songs for a little bit now, and the project’s latest is an especially breezy hopper. “Secret Touch” bounces along, built for early evenings, and is blessed with a great vocal, presumably from Chap:pee. Always good to keep one ear focused on Western Japan, and here is another outfit to mind. Listen above.
Wasabi Tapes have been at the forefront of Japanese artists exploring and embracing the wonder of sound, from the high-definition collage blitz of DJWWWW and Toiret Status to the hypnotic affects of pachinko. Their latest offering comes from a project called Nikkei — aiming for my journalistic side — and finds them more directly approaching…
東京のプロデューサーTaquwamiは様々な挑戦をしてきました。激しい曲や繊細な曲、サンプル重視の曲や貝殻を耳に当てているような幻想的な曲、Occult Youの活動を除いても、彼の手がけた楽曲は大変バラエティーに富んでいます。新曲”All My Life”ではそんなTaquwamiの得意なサンプリングやエレクトロ・サウンドが輝きつつも、新たな挑戦も随所にちりばめられています。今年リリースされたBlurrywonder EPはR&BをTaquwami流のシンセの渦に巻き込んだようなサウンドだったのですが、今回の”All My Life”はより正統派なR&Bに。曲の前半を埋め尽くしているミニマルなビートはまるでUsherの”Climax”のよう。空気感に影響されてなのか、ボーカルサンプルはいつもよりもつぶやきがちで暗い印象に聴こえてきます。後半ではいつものスタイルが展開されていくのですが、”All My Life”はTaquwamiの新たな一面を確かに確認できる曲になっています。試聴はこちらから。
That collective attention spans have been drastically reduced thanks to social media is probably a net negative for society as a whole, but one small perk of this shift in how information comes and goes seems to be that musicians have to act a lot faster than before in putting music out. Pasocom Music Club…
Children singing is, in and of itself, isn’t a scary occurrence. It can actually be cute or touching or, in the case of The Langley Schools Project, sorta beautiful. Yet Idiot Pop has a knack for turning happy noises into something creepy, as evidenced on last year’s Requiem For A Dream-featuring video for the Euro…
Plenty of producers make some slight changes to familiar songs, failing to offer new perspective on the number. Pavilion Xool offers the opposite on Stick Around. Take “Glass Streeeeet,” which builds around a sample of Mint Condition’s “Breakin’ My Heart (Pretty Brown Eyes).” It isn’t straightforward, but rather the Tokyo producer plays around with the…
The group QQIQ always have worked in somewhat secretive ways. Sure, they posted all of their songs to YouTube, so it wasn’t that mysterious, but they rarely shared any pictures of themselves, and the only way to get their albums was to follow a special online ordering process. And the music could carry that same…