Not quite a homage to a certain ’80s jam, but the spirit of city pop flows through Caro Kissa’s newest song “Merry-Go-Round.” It’s a slower number, one where the words are allowed to hang out over the horn blurts and laid-back guitar playing. And it all builds towards that hook, which really plays up the melancholy lurking at the center of so many of this duo’s songs. Listen above.
After Japanese house maker (and chiptune enka genius) Soichi Terada started getting a bit more shine over the last few years, those near him also began to get more attention. Shinichiro Yokota, a long-time collaborator, benefited a lot, releasing his first album last year to a nice amount of attention. And he isn’t done yet….
Young hip-hop duo Chelmico have shared only three songs total thus far in their career, yet each one has been pretty strong. The third, “Oh, Baby!,” came out last night, and if it doesn’t touch the dizzy heights the pair hit on this summer’s “JuneJuly” that says more about the latter’s quality than anything else….
[youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJWoJ0yVwtc”] Tweegaze? Google tells me I’m not remotely the first person to come up with that Franken-genre…looks like The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart ushered it in…but originality be damned because that’s easily the best way to describe PLASTIC GIRL IN CLOSET’s “Tiny Tambourines.” The group wash the whole thing over with subtle feedback…
[youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4aXZ-NaSgk”] Dance music for ghosts, right here. AAPS find a nice little groove within the misty confines of “Invisible Sophisticated,” their latest song and video combo (watch above). For a split second it looks the mysterious project might embrace full-on, floor-filling music by ushering in a big stomach-punch beat and a piano line that wouldn’t…
American imprint Squiggle Dot just released three albums from a trio (or, maybe 2.5, as one is a split with another artist outside the country) of Japanese artists, each hitting on different pleasure centers. Boogie Idol’s Mall Pop Hits is a great place to lead off, the Tokyo producer’s crystalline synthesizers and BGM-ready beats intertwining…
It’s strange connecting dots after the fact. A few years back, D∀NGER D∀NGER was just an electro-pop outfit with one solid EP behind their syntax-shattering name. They inspired more Twitter conversations about punctuation than anything else, though that’s more the fault of writers than anything else. Three years later and Jay-Z is now JAY-Z, and…