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Check The Credits: Izumi Makuro’s “Tokyo Kinkou Rosenzu” (Produced By Sugar’s Campaign)
Look, I don’t want to take anything away from Izumi Makuro. She sounds just fine here, rapping in a relaxed way that sounds effortless and certainly isn’t as, shall we say, acquired as other pop-rap outfits in Japan. If anything, it is easily compared to Her Ghost Friend, except with a more hip-hop bend. It’s…
Dead Funny Records Prep New Compilation Album Featuring The Paellas, Fancy Books, Boyish And More
The label compilation serves as a great way to broadcast a mission statement for an imprint – here are the groups support, and this is who we are. Dead Funny Records have put out some excellent materials by the likes of Osaka’s The Paella’s, Saitama’s Fancy Books and Tokyo’s Jappers, but with their first official…
Intrigue Galore: Tonight? : “hby beer beer”
Honestly, I’m still not sure how this grabbed my attention. Was it the name of the band and song, neither of which really make any sense? Was it their minimalist Bandcamp, featuring just this one song and with a header that’s nothing more than an e-mail address? The track at the center of all this,…
Purrrrrrrfect Stuff: PARKGOLF’s Cat Walk
This last year has seen a handful of electronic-heavy acts, outfits unafraid to mess around with vocals and tempo to create something that a few have labelled “future pop” because of how left-field it sounds for something capable of topping charts. English acts like AlunaGeorge and Disclosure, Scotland’s Chvrches and Canada’s Purity Ring have been…
If They Are To Bloom: A Canata Records Compilation Featuring Atlanta Girl, Little Ripple, Lake Michigan And More
On the surface level, Canata Records seems like a pretty rigid netlabel sonically. “We believe that freedom is pop,” goes one of the slogans on their Bandcamp page, and a cursory look at the artist names, album and song titles indicate the label deals mostly in twee. Yet what has made them one of the…
Track Premier: mus.hiba Remixes spazzkid “Kokeshi Doll”
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…
New Cuushe Music Video: “Do You Know The Way To Sleep”
Flau’s Cuushe has a new video for her song “Do You Know The Way To Sleep” off of this year’s Girl You Know That I Am Here But The Dream, and it matches up well with the slow-motion feel of the song. The clip slows down found footage of ballerinas to emphasize the beauty and weirdness (that neck on the one dancer jutting out) of their movements. Watch above.
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New Dubb Parade: Sigh
Always nice to see two familiar names join together. Producer Dubb Parade has long been one of the most consistent producers juggling juke, house and techno in Japan in recent years, while netlabel Omoide Label has been a pretty reliable place for underground dance music. They team up for Sigh, a three track set starting…
New Stuck In Summer: “Wasting Time”
Looks like the person behind the Stuck In Summer project isn’t just locked in to one season – new song “Wasting Time” focuses on the foolishness of unrequited love, as Stuck In Summer sings “but i should not go back to your side/all things I’m holding are lies,” not to mention the title (only time…
Comfort Time: Hasegawa-4200’s One Hour A Day EP
This marks the second release in the span of the month out of Japan that builds around samples from Pac-Man. One more and we got us a trend! Omoide Label tends to release music that is pure comfort for me personally, the type of stuff that goes down like convenience store desserts after a long…
Newish Territory: MCpero’s Kaitei Picnic EP
This isn’t a new revelation, but one worth restating — I tend to avoid writing about Japanese rap music for several reasons (the key one being I just don’t know enough about it to sound remotely smart). This year, though, I’ve reached a dilemma — I’ve written about a lot of artists who rap, but…
Osamu Ansai Remiexs OGRE YOU ASSHOLE: “Sweet Nothings”
It has, admittedly, been a while since I’ve listened to OGRE YOU ASSHOLE. At some point, probably within the first two years I came to Japan, I thought they were a spectacular band, a group who had studied up on Built To Spill and Modest Mouse (the latter giving them their name) and gathered the…
New Secret Space Featuring Chao Fujimoto: “Last New World”
Sitting in my “drafts” column for…what…the past month now has been a post about Chao Fujimoto, probably the most interesting Japanese artist I’ve stumbled across this fall. She’s a 19-year-old woman who makes something between poemcore (the semi-genre where people speak over music) and deep-dream pop, as she uses synthesizers and samples to create her…