“Restraint”(制御)という単語をDe De Mouseと結びつける事などないと思っていました。彼の音楽は通常、ボーカルを切り刻み、その切れ端をスピード感のあるビートの上に乗せるようなスタイル。任天堂DSの音楽ゲームだったら最大級の難易度ですね。ドラムンベースの影響が薄い曲に限っての話ですが。新作Sky Was Darkからの曲、”Floats And Falls”は何と9分もあるのですが、今回はただ速いだけではありません。逆にスローなこの曲では、シンセが上手く曲を展開させて行きます。ボーカルのみにスピード感があります…というよりは、跳ねるようなスタイルがそう聴こえさせるのかもしれませんが。
“Floats And Falls”は5分が経過したその時点で既に完成された曲なのですが、それだけで終わらないのが今回の注目点。曲は不意に展開し、ビートが消えてボーカルとシンセのみのパートになります。その後も次々に新しい音色が加えられ、曲を終わりへと導きます。長くも飽きのこない、優れた工夫が施された作品だと感じます。De De Mouseの曲の中でもダントツで平和な、広々とした空気感を放っていて、彼の新しいスタイルを象徴した、新しい始まりを感じさせる曲になっています。ビデオは以下に。
Maltine Records has released a lot of music during their existence – a few gems were bound to slip by. One really fantastic song I failed to write about, from earlier this year, was Pa’s Lam System’s “b00mb0x,” an absolutely thumping number that’s one of Japan’s best pure floor-fillers in 2013. Now here comes the…
Might as well end a banner year with a bang, right? Tanukineiri and House Of Tapes both had strong years – and they’ve basically been tied together in 2013, House Of Tapes being one of two obvious candidates as the label’s major musical representative (the other is May.e). So, for the Nagoya producers third album,…
Lots and lots to love today…so lets dive into all of it. Way better than chocolate, yeah? The biggest news of the day comes courtesy of Flau, who’ve released the follow up to mysterious outfit Neon Cloud’s stunning debut Knit. Scar finds the group…and it is becoming more and more clear Cuushe is involved somehow…
Lot to report out of the Kansai electronic music scene this week, starting with Kyoto producer Madegg’s newly released Alone Breath To My Family EP. It’s a collection of his wonkiest productions to date – late cut “Moviesound,” in particular, is among the most off-the-wall song he’s ever put together – yet still defined by…
The overlap between Internet-centric producers and idol pop continues shrinking. Maltine Girls’ Wave was the year’s biggest breakthrough, but it won’t be an isolated case. Sakura Yura is a rising idol…not a nobody but a far cry from, say, Tokyo Girls’ Style…and she’s teamed up with two producers repping two different netlabels. The first is…
Probably should do a “stuff we missed post” in the near future, because Osaka producer Metome deserves a little more shine. He’s released one of the year’s better electronic album, OPUS Cloud, and is just all around doing a lot of good work as of late. Here’s the latest song he’s made worth gushing about,…
“Restraint” isn’t a word I’d normally associate with producer De De Mouse. His music usually dices vocal snippets into half-second squeaks, and then he rearranges them into speedy patterns that at times sound like something you find on the hardest difficulty of a Nintendo DS rhythm game…and those are the tracks lacking drum ‘n’ bass influences. “Floats And Falls,” from De De Mouse’s new album Sky Was Dark, clocks in at nine minutes and he doesn’t spend all those seconds creating sonic whiplash. Rather, the majority of “Floats And Falls” is a slow build up, the beat moving at a slower pace for a De De Mouse song as the synths surrounding it go through subtle changes. The singing remains the only really fast element of the song, but over everything else even it sounds more like a bounce.
The first half of “Floats And Falls” passes and it sounds like all that build up is about to pay off. Then, right before the five-minute point, the beat drops out and all that’s left is those vocal samples and some synth. The song goes into an even longer movement seemingly moving towards something, De De Mouse adding new sounds as the track progresses. At times it can drag, but he adds enough small details to make this fake-out worth an attentive listen. This is the most ethereal song he’s ever composed, and shows he can turn his rapid-fire style into something spacious with only a few alterations. Watch the video below.
Tokyo-based electronic producer Erik Luebs kicked in the new year with a dizzying two-song set built for the dancefloor. Cycle 1 | January finds Luebs laying down something quicker paced than other recent tracks from him, which in 2017 tended to be a bit more shadowy and cerebral. Yet something like “Pressed” just zips ahead,…
The 100% Silk label…a relative of American imprint Not Not Fun… are set to start touring around Japan soon, as this handy YouTube video lays out. To celebrate, they’ve released a special 100% Silk CD, featuring some remix work from Sapphire Slows (who is signed to Not Not Fun). She takes on the song “Found…
“Scary” isn’t the right word, these moments are far more unnerving than anything else. N. Brennan…like the Wasabi Tapes before them (and potentially the same people, who knows)…smashes what is either movie or video game dialogue with snippets of music — at one point the intro to a Burial song sneaks in — to create…
While still quite young, Local Visions has stood out among Japan-based labels in 2018 thanks to one of my personal favorite mish-mashes of recent times. They dabble in the same sound and (sigh) aesthetic of internet niche genres such as vaporwave or future funk, but owing to the fact the bulk of artists thus far…
Yunomi’s colorful blasts of dance music rarely leave space for detail, but “Fashion” excels at the small stuff. It works well as a Technicolor rollercoaster ride too, with guest vocalist Rinahamu (from Yunomi-produced outfit CY8ER providing higher-pitched vocals) guiding the song from dramatic verses to ragin-out drops. But that’s also familiar — Yunomi has proven…
Every element of Sea Level’s “Race Against the Drum Machine” feels stitched together into a really jarring patchwork. The group, split between Fukuoka and Tokyo, recently put out their debut full-length on Call And Response (get that here), and this advance peek stands as one of the more wobbly — and fun in its unsteadiness…