Slowは元々MOSCOW CLUBのC８６コンピレーションに収録されていた楽曲でしたが＜＞今回の再編集を経て（なのでタイトルに新しいを表すNUEとついています）オリジナルよりもクリアーになっています。氷山を彷彿とさせる様な壮大な冷たい空気感のギターとドラムスは彼の歌う歌詞”but you slow down/slow down/slow down,” と重なってゆっくりと流れていきます。オリジナルバージョンも良曲でしたがこのバージョンによってさらに洗練されたと言えると思います。
Well, turns out this is a real indie-popping weekend after all: Osaka’s Post Modern Team, behind some of the absolute finest songs in Japan’s current indie-pop boom, have just released their self-titled debut album. Post Modern Team mostly collects all of the group’s previously released numbers – which means this comes loaded with “Never Let…
It’s a nice occurrence that Tokyo producer Taquwami’s mix for the website SSENSE, featuring a new song called “Hate Winter,” dropped during a weekend that featured Spring-like temperatures in Japan’s capital. “Hate Winter” closes out his almost-40-minute mix and is a lovely comedown, a slowly unfolding track full of layered vocal samples and some nice…
Between the woozy pop of Fancy Books and the dusk-shrouded rock of The Paellas, Tokyo’s Dead Funny Records had a pretty strong 2012. Add Jappers to that diverse-sounding list – this outfit’s Lately EP plays around with a more classic rock/pop sound, the tracks within sounding more clear than either the seasick Fancy Books or…
Might want to give this one some time – producer Pa’s Lam System’s new album Virus Window went up on the Maltine Records’ site a little while ago, and everything seems to have crashed thanks to demand for it. I can’t even download it at the moment! But we do this album features his club-thumping…
Soft As Snow But Warm Inside continues to avoid falling for the predictable trap laid out in their name – on new EP Asymmetry, they continue to not sound anything like My Bloody Valentine. Unless you count the fact the duo keep their vocals relatively low in the mix (and even that is a stretch),…
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…
“Slow” originally appeared on Moscow Club’s C86 compilation back in the spring, but has now been touched up a bit (hence the “Neu” in the title) and sounds a lot crisper than Elen Never Sleeps’ original version. Well, it sounds as crisp as something so hazy can sound – the song title is almost an understatement, because “Slow” practically crawls, the guitars and drums sounding glacial. It’s all intentional, though, a decision meant to match up with Elen Never Sleeps repeated cries of “but you slow down/slow down/slow down,” delivered in a dejected-but-pretty voice that this project has gotten so good at utilizing. The original version was good, but this slightly fleshed-out version shows what can happen when an artist spends time perfecting their creations. Listen below.
Listening to fidgety electro-pop duo Kamisama Club’s latest number, something in the back of my head kept telling me “doesn’t this sound vaguely familiar?” Not of anything specific, but the atmosphere of “N°5” reminded me of…something. But the more I listen, the more I’m thinking it was bossa-nova-guided neo-Shibuya-kei in the vein of EeL (OK,…
Look, I’m not going to pretend blogging about music at a deeply weird moment like this is worthwhile, and right now I don’t think music can be much more than pure escapism. But both acts — writing and listening — offers some very slight calm in the face of vast uncertainty (or, like, at least…
Erectricmole aren’t just writing songs, they’re creating entire worlds. Houka No Hirune, the young group’s recent debut for the fledgling Flawless World imprint, takes the idea of electro-pop being loud techno-leaning feet movers and inverts it, turning the synths inward to create intimate sonic worlds. Erectricmole give their creations plenty of color and life, beats…
Ignore one of the worst cover images I’ve seen all year — no easy accomplishment, given the terrors of Bandcamp’s “Japan” tag — and focus on the music within AR30: Autumn Compilation, which is much much better. The electronic collective’s second comp of 2016 highlights their creative approach to beatmaking, which oftentimes runs well beyond…
Turns out when another producer joins Foodman to make a song, the results are somehow more trippy than what he does on his own. For “Wan Wan Wan Wan,” he’s joined by Taiwan producer Meuko Meuko, and the pair create a woozy rumbler of a track, one that feels tipsy enough to pass out on…
Long-running indie-pop singer Hideki Kaji has a new album out this August, and here’s the first song from it, the breezy, horn-guided “Tropical Girl.” More on this album later…but one can always count on Kaji to deliver a consistently good collection of sunny-day indie-pop. Watch the video where he…does stuff in a hotel room and…