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99Letters Has Two New EPs: Rosetta And Turbo Drum
Video game noises are no longer just a novelty, a cheap sonic trick used to evoke a decade long gone. Despite several hard drives worth of shitty chiptune music floating across the Internet in 2013, the last few years has seen 8-bit bloops legitimized, to some degree. Crystal Castles cop moves from the Silent Hill…
Rollin’ On: Dubb Parade’s Cold Tone
Producer Dubb Parade was, just one month ago, a lot sunnier. He billed his Your Emotion collection as “chillwave” and, even if it wasn’t totally locked to that Internet-genre, it carried a hazy, disco-influenced vibe that sounded more suitable for a blissed-out (remember that one?) summer spent indoors. Whether intentionally pushing himself to release music…
New Kyary Pamyu Pamyu: “Mottai Night Land”
So this is music blog, and I rarely spend too much time talking about music videos because I prefer for Make Believe Melodies to focus on the sounds themselves. I’m positive I’ve broken this self-imposed rule before…but I won’t do it here, for the new Kyary Pamyu Pamyu single “Mottai Night Land” for two reasons:…
Sound Of The City: YYSHIDD
シティ・ポップスは、日本経済がピークを迎えたバブルの頃に盛り上がったジャンルですが、数年前から復活の兆しを見せています。ジャパンタイムズでこの流行について取り上げられています。Things That Fadeをリリースしたデュオ、Greeen Linezを中心として書かれてるのですが、彼等の音はまるで銀座のホテルでくつろいでいるような気分にさせてくれます。最近注目している他のシティ・ポップスアーティストといえば海老名のYYSHIDDです。SoundCloudのプロフィールには、“Japanese composer/student” (日本の作曲家/学生)と紹介されています。彼の“Naomi’s Love Affair”という曲では、シティ・ポップスの醍醐味が全て取り入れられています。シンセやベース、そしてトロピカルな雰囲気を持つパーカッションが、仕事の後のリラックスタイムのような空気感を表現しています。夏の暑さを和らげてくれるようなスムーズなボーカルも印象的です。 だからといってYYSHIDDはシティ・ポップスに留まろうとしている訳ではありません。Greeen Linezのように、他のジャンルからの影響も積極的に取り入れられています。例えば、“Potato”では涼しく心地良い楽曲の上にラップがサンプルされています。視聴は以下から。
New Talking City 1994: “Love Won’t Let Me Wait”
Talking City 1994 is one of the Japanese bands having a really good 2013. After being quiet for more than two quarters of 2012, the Osaka band has come back strong, releasing a strong three-song EP and several great stand-alone tracks. They’ve come along way since when they first popped up, developing a more polished…
Upbeat!: Seagull Travel’s “Kill Me My Girl”
Sometimes, when dealing with song titles written in Japanese, I sorta ignore what the track is actually called and just give it a play while working on other things (read: updating Tumblr, looking at sports .GIFs). Seagull Travel’s, the project of Kanagawa’s Ryuichi Nakamura, sounded like a lovely bit of upbeat electro-pop when I first…
New Elen Never Sleeps: “Slow (Neu)”
“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.
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New Tofubeats: “I Believe In You”
Maltine Records turns 10 this year, and they’ve already celebrated with a big (and super fun) party at Tokyo’s Unit venue earlier this month. Today sees the next step in reveling with the release of the Maltine Book, a publication devoted to the pioneering netlabel (full disclosure: I was asked to contribute a piece for…
YULO: “Yes”
Plenty of bands all over Japan try to mimic the Brit-rock sound that dominated the entirety of the Oughts and still sorta do. It’s a very vague style, probably best summed up as “trying to sound like that first Bloc Party album” featuring mainly guitars, though a few brave souls dragged synths into the mix…
New House Plan To Start Recording New Album Soon, Share “Small World”
Peace be on Google Translate. Thanks to it, I learned that Tokyo-based outfit New House plan on hitting the studio soon to record a new album. Considering how long we’ve been salivating over a couple of demo tracks the band released last year, this ends up being some stellar news. The actual release probably will…
New Acidclank: Apache Sound
Shoegaze endears in the Japanese music community. Walk around certain music-leaning neighborhoods in the capital and the odds of bumping into someone who spends their Thursdays after work getting lost in distortion is pretty high. The downside to this is a lot of groups who listen to Nowhere on a weekly basis making songs that…
New Chai: “Choose Go!”
Chai hasn’t sounded as direct at any point as they do on “Choose Go!” Not all of their songs delve into metaphor and clever fake outs, but more than most do, whether poking at the concept of “kawaii” in modern Japan or simply turning a love song into an ode about dumplings. “Choose Go!” though…
Controlled Karaoke: Super Gaijdlsjgfhdlgdjflsdfjhjvkl
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ki658-gBB1k&hl=en_US&fs=1&] I’m not going to touch the humor aspect of this video. I believe comedy should be held up to the same scrutiny other arts are subjected to…we’ve got to weed out the Dane Cook’s of the world before they grab leading roles. Still, the moment you criticize a “gag,” seas of people emerge to…
