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。
It sometimes feels stupid to describe a song as being “perfect for Summer” (or any specific time), like it’s a cop out in regards to poking deeper into a piece of music. Even when the artist advertises it as so! Yet here I am, confronted with Osamu Ansai’s “Woman,” a Maltine-backed track, that really begs…
To some extent, Shibuya-based music maker Metoronori’s Mawari reminds me of fellow Japanese artist i-fls. Both are painfully DIY, recording simple electronic tracks on their own, both artists defined by chintzy keyboard and synth sounds. Their music also evokes youth gone by, mostly via the simplistic sound they lean on. Yet one thing separates the…
This just slithers, all icy synths and vocals. Miu Mau are a new-wave trio, and on “Monochrome” they have created a prickly number that’s both catchy and a touch mysterious. It is a relatively sparse song – some leading guitar and synth bouncing, which gives way to just drum and woozy synth notes. This backdrop…
Sorta surprising that Tokyo producer mus.hiba ended up being one of the dudes from this metropolis to score a surprising amount of international collabs. It isn’t that his music is all that weird, just that it makes use of a technology you more or less never see pop up in Western songs – Vocaloid, specifically…
A few days after gushing about their new album, here comes Boyish with a new song. “Sadness And Arcade” is them at their most, errr, boyish…bright, peppy melody tempered by those muffled vocals. Nothing sea changing, but good nonetheless. Listen below.
Why release an album in December???? Don’t you know it won’t appear on year-end lists???? Nobody who is anybody would release an album at the end of the year, right???? Oh. Two great Japan-based artists released new albums this past week, and the only real loser is me, as neither of these could sneak onto…
“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.
Simplicity has always been central to what makes Have A Nice Day! standout from the pack. They find an emotion, grab some guitars and floor-ready electronics and just burrow into it until they get to the gooey core. “Smells Like Teenage Riot” is a celebration of youth and making the most of those limited years,…
Preconceptions can be a drag. Producer Tomodati has spent most of the year making frantic, at times unhinged electro-pop, so you’d figure something titled EP 2016 would follow suit. But nope — the three song set jumps from sweetly sung robo ballads about love (the charming “We Are Not Cinderella,” which flashes a few instances…
I’ve been trying to find decent Japanese hip hop for a long-ass time now, but it’s no easy task despite the genre sorta sitting out in the open. The mainstream music establishment doesn’t embrace hip hop as much as they try to appropriate, giving artists songs with some light rhyming or maybe throw a turntable…
A lot of words get mushed together on Hoshina Anniversary’s new track “Everybody Plays The Music.” Yet it’s the titular phrase that manages to escape unscathed and take center spotlight, emerging from the throbbing electronics to serve as the song’s (intelligible) chorus. The rest of “Everybody Plays The Music” features sliced-up vocals (or French???) that…
Lord, I can feel the sweat on this song’s back. Seiho has been exploring this terrain for quite some time – locking disparate sounds together in such a way that they sound natural for one another – but on “Taboo” he’s hit on something particularly steamy…like, how muggy a jungle can get. Maybe it stems…
Osaka’s Metome has mostly drawn attention for his more woozy moments — as highlighted on the still-excellent Objet, he’s a pro at getting disparate elements together and letting them bounce off one another just right. Yet he’s long shown a side willing to stray from the tight bass slaps and half-second vocal burps, and latest…