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。
東京のElen Never Sleepsは、４枚目となる”Silver EP”からいくつか曲をプレビューとして発表してましたね。ついにこの７曲組が無料ダウンロードか限定版カセットとして入手可能になりましたよ。“Silver”や(特に)“Shine On Me”など、素晴らしいトラックと共に、Taquwamiによるリミックスなんかも収録されています。日曜日にElenから嬉しいプレゼントが届きましたね。 別のニュースになりますが、Wild Nothingがこの春に来日するそうです。もしElen Never Sleepsをオープニング・アクトにしようと考えている人がいないなら…これから何を信じていけばいいやら。
Here’s a nice bit of international cooperation. Japanese producer Canoooopy has teamed up with South Korean music maker Sima Kim for the moody “Tragicomical Sandstorm.” The track starts out subdued enough – just some finger-snapping percussion, some barely there voices and wisps of synths going by. Yet what seems like a just-drifting-by work suddenly blooms…
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…
We’ve reached the point where idol music – usually an area reserved for AKB48 and Momoiro Clover z – has become really sonically smart. Not always at the top (though sometimes for sure!) but the lower rungs of idol-dom have resulted in some really interesting music. One reason – a lot of young producers are…
Nagoya’s Figure pretty much exists outside of any current Japanese music scene going today. His music easily could be classified as DIY indie-pop, but dude’s work is both too dark and too gravely to match up with the rest of Japan’s sunny twee charms. Figure also isn’t particularly arty or wild, discounting him from the…
This isn’t the first time Osaka’s spacey Seiho has produced a track for a hip-hop artist…he also worked with insufferable rap unit LUVRAW & BTB on a track that is best forgotten to time. The end result is a lot better when he teams up with rapper Klooz for “Find You.” Seiho is way less…
“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.
CLAT is a part and collective based out of Tokyo, focusing mainly on techno and dance music, but also making a bit of space for more laid-back, sophisticated pop sounds. The latter is how I stumbled across the recently released When I Was Holden Gaulfield EP, a sampler of sorts of the crew, as Half…
Indie-popster Hideki Kaji will release a new full-length, Strawberries and Cream, October 21. I love this guy’s work (though at glance at his discography reveals I have a lot more albums to hunt down) and this LP has jumped near the top of my “most excited” list. Watch Kaji’s extremely cute video starring a pineapple…
サカナクションは１月２３日発売のニューシングル、”ミュージック”にて、彼らの原点を少し振り返っています。ボーカリスト山口一郎のバースでの声の伸ばし方はまるでシングル”エンドレス”のようで、曲の後半で感情がぐっと込み上げてくる感じは”モノクロトウキョー”の世界観。でもアイディアが尽きたとかそういう意味ではなく、彼らが本来持っていたコアな部分を大事にしつつ、新しい事にチャレンジしています。構成も美しく、最初は山口のボーカルをセンターに配置した寂しい雰囲気で始まり、徐々にバンドがスペースを埋め、コーラスで感情は頂点に。度々言いますが、サカナクションが日本のメインストリームで飛躍していく姿を観れて本当に光栄です。試聴はこちらから。
EDM gets tagged as this big decadent, corporate thing, but it can be assembled relatively easily, which was part of the charm early on in that industry’s rise. Pelican reminds of how something most likely made in a bedroom can still carry the same energy. “Furomu Japan” (“From Japan”) is pure energy, starting with some…
Not much to go off of, I know, but when an always-on-the-fray musician like DODDODO releases even 40 seconds of new music I’m going to write about those 40 seconds. Jet Set Records recently posted four short clips of tracks from her recently released album ど, and as expected they sound a little strange. Biggest…
Lolica Tonica contributed one of the highlights on the latest Fogpak compilation, and they aren’t slowing down. Lolica Tonica have a new EP prepped for Trekkie Trax in September, and that netlabel has gone ahead and shared the title track to it, “Make Me Feel.” This sort of giddy, vocals-sliced-like-onions sound has become pretty common…