New group Lucky Tapes – fronted by Kai Takahashi – have their debut EP out now, and here’s another taste of the laid-back group’s sound. “In Paris” is an especially Sunday-morning-in-bed-ready song, a slow groover of a number that adds sweet vocal dollops behind Takahashi’s love talk. Listen below.
When producer 99 Letters first caught our attention all the way back in 2009 (!), the music he was making aggressive chiptune music, a series of bleeps and bloops rendered a bit more crushing. He stuck at this for a while — and was very good at it — but he’s taken a step in…
Kenji Ayabe is the lead singer of the band U&DESIGN, who have been kicking around for a bit, and now he’s setting off on his own. He’s releasing his first solo album on December 17, and he’s shared the song “The 1st Corner” from his forthcoming full-length. It’s a breezy number, accented by slightly clanging…
Denial surrounds and unnerves. The first album from the Tokyo-based project of Cemetery…the solo outing of Batman Winks’ member Kota Watanabe…loads up on spoken-word samples in all sorts of tongues and layers on the thick synthesizer lines to create a collection following somewhere between Jesse Ruins and a puddle of wet cement. Sometimes, a clear…
[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…
A quick history lesson: their once existed a stellar Japanese rock band called (awesomely) Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her. They made some great music and, real talk, were one of the first Japanese bands to really hit me and thus were integral in you reading this sentence right now. That group broke up a…
This year has found Snail’s House pushing his sound in all sorts of directions, for better or for worse. The ever-prolific creator joined other electronic producers in Japan (or those abroad playing with Japanese imagery) in shying away from what has been described as a “kawaii” sound, best summed up as a busy overload of…