CUZ ME PAINは最近、あまりリリースをせず、ライブやレコーディングに力を入れている感じがします。それともニコラス・ケイジ出演の映画を勉強したりしてるのかな。CUZ ME PAINのプロジェクトMasculinの新曲、”Manhattan Suicide”は、ニコラス・ケイジ主演のデビッド・リンチ映画、ワイルド・アット・ハートの台詞から始まります。２分間シンプルに淡々と流れるグルーブは、リンチ・テイストが他の曲よりは抑えめかも。ワイルド・アット・ハートからの物かは確かじゃないですが、他の台詞とピアノの流れるようなフレーズがリピートされています。そのようなサウンドが楽しい雰囲気を出していて、ツイン・ピークス的か、と言えばそうではないのですが、このような遊び心のあるリリースを聴く事で、CUZ ME PAINから更なるリリースを期待してしまいます。
Late on J-Pop superstar Ayumi Hamasaki’s new album, a weird little remix of her song “Melody” pops up. It’s the sort of rework one doesn’t typically find on CDs, a fidgety track unafraid to distort Hamasaki’s voice and let its beat burst out in all sorts of directions. It could be safely called “post-dubstep,” and…
Do you feel that, hanging in the air? As chilly autumn winds start blowing in, so does the specter of year-end lists. Tofubeat’s first full-length album Lost Decade is a lock to land somewhere on Make Believe Melodies’ top albums list, and if you haven’t bought a copy yet, get on that. Maltine Records, who…
Another day, another electronic music comp combining familiar faces with new ones, so let’s just run through this quick, yeah? The old: mus.hiba and his Vocaloid partner in art Sekka Yufu contribute “Hitori,” another slow-moving stunner in a song catalog that’s starting to overflow with great work. It’s one of his most glacial numbers yet,…
boy from HOTEL MEXICO on Vimeo. Hotel Mexico’s new album Her Decorated Post Love dropped yesterday, and definitely worth your time. The Kyoto group also released a video for that album’s lead-off track, “boy,” yesterday, which you can watch above. This song bares a slight resemblance to Hotel Mexico’s older “Starling, Tiger, Fox,” what with…
For Tracy Hydeについて初めて知ったのは、BOYISHと共にスプリットEPを出した時。その軽快なギター・ポップは、もし今が８０年代ならば、Sarah Recordsが大きく取り上げていた事でしょう。For Tracy Hydeの今までの作品は、他の日本インディーポップアーティストと似た音楽性を持ちつつも、日本語で歌う事で、WallflowerともBOYISHとも異なる響きを鳴らしていました。彼等のデビューEP、”Juniper And Lamplight“は、”A Clockwork Lemon”で聴けるような、陽気で明るい雰囲気に満ちています。”First Regrets”ではシューゲイザーからの影響も。 今回の作品では更に他と差をつけるべく、インディー・ポップらしかぬ曲も。”Shady Lane Sherbert”なんかでは大胆不敵にもギターが取り除かれていて、代わりにシンセが鳴り響いています。チルウェイブの影響を取り入れ、上手く再構築されています。ふわふわしたボーカルとゆったりとしたテンポから繰り出される独特な空気感は、”Juniper And Lamplight”以外からは聴けないでしょう。最後の曲、”₀oOℑ ∪╹ω╹∪ℜ (Delikate Dawgz)”では、うねる電子音の上にボーカル・サンプルが浮いているかのごとく配置されていて、更に衝撃的。奇妙なエンディングですが、For Tracy Hydeが次にどんな挑戦をするのか、とても興味をそそられます。ダウンロードはこちらから、視聴は以下から。 Juniper And Lamplight by For Tracy Hyde
I do not profess to being a guy who knows much about Japanese hip-hop. I have about as basic an understanding of the scene one can get, but that’s it – I don’t know the intricacies or the regional differences or even, like, the fashions (I think Yankees’ caps are popular?). What I do know,…
CUZ ME PAIN has been a little quiet as of late, the Tokyo imprint not putting out all that much new material lately. They’ve either been focused on playing live shows and recording new material…..or they’ve been brushing up on Nicolas Cage movies. CUZ ME PAIN project Masculin’s new track “Manhattan Suicide” opens with a snippet of dialogue from David Lynch’s Wild At Heart, but unlike most songs that get described as “Lynchian,” this one isn’t all that unsettling. Instead, it just grooves on for just over two minutes. It features another vocal sample that skips a little bit (don’t know if it’s also from Wild At Heart) and a piano line swoops in every once in awhile, but none of it sounds Twin Peaks worthy. A nice little track that hopefully means more CUZ ME PAIN tunes on the horizon.
Today’s theme — things that aren’t technically “new,” but still very worth your time. Kyoto’s Mariana In Our Heads uploaded “Flash Shot” online about a month ago, though I think the song’s slow-motion feel suits the beginning of autumn better than the depths of August. “Flash Shot” finds the band, last seen making straight-up indie-pop,…
Usually when I see “new HNC,” I go in expecting a twee-tastic rush of bells, break beats and maybe a cat sound or two. Her latest song “I Dream I Dead”…snuffs out any cuteness in favor of pure claustrophobia. Despite the dreamy opening, “I Dream” quickly surrounds the listener with a wall of noise and…
First off…HNC recently remixed Tokyo group The Brixton Academy’s “So Shy,” transforming it from a starry-eyed new wave joint into a chopped up, vaguely Bollywood track. HNC builds her take on the track around a bell-driven beat, slicing up the original track’s vocals into a call-for-prayer tone (it sounds a lot like the start of…
“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…
99 Letters seems like a really busy guy – dude releases new tracks at a pretty fast pace, and MySpace indicates he plays a lot of shows including some upcoming ones in England this summer. So for him to have time to pump out “Reminder” and “9n9i9n9e” AND make them slight departures from his usual…
The other day we posted a Cloudy Busey track that came out in late December, a dance song called “Don’t Know Why You Love Me.” Bob, who fronts Ice Cream Shout and counts Cloudy Busey as his personal project, tweeted us afterwards noting that “it was a dry run.” Now we know what it was…