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…
YMCK, like fellow Japanese artists Omodaka and the older material of 99 Letters, pulls off a rare thing – being able to make music based primarily around 8-bit sounds and turning it into something beyond novelty. “Sesetsu Shite Usetsu Shite” could be goofy novelty in the hands of someone more interested in playing Mega Man…
Incorporating natural sounds into one’s work isn’t a new trick – artists have long been doing that, many of them recently and many of them in Japan. Magical Mistakes jumps immediately to mind with his bird and bug sounds sneaking into his songs. So Kindan No Tasuketsu shouldn’t be praised for her use of nature…
One of the trickiest things about covering Japanese bands is comparing acts in Japan to Western artists…most of the time, it ends up being misguided, a lazy way for writers to create a connect-the-dots situation that makes it easier to describe the group’s sound. Or just be a total cop out…Kyary Pamyu Pamyu as Japanese…
２０１２年にインターネットで急速な成長を始めたインディーポップシーンは、男性アーティストによる男性の為のものになってしまっている。２ヶ月前のにJolie Joliを紹介させて頂いた時にそう書きました。でも１０月になった今、女性中心のバンドが多くでてきて、良いバランスになってきたと感じてます。Jolie Joli、Old Lacy Bed、The HomecomeingsやFoodie等が登場したり、Les Glass GlaceやMemory Girls等の以前から存在したバンドも活躍が目立ちます。そして新たに２組のグループ、名古屋のCRUNCHと大阪のJesus Weekendがシーンにでてきてました。 CRUNCHは新参者というわけではないようで、ツイッターを見る限りでは２０１０から活動しているようです。なぜ今になって注目したかというと、今週SoundCloudを始めて、”Simple Mind”という曲をアップロードしたからです。今のシーンに上手くなじむこの曲は、他のバンドよりもマイナー調なのが特徴的で、ギターの奏でるエコーが美しいです。試聴は以下から。 大阪のJesus Weekendは本当の意味でのニューカマー。結成したばかりのこのグループは、来月にAno(t)raksからEPをリリースする予定みたい。今聴ける音源はかなりローファイなので、レーベルのカラーに合わせてどう磨きをかけるのか、楽しみです。アコースティックギターの目立つシンプルな構成の”Puberty Bell”は、音質のクオリティの悪さも気にならないような愛らしい曲になっています。試聴は以下から。
This isn’t the first time Nagoya’s POP-OFFICE have covered a song…but these two latest renditions highlight what they do so well better than what they’ve done. First, they take out Sparklehorse’s “Gold Day,” itself an understated, sadness-tinged number that’s best described as very pretty sounding but with a frown hidden deep within. Well, POP-OFFICE blow…
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.
City pop, a genre of music that saw its heyday during the high times of Japan’s bubble economy, has had a bit of a resurgence over the past year. The Japan Times covered this trend towards the retro recently, focusing on the likes of Greeen Linez whose recent album Things That Fade is an excellent…
Playing with irony is a dangerous game…one wrong move, and suddenly what sounded like a good joke transforms into something legitimately off-putting. Idol-duo Vanilla Beans have always tip-toed on the edge just fine, their winking brand of J-Pop managing to deliver catchy tunes alongside the smirks. New single “Non Section,” though, comes close to tumbling…
This week, Suiyoubi No Campanella’s major label debut comes out via Warner Japan, and…even though I was definitely later to this artist than many others (thanks Tumblr!)…this situation is something fans of many artists before and many in the future will deal with. The weird excitement of seeing just how an artist you’ve backed for…
Semi-mysterious producer Ventla set out years ago to release 100 albums featuring instruments all played by Ventla themselves. The resulting releases touched on every style around, from neon-smeared synth-pop to acoustic pop to bedroom exotica. Ventla was getting pretty far and…then just kind of stopped, in 2015. And more or less vanished. When I talked…
Starship – Single by Happypills It’s the fluttery and fizzy edges of “Starship” that really stand out. Fukuoka artist Happypills mostly finds a middle ground between indie-pop and larger Japanese rock bands such as Galileo Galilei, Asian Kung-Fu Generation and maybe a little bit of Supercar. For the most part, “Starship” is a straightforward gallop,…
What makes Tokyo project LLLL stand out from a very crowded music scene in the metropolis is the refusal to shy away from pop. Others involved in the city’s indie scene tend to avoid mainstream pop music, especially J-Pop, and some even seem antagonistic to it (this blog has been called “the one that has…