“Pppppppp-picnicwomen-women-women-women”という強烈なタグの曲。Picnicwomenがジュークにチャレンジし、今年のお気に入りの一つになりました。このプロジェクトの最新EP、Stylusには、 “Ripstick Girl”という曲意外に、同じKool Switch Worksのアーティスト、Ahmad Jackson Jr.の曲も含まれています。”Ripstick Girl”はゆったりとしたギターで始まり、攻撃的なマシンガンのようなビートに、ググっても探すのが不可能に近いマニアックなサンプルが乗っています。その後、曲はテンポが速まり、他の要素が入ってきたりして、複雑になっていきます。Ahmad Jackson Jr.の”Done For You”も面白く、ホーンがや、泡がはじけるような音がふんだんに使われ、ミックスの奥には、J. Dillaがやっていた事で有名なサイレン・サウンドが聴こえます。購入はこちらから。
The Fogpak compilations, albums collecting songs from independent electronic artists all across Japan, have been getting a lot longer with each new installment in the series. The sixth edition featured 33 tracks, and that already felt like a challenge to get through. Now comes the seventh in the series which ups the ante with 48…
数年前に東京のGive Me Walletsを初めて聴いた時、踊る為の音楽というよりは、じっくり聞き込みたい、マスロック的な音楽だと感じました。マイスペースにあげられていた曲はフォールズを彷彿とさせ、好みではあったものの、ダンスフロアには適さないような気がしていました。 なので、Give Me Walletsにはよりダンサブルに、そしてエモーショナルになってくれるように期待していました。彼らの新曲、”Look After You”は、８０年代風シンセやビートで彩られ、まるで当時の曲のようでした。 また、”Look After You”のボーカルは、歌詞は聞き取りにくいものの、The Brixton Academyのように、感情的かつ情熱的でした。”Look After You”を含む、SoundCloudにあげられているGive Me Walletsの新曲は、バンドが良い方向性を見つけた事を証明しています。視聴は以下から。
「自分が歌うつもりが無い曲を書くのにいつも罪の意識を感じてる。」と語るのは、Cloud Buseyことボブ・ワイリー。Lights ＋ Musicにて新曲、”havUever”について解説しています。この曲はジャスティン・ビーバーの曲にしてもいいんじゃないか、と言い、もしジャスティンが見つけたなら提供する、との事。確かに”havUever”の輝くようなシンセとビートは、ジャスティンのボーカルが際立つような物になっています。 でもまあ”havUever”にはボブのボーカルが一番しっくりくると思います。ビッグネームのポップ・スターが歌ったらまた違った物になるんじゃないかな。Cloudy Buseyのトラックでもそうですし、特にIce Cream Shoutの”Tattooed Tears“なんかでは、ボブのボーカルは心に触れてくるような、暖かい真心を感じるような物では決してないものの、現実的で冷ややかなその表現は、同じような経験を持つ人から、より大きな共感を得られるでしょう。Cloudy Buseyの新作からも分かる通り、ボブのボーカルはどんどん説得力を増していてます。ジャスティン・ビーバーが歌っても良いのかもしれないけれど、ボブの歌う”havUever”は、独自の美しさで溢れています。
Note: This will be the final regular update around these parts for a bit…starting tomorrow (hopefully!) we will share MBM’s top 20 Japanese albums of the year. And then we will go on a vacation where posts will be more infrequent. Fittingly, we end with Especia. Osaka idol outfit Especia – who take cues from…
My image of Tokyo long ago became demystified, even before I got a room in a sleepy corner of the city and decided to call Japan’s capital my current home. It’s just a sprawling place to me, one mixing glassy skyscrapers with drab apartment complexes disrupted by the occasional park or shrine. It is nothing…
Memories are imperfect things. That’s something home-recording artist i-fls understands so well, especially on his latest collection Diary Of Spectre. We like to treat nostalgia as something warm, something that gets stirred up in us and reminds us of simpler times. Yet that’s just the stuff of movies – nostalgia, once treated as a disease,…
“Pppppppp-picnicwomen-women-women-women.” That sonic identification tag has become one of my favorite sounds of the year, not just because it’s a pleasure to hear but also because it means I’m about to listen to some sample-stretching juke courtesy of Picnicwomen. The project’s latest, “Ripstick Girl,” appears on the recently released Stylus EP, which also features a track from fellow Kool Switch Works’ artists Ahmad Jackson Jr. “Ripstick Girl” opens with some laid-back guitar before introducing the skittery beat and an especially difficult-to-Google sample (I think it might be from some sort of Christian artist?). Then the song launches off, the original beat speeding up and an extra one also dropping in as Picnicwomen bends the song in a bunch of different ways. Ahmad Jackson Jr.’s “Done For You” doesn’t slouch either, the producer creating a horn-heavy track also featuring what sounds like bubbles popping and, deeper in the mix, J. Dilla’s signature siren sound. Get it here.
[youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlkj2rzy7e0″] You probably love Pocky. If you don’t enjoy the delicious snack all the stereotypical otaku enjoy, check your head. It’s delicious. Chances are, fair reader of this blog, you also fancy the music of Yellow Magic Orchestra. Or you at least dig Perfume, who take a lot of musical cues from the group. Now,…
We’ve been quite smitten with the music the duo of Yentax have put forth thus far, and latest cut “Yentax Error” only further fuels that interest. This number features more guitar at its center, only introducing rubbery synth lines and brief vocal touches (covered in a layer of electricity) about halfway through. It’s a track…
Part of me hesitates at broaching this subject, yet for the purpose of this post it must be done – lets talk dubstep. Well, assuming we can even agree on a common definition of it. A few years ago, that wouldn’t have been difficult, because “dubstep” referred to a very dark, very British type of…
Anyone living in Japan at the moment probably wishes for a bit of summer overload – the nation is currently dealing with a typhoon, with ANOTHER typhoon on the way for the end of the week. Here comes Osaka’s Stuck In Summer, though, to give us all a splash of the season with their Stuck…
Between major label releases, tofubeats tends to explore sounds that might not be the sort of thing to make it on his major-label albums. In the year since Positive, he’s been getting deeper into house — with a pretty fantastic house set at this year’s Maltine event at WWW X — while “Shopping Mall” gives…
The latest from Aymiko works best when simply conjuring up a dream-like state. “Yako” swirls about, giving space for Aymiko to deliver lyrics that unfold at her own pace, everything surrounding her adding a certain tension. Guest Nozaki Rikon proves to be a hit-or-miss addition — as someone adding a few spoken-word dollops of creepiness…