２０１２年に入って既に二枚のEPをリリースしているフットワークのプロデューサー、Picnicwomenが、続いて今年度三枚目を発表しました。”Super Freak”では新しい挑戦が聴ける訳ではないのですが、スピード感やスリリングなボーカルサンプルは健在です。”Again”はよりメローな方向性を模索しているのですが…結局は打ち込みのドタバタ地獄に突入し、彼の持つユニークなスタイルを主張しています。”Milk Man_s Wife”はエイフェックス・ツインの”Milkman“のカバーで、”I would like some milk from the milk man’s wife’s tits.” というフレーズが繰り返されます。試聴は以下から、購入はこちらから。
Santa Ana isn’t the first place you think of in California as being “unsettling,” though it is definitely far from being a boring place. Still, Kyoto outfit Jesus Weekend’s chugging instrumental “Santa Ana” is an extremely shadowy number, one that makes one of the biggest cities in Orange County seem like it would be a…
This song isn’t introducing anything novel to the Japanese independent music landscape – producers pitch-shifting a vocal sample or two and building a song around it were all over the place in 2012, highlighted by the likes of Taquwami and Seiho. Yet Winona Hyper’s “Promise” does a solid job of this style, taking only a…
It is a soundtrack made for commuting between different places in large urban spaces, filled by swarms of people shoaling and funneling across intersections, subway stations and central hubs like corpuscles pulsating in the cities veins, conducted by invisible algorithms in the symbiotic superorganism that is a metropole. – Submerse, about his new EP Algorithms…
The overlap between Internet-centric producers and idol pop continues shrinking. Maltine Girls’ Wave was the year’s biggest breakthrough, but it won’t be an isolated case. Sakura Yura is a rising idol…not a nobody but a far cry from, say, Tokyo Girls’ Style…and she’s teamed up with two producers repping two different netlabels. The first is…
This didn’t need to be fucked around with. Producer Oven Toast Jam could have played this song straight, just crafted a beat orbiting around that acid-smeared throb and those ghostly vocals in the back, also letting those occasional piano notes float to the top. It would have been a more than serviceable beat. Thankfully, Oven…
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…
Footwork producer Picnicwomen has released two of the better EPs of 2012 this year, and now the fast-paced-music maker dropped a third that’s every bit as good. Super Freak doesn’t really enter into any new territory, but it’s another jittery collection of cut-up samples played over music that just darts forward. “Again” shoots for more mellow terrain…though it still ends up being carried by rapid-fire beat programming…while closer “Milk Man_s Wife” offers a ghettotech-like remix of Aphex Twin’s “Milkman,” emphasis on the line “I would like some milk from the milk man’s wife’s tits.” Listen below, or get it here.
Online label commune310 excels at the compilation game, and their biggie-sized Compilation2017 delivers as expected. Unlike seasonal offerings which sometimes have a bend to them, this is just a collection of great electronic music from Japan, on the higher-tempo side of things but with plenty of variety. It’s one of those “jump in and see…
Mukuchi excels at jolly little pop songs, whether on her own or as part of Feather Shuttles Forever. She’s the prior for “Reizouko,” and it’s a funny bit of bedroom pop to start off the new week. The music itself relies on some jaunty piano notes alongside a few more toy-like details — I swear…
Welp, this Spring just keeps getting loaded with promising releases. The meeting between LLLL and Metoronori is something that seems natural — both are Tokyo artists who create woozy…and sometimes dark…music shaped by the metropolis. And both injected moments of joyful escape into their music, lining even the most shadowy moments with hope. And so…
TOYOMU got all the attention for his imagined take on Kanye, but the young producer also co-runs a party / label out of his hometown of Kyoto called Qauntizer Kyoto, giving space for similarly cosmic-tripping producers in the Kansai region. Quantizer Sampler 2 is, fittingly, a great gateway to a collective taking the Brainfeeder-inspired deep-space…
Osaka indie-pop outfit Wallflower posted a cover of The Field Mice’s “This Love Is Not Wrong” online over the weekend, and its definitely worth taking a listen to. For the most part, Wallflower’s take on the track doesn’t break new ground – something something jangle something something twee – save for the vocals. Whereas The…
Editor’s Note: Hello, long time no see! After a break from blogging due to family issues, I’m starting up, though it might still be infrequent. Thanks for your continued support. Hiroshima juke producer CRZKNY has been political since the very start of the decade, kicking back at Japan’s nuclear power industry and the government in…