Lucky lucky Europeans…ignoring things like economic collapse and drug-resistant infections, folks in that continent have the chance to see Tokyo psych rockers Praha Depart play live for the next two weeks. Even more jealousy inducing, those who wisely head out to the group’s show will have the chance to buy a mini-album titled Dot. that us folks in Japan won’t get until early next year. Maybe not particularly helpful if your leg is being cut off, but pretty great in most other situations.
The rest of the world will have to make do with “Portrait Man,” a track from Dot. available for your listening pleasure below. The song has been floating around the online ether for a while now…I wrote very briefly about it a while back…and I’m faced with the same dilemma now. Like a lot of the noisy stuff that has come before it, trying to describe “Portrait Man” leads me to just stupidly type words like “loud” and “strange” and “awesome” in a way that really doesn’t convey how strangely loudly awesome this is. The only thing I can truly point to are the vocals, which really elevate the whole track to a new level. Lead singer Mai moves from standard singing to borderline bird chirping to screaming to frantic screaming to…well, some otherworldly stuff…over the track’s buzzing scrum. Spellbinding stuff, which you can hear in Europe or below!
[soundcloud width=”100%” height=”81″ params=”show_comments=true&color=ff7700″ url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/25959146″]