昨年、当サイトのベストアルバムランキングで２位に選ばせて頂いたサカナクションが、夜の踊り子という新曲をリリースしました。ビデオも公開されていて、それはこの上からご覧になって下さい。ダンサブルなバースに極めてキャッチーなコーラス、という今までと同じスタイルを貫いているのですが、新たな試みとして、女性バックアップ・ボーカルが使われていて、新鮮さも感じられます。ビデオはローディングに時間がかかるのですが…簡単に説明すると、メンバーが日本の伝統衣装を着て富士山付近にいます。
In his relatively brief career, Tokyo’s Taquwami has explored a lot of sonic ground. He’s made maximal sounds, fragile songs, sample-heavy dance numbers and heady tunes that sound like holding a particularly trippy seashell up to your ear. And that’s not even counting the directions he’s splintered off with his Occult You project. His latest…
Cloudy Busey “Who Says They Love You” Osaka’s Cloudy Busey started the year with the long, lonely walk home anthem “Up To You (If You Love Me)” and later released “Have U Ever,” which he said would be perfect for Justin Bieber. Between those two, the Ice Cream Shout frontman who also records under the…
I mean, its definitely a misleading title on a lot of levels, mostly because to reduce Shortcake Collage Tape down to being just “chillwave” does a great disservice. Yeah, the adjectives that comes to mind for this (Mogwai-referencing?) song fit…hazy, blurred, chilled out. Yet it owes just as much to vaporwave, and even dropping something…
SHoegaze often gets saddled with negative connotations – “my god, it’s full of stars,” one music critic mocked on Twitter when My Bloody Valentine’s MBV dropped earlier this year, with plenty of others calling the group (who stand in for shoegaze) nerd music or weed music, neither of which were meant in a positive context….
Two years ago, when I lived not in the hyper-speed metropolis of Tokyo but rather in the semi-rural mountains of Mie prefecture, I brought a friend from America who was on vacation to my then home. We spent a lot of time in my quaint city, population 80,000. We had spent nearly a week in…
First off, not safe for work! Kindan No Tasuketsu recently released a new album, and tracks off of it have been trickling online over the last few weeks. Here’s the latest, being released as a special Christmas special (B-side….”Santa Claus Is Coming Back”), though it also appears on her new full-length as well. “Ring A…
Sakanaction, who made this site’s second favorite album of 2011, have a new single and video (above) out now called “Yoru No Odoriko.” The song finds the group continuing to play around with the dance-friendly-verse-explosive-chorus structure they’ve been exploring for a while now, although the addition of female backing vocals is a great sounding touch. The video…which takes forever to load…finds the band clad in traditional Japanese clothes standing near Mt. Fuji.
[youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMhjVUmQ6oM”] Welp, April Fool’s Day has arrived for most of the world (totally over that in Japan though) and I won’t be attempting to make any jokes because I’m not technically skilled enough to turn every video into Rick Astley or 8-bit-ize a map. Instead, I’ll post this video The Aprils made, which is a…
Duo Frasco have been offering up a nice alternative take on Japan’s current interest in laid-back music, and “Viewtiful” highlights just how. Whereas other young groups tend to keep everything super laid-back — and, more importantly, build around guitars — Frasco let a little tension sneak into their synth-pop jams. “Viewtiful” is in no rush…
The Atomic Bomb Compilation’s continued relevance isn’t so much the result of coincidences as much as the entire inspiration for this project’s existence taking up more of the frame with every passing year. Vol. 5 arrives in the middle of a summer featuring a news cycle featuring nuclear weapons…and threats for said devices to be…
Aiming for outright catchiness in the summer is too easy. Sapporo-based electro-pop duo HelloHowLow released a song caled “Menhera Girl” about a year ago, and it’s an upbeat bouncer featuring digitally manipulated vocals, the sort of catchy number that fans of Perfume probably can get into easily. Yet it’s also a little too breezy, save…
So this is sort of a big deal – three of the heaviest hitters in Japanese indie music today (which is to say, they are all signed to international labels of some sort) have collaborated on a song called “Yubiwa,” which is basically The Avengers of shadowy sounds from Japan. The players: Kyoto’s Hotel Mexico…
And Putting Love Away, the new EP from Tokyo’s Canopies And Drapes, takes its name from a line in Emily Dickinson’s poem “The Bustle In A House.” That work, a brief eight-line poem, deals with grieving following a death, ending with the lines “And putting Love away/We shall not want to use again/Until Eternity -.”…