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New Shortcake Collage Tape: “Chillwave Will Die But She Won’t”
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…
New Yucca: “Summer Emotion”
Everyone seems to be in a summer mood as of late…yesterday, POP-OFFICE were brooding about the end of summer, and now Yucca are getting all melancholy thinking about the season. “Summer Emotion” is a sparse tune that sorta just hangs in the air – I’m surprised this lasts only three minutes and 45 seconds. The…
Music Alliance Pact December 2012
We break a little bit from our year-end coverage for this month’s MAP, which features one of our favorite songs of the year – HNC’s “I Will Make You Sad.” Listen to it and a bunch of other great music from around the world below. Click the play button icon to listen to individual songs,…
New Merpeoples: “Tinkle”
It has been awhile since we’ve heard anything new from Tokyo’s Merpeoples…last time was last June with the song “Silent Sleep,” a good tune albeit one that faded quickly. Looks the group are ready to give it another whirl, and they’ve got this blog’s full attention with the hopping “Tinkle.” Merpeople have always been good…
mus.hiba Teams Up With Akoustik Shadow: “Molly”
Here’s two Tokyo artists teaming up to make a really lovely track. I’ve written at length about mus.hiba, who typically creates gorgeous synth washes featuring Vocaloid voices turned into dreamy sonic details. “Molly,” though, features only his mind-enveloping electronics, as vocal duties are apparently handled by “near Tokyo” based Akoustik Shadow, who seems to enjoy…
New i-fls: “Ambiguous Reply”
Tokyo Garageband producer i-fls works best in album form, his faded memory jingles sounding best when they rub up against one another to create a well-rounded portrait of what youth, nostalgia and the suburbs feel like. Individual tracks usually sound perfectly fine, but their full impact is felt when they run together. “Ambiguous Reply” would…
New Seiho: “Underwater”
Here’s your Japanese future-pop summer jam of 2012. Seiho’s “Underwater” is another fine swirl of digitally manipulated vocals and wonky electronics, this one with a few clever seasonal touches (watery sounds!). “Underwater” also highlights two of the reasons Seiho has become one of the best young music makers in Japan today. First, his songs are never just excuses to show off what his cool equipment can do. These songs go places and have structures – “Underwater” features this great build towards a bubble-powered release, Seiho adding a dash of tenseness to his music. The other detail is the bass. It sounds so precise but also so funky…so fun…that it could have come from a Zazen Boys’ song. A friend compared it to Seinfeld, but I don’t think it’s quite slap-happy enough, but he’s write about it being laid back. Listen below.
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New Hoshina Anniversary: “Dangerous”
Busy start of the week for me so this will be brief…but Hoshina Anniversary has a new track (or at least something I haven’t heard before, covering my bases now) up here. The two-minute version of “Dangerous” hits on the same style Hoshina toyed around with on “Cobra” earlier this year – a rush of…
Neon Cloud Remixes Blue Foundation’s “Describe,” We Are Mostly Pumped Neon Cloud Are Back
Neon Cloud Neon Cloud Neon Cloud Neon Cloud!取り乱してすいません…でも、ミステリアスかつ素晴らしい(どんどん良くなっています)東京のプロジェクト、Neon Cloudが、2011年のKnit EP以降ついにまた作品をドロップしました。厳密に言うとオリジナル作品ではないのですが、Neon CloudがブルックリンのBlue Foundationの”Describe”(原曲も素晴らしいですよ!)にFlauアーティスト特有のテイストを足しています。このリミックスではリズムには手が加えられていないものの、不意なビートであったり、多数のシンセであったり、加えられた音が原曲の持つ不穏さを際立てるだけでなく、更にその世界感を追求しています。この“Describe”のクライマックスはNeon CloudがBlue Foundationのヴォーカルを逆再生し、リミクサー自身のボーカルが陰から現れる所。男性ヴォーカルがメインなものの、Cloudの繊細な女性ヴォーカルもバックグラウンドに花を添えます。今年はNeon Cloudが新作をリリースするように皆で祈りましょう!試聴は以下から。
New Madegg: “WKAAFS”
The “about” section might be the most intriguing part of this – “WKAAFS” comes from Madegg’s forthcoming fourth album, release date unknown as of now. This song, complete with minimalist video, is a relaxing enough preview, swapping out the clitter-clatter production the young Kyoto native has favored for most of his career in favor of…
New House Of Tapes: “Noise Attack”
Recently on Twitter, I saw someone write (and I paraphrase) that expecting dance music to be about anything more than dancing or fucking is ridiculous. Nagoya’s House Of Tapes envision another use on new song “Noise Attack” – sonic assault. True to its name, “Noise Attack” is an often unrelenting but always engaging listen, every…
New Alloapm: Boy EP
Plenty of outfits in Japan aim for a throwback feel, with varying results – sometimes they nail it, sometimes they should stick to making music videos. Alloapm more often than not get it right, and the just-uploaded Boy EP features two tracks that completely capture the project at its very best. One of those numbers,…
THE BEAUTY: “Match Point”
Oh expectations. Though sometimes capable of building a promising-looking group into something they can never actually hope to be, resulting in crippling disappointment, they can also sometimes lead one to believe something won’t be all that good and….zing!….it’s actually amazing. Given the artists I followed to reach THE BEAUTY, I fully expected something that would…
