先週東京のデュオ、She talks Silenceが新曲”Walk Away”をSoundCloudで発表しました。Minami Yamaguchiは短いイントロの中で”walk away now”の持つ意味を明確にし、そこから速いテンポで短い３分間程度ギターをかき鳴らしていきます。”I know you’ll hate me”という印象的なフレーズが象徴するように、後ろを振り向かずに前へ前へと進みたい気持ちと共に疾走する美しい曲です。試聴は以下から。
Pure neon sounds here. Tokyo’s Alloapm has labeled this a “summer version,” but really this is a song designed for the night, preferably while cruising through the city, potentially while holding onto some ~feels~. It is, sonically, a relatively simple number – a flurry of synths, a beat, bass and some Vocder-ized singing propelling the…
To some extent, Shibuya-based music maker Metoronori’s Mawari reminds me of fellow Japanese artist i-fls. Both are painfully DIY, recording simple electronic tracks on their own, both artists defined by chintzy keyboard and synth sounds. Their music also evokes youth gone by, mostly via the simplistic sound they lean on. Yet one thing separates the…
The real news hook here might be that electronic artist/awkward-pairing master Idiot Pop has a record label. The first mp3 release on his titular imprint comes from the fantastic Carpainter, already responsible for one of the year’s finest EPs, and now back with two new songs on the Gravity Falls EP. His two originals are…
Some jittery goodness coming your way from Sapporo’s PARKGOLF, who has been having a very nice 2013. “Kiss Me” is his latest display of herky-jerky electronic music, a hyperactive blast that opens with handclaps before zipping off into the main part, a disorienting passage anchored by some manipulated vocals singing the titular phrase. The best…
The opening minute of producer Ujaku’s “Tonakai” sounds like a lost snippet of some Studio Ghibli film soundtrack. It’s nothing but some plaintive piano strokes with a few additional affects added in. It’s the emotional core of the song, which bursts open into a rollicking dance number soon after the minute mark, Ujaku dropping in…
Los Angeles’ Meishi Smile is one of Make Believe Melodies’ favorite artists who technically falls outside our area of coverage (though when Maltine Records released a collection from him, we broke the rules because…why not?), and you should definitely get a copy of his album Lust, out this week via Attack The Music (it’s a…
Last week, Tokyo duo She Talks Silence posted a new song called “Walk Away” to their SoundCloud. It’s more like a gallop – after a minimal intro where Minami Yamaguchi sets the scene and makes her intention to “walk away now” clear, STS launches into a fast-paced guitar passage that lasts for the majority of the song’s just-over-three-minute playtime. “I know you’ll hate me,” Yamaguchi sings at one point, and from there “Walk Away” sounds like a dash forward, one that refuses to look back towards whatever it is it wants to avoid. Listen below.
This is both the liveliest sounding Boys Age song and the most downtrodden. The bedroom rock project has gotten jangly at times in the past, but “Forlorn Beach” deploys a jaunty drum beat that practically skips ahead, adding an energy rarely found in the group’s music. And it works well in conjunction with the guitar…
Twitter long ago replaced Facebook as my go-to social media, but I’m glad I haven’t abandoned the “Mafia Wars” dappled wasteland just yet. Dream rockers Texas Pandaa (yep, two “a’s”) announced some info regarding their new album via Facebook news feed. The group reveals the album will come out in June after being pushed back…
Recall the “comedy club” bits on the sitcom Seinfeld for a second. What sticks out from these scenes? I doubt it was whatever topic Jerry Seinfeld tackled at the start of whichever episode, but rather the iconic slap-bass music accompanying said moments. Even the best gags (which, to be fair, rarely came out during that…
When Mitsume introduces a fresh sound to their strolling rock, it really comes through clearly. It doesn’t take long into new number “Namerakana Hibi,” from forthcoming album Ghosts, for a new wrinkle to pop up in a song that initially sounds locked-in like so many of the quartet’s previous releases. But then lurking a little…
Le Makeup’s letting his voice get louder and louder. “Lush” is the latest track from the Osaka artist that finds them revisiting the skip of their early Bala-Club-esque experiments and adjusting it to their current one-day-at-a-time mindset. But the bigger development, as mentioned, is how clearer Le Makeup’s vocals are getting, here coming through clearer…
Nazoyama Meisoun’s work on Mineral makes for a nervy, at times disorienting listen. The 11-song set highlights the producer’s approach to beats, but it is not a simple collection of skeletons begging for something more. “Quartz” rumbles ahead, adding in metallic sounds that seemingly lower on to the song (like…a docking bay from Star Wars?),…