“Pppppppp-picnicwomen-women-women-women”という強烈なタグの曲。Picnicwomenがジュークにチャレンジし、今年のお気に入りの一つになりました。このプロジェクトの最新EP、Stylusには、 “Ripstick Girl”という曲意外に、同じKool Switch Worksのアーティスト、Ahmad Jackson Jr.の曲も含まれています。”Ripstick Girl”はゆったりとしたギターで始まり、攻撃的なマシンガンのようなビートに、ググっても探すのが不可能に近いマニアックなサンプルが乗っています。その後、曲はテンポが速まり、他の要素が入ってきたりして、複雑になっていきます。Ahmad Jackson Jr.の”Done For You”も面白く、ホーンがや、泡がはじけるような音がふんだんに使われ、ミックスの奥には、J. Dillaがやっていた事で有名なサイレン・サウンドが聴こえます。購入はこちらから。 stylus ep by KOOL SWITCH WORKS
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,…
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…
One of the weirder things to happen…or, more appropriately, not happen…in the realm of Japanese music is the near lack of music relating to the 3/11 earthquake and tsunami or the Fukushima nuclear incident following it (and still going as strong as ever). I’m not talking about outright political songs addressing the government or TEPCO…
This month’s Music Alliance Pact has arrived! As always, MAP finds 30-plus blogs from all over the world sharing one song from a domestic act with the rest of the bunch. Make Believe Melodies represents Japan, and this month we are putting the spotlight on ultra-pop specialist Yoshino Yoshikawa and his “I Feel You, I…
Bedroom-whizz Shugo Tokumaru has released his first glimpse of the follow-up to 2010’s Port Entropy in the form of new single “Decorate.” For those expecting his whimsical, toy-instrument heavy music to morph into something new by now, prepare to be let down because “Decorate” is another solid example of his playroom pop. Tokumaru’s usual assortment of bells, woodwinds and acoustic guitar dominates this song, and at one point he even works in the sound of an alarm clock ringing off. Also intact – the same sense of wonder the majority of Tokumaru’s tracks possess. Listen above. You can buy the single in stores now, and if you do, you also will get the chance to hear Tokumaru’s take on The Buggles’ MTV-launching “Video Killed The Radio Star.” I don’t know what the single version sounds like, but watch Shugo deliver a cutesy live cover below.
It’s strange connecting dots after the fact. A few years back, D∀NGER D∀NGER was just an electro-pop outfit with one solid EP behind their syntax-shattering name. They inspired more Twitter conversations about punctuation than anything else, though that’s more the fault of writers than anything else. Three years later and Jay-Z is now JAY-Z, and…
When you need a little burst of energy during a busy day, Osaka’s Satanicpornocultshop always comes through. The juke-leaning collective’s new Green Papaya EP zeroes in on percussion, with nearly every track here interlaying different beats over one another to create shuffling rhythm tracks. It runs from the sparse, skin-tingling wooden sounds of “Mouthwash” to…
Virgin Babylon Records has, in consecutive weeks, released two albums that have grabbed my attention and stand out as a pair of 2016’s best Japanese albums thus far. The first is anything but a surprise if you’ve read this blog for a while — Metoronori’s latest full-length is a disjointed, fizzling rabbit hole of an…
CUZ ME PAIN has been a little quiet as of late, the Tokyo imprint not putting out all that much new material lately. They’ve either been focused on playing live shows and recording new material…..or they’ve been brushing up on Nicolas Cage movies. CUZ ME PAIN project Masculin’s new track “Manhattan Suicide” opens with a…
New-ish project Feather Shuttles Forever brings together Hikaru Yamada (of the group Hiakru Yamada and The Librarians) and Mukuchi, who has appeared on this blog a few times with a genre called “seagazer.” Together, they create a shifty electronic-pop number in “Zujou No Seaside Town,” which features smooth singing gliding over an ever-changing backdrop, one…
“Can this be called juke?” Gnyonpix wonders this in the description for “Tropical Cider Blue,” and my initial reaction is no, as it resembles more of the reggae-inspired output of someone like Quarta330. But also! Maybe lightening up about genre would be a good thing (to a degree) in 2017, and “Tropical Cider Blue” does…