Look, I’m watching the second half of this Japan-Colombia World Cup game and it is stupid stressful, here is a new song from Osaka’s Soleil Soleil, it’s good. Back to sitting all scrunched up like seeing if Japan can score two goals….
A Transparent Girl manages to navigate between two worlds. The duo float in squiggly orbit on “Like Reich’s Pulse,” shimmering synths constantly interrupted by glitchy vocals. Midway through, though, the song blooms into something new, a bouncy melody that transforms the same vocal skippings into something catchy. Despite this outro, the track boasts an air…
More catching up from vacation, as we have settled back into Japan and moved on from the Winter break! OK, we are still a bit sad about that last part…on January 5th, the weather in my hometown was 76 degrees, whereas now I’m back to huddling for warmth under my coat…but on the plus side,…
We are waist-deep in year-end season, but let’s peel back from the lists for a second (ours to come next week maybe if I don’t melt into a puddle!) to look at 2016. It’s already shaping up to be an interesting year — that was before Utada Hikaru announced her spring comeback to music —…
Not to be too “ughhhh my week!” but…ughhhh my week. Ultimately, it’s good for me to be hyper busy, but boy do I feel tired (and behind). And that extends to writing about music and checking in on what’s happening. Thank goodness for reliable releases, like the latest from Picnic Women All That’s Juke. As…
In an effort to reflect the dominant trends in Japanese indie music, we chose Osaka indie-pop outfit Wallflower to appear in the May 2012 edition of the Music Alliance Pact. There “Cure Your Heart” is one of the peppiest songs with twee DNA to pop out of the country this year…and there have been many….
That Kool Switch Works’ compilation EP introduced us to a lot of great producers in Japan – the skittering slice-ups of bbbbb, the glowing work of Exccow, the footwork fun of Poncho and Casino Tart – but the MVP of that release (at least around these parts) was PICNICWOMEN. Whereas others on Witchcraft diced up…