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….
If Dialect is one final glance back at a past quickly dissolving away, Turquoise is the first step forward into the unknown. Metome’s first release following that stunner opens with pure unnerving voices looping on “Teeth,” but that’s just scene setting for “Turquoise” itself. Metome moves closer to straight-up ambient music with this one, with…
Shiga-based producer Mecanika loves to explore the texture of noise, which makes “Explorer” an apt mission statement. It’s a rumbling number, one that finds an artist who was always pushing towards maximalism committing, loading the brief song up with whirring synthesizer notes and brighter keyboard notes in the mold of post-Nakata electro-pop. Yet instead of…
The name should offer a big tip as what to expect – Atlas Young dabbles in bedroom music often associated with acts featuring very similar names. Yet Atlas Young isn’t at all derivative. He makes massive, sky-ward symphonies greatly indebted to shoegaze in his room. Vocals get doused in a colorful coat of swirling electronics,…
The months just keep passing and the summer draws even closer. Let’s check in with Japan’s premier summer festivals to see what’s up. – The big new update on the Summer Sonic front would be reunited indie-gods Pavement getting a slot. They already dazzled Tokyo and (especially) Osaka once before, so if you missed out…
Osaka Game-Boy genius 99 Letters has been quite productive as of late. Well, at least according to some entries on his blog – dude has about four EPs due out in November. Let’s run ’em down, shall we? – First up is the 3 A.M. and Boys Like Girls EPs out on November 10. Both…
I’ll cut straight to the chase…the band Flight Egg recently posted two new songs to their MySpace. One of them sounds like a stab at Radiohead balladry. The other, and the one I want to write about, is “道程.” The track opens with an indie-take on hard rock, meaning the guitars sound aggressive but still…