This bubbly beat comes courtesy of Tokyo’s Yuichi Nagao, and it is a nice bleep-blooper full of bouncy details (the way those synths intersect with one another! how hopeful this sounds!) and just a fun little groover. Listen below.
Side projects usually give someone the chance to try out sounds they can’t get away with in their main vehicle, and the results are often hit or miss. Body Curves, the solo creation of Shion Hosobe of the band Waater, deals in songs really similar to what comes out from the group…and finds a lot…
Here’s the latest taste of Tofubeats’ forthcoming major-label debut, First Album, which for those who know their Tofu will realize it sounds very very familiar. That’s because the luxurious beat for “Poolside” first appeared as the opening track for 2012’s fantastic Summer Dreams. The music…along with Tofubeat’s original rap…remain, but it is now joined by…
Well this was a nice Google surprise. While researching bands (“research” meaning “clicking random pages on MySpace and hoping for the best”), I ended up finding this incredibly useful guide to live houses in Osaka. This revealed about ten new venues to see shows, and I am eternally grateful to whoever created this page. A…
Remember when the “city pop revival” was the premier wave of nostalgia running through Japanese music? For those who are a little exhausted by what came next — an intense rash of “oh man, the ’90s!” speared by SMAP, Hikaru Utada and the crushing march of time — we have a new three-song set from…
Anime certainly plays a role in Anime, the latest EP from fledgling producer Secret Space, but it isn’t in any particularly bubbly way that seems trendy at the moment. This is unsettling territory, where sampled dialogue from cartoons plays out behind synths howling away or drum machines given plenty of space to strike, making the…
Some times, Beef Fantasy shows off his dazzling songwriting skills on songs about train lines, or virtual beaches. This time…a seemingly simple, borderline jokey number called “Panty Stocking,” which finds the artist repeating the titular phrase through heavy Vocoder over and over again. Yet despite the thematic simplicity, this song is a great highlight of…