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Dream Machine: MSS Sound System Featuring Shiroro’s Time Warp Love

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It’s tough to make music that manages to be emotionally evocative and barrier pushing, but producer MSS Sound System and Shiroro pull it off on Time Warp Love, one of the year’s best collaborations to date and a sorta-outta-nowhere contender for best Japanese album of 2018. MSS Sound System has been making music for a while now, most active in Japan’s Vocaloid community. Last year, they shared Secret, which revolved around the digi-voice of UTAU Yufu Sekka. While that one has some sterling moments — see the strobed-out “Emotion Blue — it’s ultimately more interesting than anything else, lacking something a lot of Vocaloid music does (not helped by the fact that same voice has been deployed much better this decade).

Time Warp Love stands as a big jump forward because of the presence of Shiroro, who adds a human warmth to MSS Sound System’s music. That’s immediate from the jump, with Shiroro’s voice adding a sweetness to the hazy-day dream of opener “Walk,” her singing moving from syllable smoke rings to fully formed words creeping into frame. She meshes well with MSS Sound System’s music itself, whether on the melancholic synth bounce of “Satellite” or on “While my footwork gently weeps,” a juke number that manages to work in a swift pop vocal without feeling like a novelty combo (you got Chicago dance music in my J-pop!). Most clearly, she elevates the bleepy number “Milky Way” to a much higher place than where it was when emerging on Secret last year (though, to their credit MSS Sound System tweaks the music so it is a little less 8-bit and more delirious). MSS Sound System has always dabbled in a variety of styles, and Time Warp Love goes all over the place, but Shiroro serves as a constant, and the team create an always-compelling bit of electro-pop. Get it here, or listen below.

New HoneyComeBear: Intro And Outro

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Think of this more like one solid mini-album rather than two EPs teased as bookends (collecting and polishing up older songs from them). Duo HoneyComeBear have been one of the better projects in Japan at merging the business of “future bass” with an emotional delivery that often feels two clicks away from J-pop proper. Their best songs tightrope this just right, including the sweet and sputtering “Sneaker,” one of their finest pop-and-bass hybrids to date (the robo-vocals backing up the main singing at the chorus!). Some artists can go overboard in one direction and come out OK, but HoneyComeBear succeed here because they keep themselves in check — they let bell chimes and bass drops creep in, but they are always weighted by untouched singing that give busy numbers such as “Natsuzora” and “Defy” a pop sheen. Get Intro and Outro here, or listen below.

Urban Strut: Gimgigam’s Cities In Glass

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It’s incredible how even the slightest change to an expected formula can re-invigorate a sound that once seemed completely mined clean. Japanese producer Gimgigam’s Cities In Glass comes via Elemental 95, a label dabbling in all sorts of genre but which is most associated with vaporwave, a niche that feels pretty drained in 2018, unless they discover some new Greek ruins in the near future. But Cities In Glass moves in a far slinkier style, using samples (and it appears guitar) in a more energetic way and treating them like livelier beats. It’s kind of a midpoint between vaporwave and future funk’s ’80s sheen, and the lo-fi hip-hop beats for studying channels. “VOU” straight-up struts out the gate, not hiding behind any distortion but rather zeroing in on some particularly funky sounds and letting them work their magic. Though the disorienting details can go a long way — “Glass Beret” ripples up its laid-back atmosphere with a distorted vocal sample that adds some sadness to the surrounding glitz, while the clipped voices running through “Turquoise” adds a nice roughness you can still bop along to. It burns itself out by the end — “Plastic Poem” chooses a really annoying string arrangement and pop vocal to loop into the ground — but after all the energy before it, who can blame it? Get it here, or listen below.

Wasabi Tapes Presents DJ Gaga Slime & MC Pure Photoshop Core’s Golden Slime Core

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The artists on Wasabi Tapes go under a lot of names, but the label has developed a unifying sound that touches nearly all their releases, give or take a Nikkei. They wrangle chaos into something focused, using jarring samples and synthesizer notes smooshed together into something disorienting but fascinating (and, really, fun as hell). DJ Gaga Slime & MC Pure Photoshop Core’s Golden Slime Core builds on the overwhelming vibe of N. Brennan’s releases via the label, letting samples sourced from 21st century video games, The-Dream albums, and more to create headrushes, using modern media as building blocks to their own loopy world. “Andromeda Galaxy” cushions the explosion SFX with breezy synths pushed to the grotesque, while “Gokiburi” replicates Pachinko Machine Music from someone’s bedroom. In a lot of ways, Golden Slime Core is one of the best gateways into their world, because you can find a little of every artist mixed up somewhere in the madness. Get it here, or listen below.

Ano(t)raks Presents Die In Pop, Featuring I Saw You Yesterday, Youthmemory And More

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No label does compilations quite like Ano(t)raks. This decade, their stuffed-tight collections have highlighted artists who have gone on too much bigger things in the Japanese market…and also highlighted some of the more interesting artists to stay in the indie world, too. Die In Pop is the label’s latest, and like previous efforts offers a glance at Japan’s indie-pop scene. This comp zeroes in mostly on the guitar-centric side of things, opening up with a zippy number from Bearwear before touching on other artists from Japan’s vast indie-pop scene. It ranges from the slightly dreamy sounds of BLANCO’s “Paradise” to the more straight-forward jangle of I Saw You Yesterday’s “Girlfriend.” A few familiar sounds come up —- Youthmemory’s “Neo Tokyo,” still a gem — but the bulk of this comp is a chance to jump in and find something new. Get it here, or listen below.