“Taker Giver Pool” offers another angle on producer Pavilion Xool’s sound. The young Tokyo-based artist has some swift moments in his catalog, but “Taker Giver Pool” unfolds the quickest of anything they’ve released yet. The beat just moves quicker, the whole song feeling all the more woozy because of Pavilion Xool’s use of pitched vocal samples, pushing them in both slowed-down and sped-up directions. Coupled with the galloping pace, it makes for a lovely bit of disorienting music. Listen above.
Never Fades: Still Dreams’ “Spaceship”
There was a time, not all that long ago, that it felt like at least one new indie-pop gem surfaced out in Kansai on a weekly basis. I doubt the collective music fans of Osaka, Kyoto and beyond have moved on from their Sarah Records collections, but the pace certainly slowed down a little bit over the last year. New project Still Dreams serves up a great reminder that the indie-pop atmosphere stays strong. All of the familiar touchstones comes across — a mid-tempo jog, simple but effective guitar, some sweet-sounding vocals hiding melancholy — though Still Dreams push it in a dreamier direction than, say, Post Modern Team. Check the electronic flourishes, or the bass notes, or even the lyrics, which approach something more surreal than most (“I’ve got a spaceship in my garden”). Kansai stays on the indie-pop game. Listen above.
New Aya Gloomy: “Shizukane Kieru”
Aya Gloomy’s initial foray into music after joining up with Tokyo’s Big Love Records was to create a buzzing, unsettling number that gave just enough room for her singing to come through clearly, even if the whole song felt like it was being sucked into a whirlpool. Now she has her proper debut album out in less than a month, and latest number “Shizukane Kieru” prioritizes space over all else. The beat and melody are sparse, giving plenty of room for Gloomy herself to sing, and for the most part she comes through clearly (though at a few points a faint echo comes up, and at other times her vocals get multi-tracked). Yet “Shizukane” remains as unnerving as last year’s busier releases, achieving that by letting so much room through that little details and changes make everything feel just off. Listen above.
New World’s End Girlfriend: “Meguri”
World’s End Girlfriend don’t keep things simple. The project’s new song “Meguri” clocks in at nearly ten minutes, and finds Katsuhiko Maeda crafting a dramatic slow burner. The first half is all build — Maeda arranges strings and piano to create a dizzying climb upward, pretty but also a touch unsettling. It’s when the electric guitar slides in that “Meguri” starts ramping up. And it makes the final stretch, when Maeda lets the song just burst open into a combination of feedback and orchestral echoes, all the more memorable. Listen above.
New CHAI: “I’m Me”
One of the driving themes of CHAI’s music thus far — made all the clearer after talking to them — is inclusiveness, of celebrating the unique characteristics we all possess. “I’m Me” isn’t quite a manifesto for the four-piece — that remains the herky-jerky “N.E.O.” — but it’s definitely them at their most direct, avoiding the sudden twists in tempo and shouts (and also opting to not go the more reflective-but-not-really-reflective route of slower songs) in favor of a down-the-middle number that gives them room to share the main lyrical conceit more clearly — which is a smart move, as their next EP is probably going to be a grab at greater mainstream attention in Japan. Still, they work in some cleverness, such as trying to make the Japanese word for “selfish” into something positive, and deliver one of the most subtly cutting lines I’ve heard from any song this year (“you know about the world but you don’t know me” is an incredible cut in the age of “actually….”). And while it lacks any theme-park-ready turns, the music still falls in CHAI’s lane, from the squiggly guitar melody, a really bright and lovely keyboard interlude, and a breakdown that shifts everything but not too suddenly. Listen above.