Duo Frasco keep up their prolific pace in 2018 with “Dramatic,” their latest digital single. And like the numbers before it, “Dramatic” finds them shifting things up ever so slightly, highlighting the pair’s ability to bring in various elements under a funk-pop umbrella. “Dramatic” features a pronounced electronic bounce, which gives it extra force than other Frasco songs from the last two months. Yet it also comes with a vocal delivery not far removed from what Etsuko Yakushimaru does, extending even to a word selection seemingly focused on sound over meaning. It all builds to a gooey hook giving way to some looser sections. Listen above.
New Animal Hack: Gift
There is a blurriness to electronic duo Animal Hack’s new album Gift that helps it stand out a bit from other artists in the same zone as them. Their latest release features plenty of hallmarks of contemporary electronic music in Japan — see the big release of opener “Body,” the breezy portions of “Plastic Night” — but the edge feature something a bit more disorienting, a bit more deep-into-the-night-with-no-sleep. Animal Hack’s approach to playing around with vocal samples drives this feeling the most, as numbers such as “Letter” find voices smeared into one another, giving the song a disorienting atmosphere. Same goes for “Inside,” which sounds vaguely familiar (the sample is dancing on my mind, what is it!?) but gets tweaked enough to turn woozy. Best of all is “WIMM?,” a soft number interrupted by these jarring crashes and screams — it’s less about tension and more about just letting sound rip a song apart. Listen above.
New Bighead Featuring Hatsune Miku: World Is Wide
Sapporo’s Bighead is one of the better producers in Japan going right now when it comes to creating flat-out electro-pop jams featuring Vocaloid singing. World Is Wide finds them in their comfort zone, utilizing the familiar digi-sing of Hatsune Miku to create energetic pop numbers. The music across these 11 songs features plenty of contemporary twists — see the bass squeals on the otherwise shimmering “Gold Coast” or the drops in “I’ll See You” — but Bighead’s greatest skill is an ability to craft really catchy music out of an instrument that often feels unnatural (and World Is Wide certainly has that musical uncanny valley, but Bighead makes the non-human English singing work in these songs well, everything working well in the busy musical backdrop). Just check the title track, a zippy affair among the year’s best dance-pop so far. Get it here, or listen below.
Omoide Label And Bytedoll Records Present Shibuya-Kei Chiptune Cover Compilation
Video game-derived sounds appeared in the swirl that would eventually be called Shibuya-kei — while lots of attention (rightfully) goes to the style’s focus on the dustier corners of the record store, not-so-faded 8-bit sounds also popped up frequently, giving the style a nice splash of computer-age energy. Shibuya-Kei Chiptune Cover Compilation, then, isn’t a totally out of nowhere proposition — I mean, for something far more unexpected, try the Vocaloid cover set — but still offers a nice new angle on the scene. The chip-centric nature of this comp results in the emphasis falling on the melodies, both of how the artists here (Japanese and from abroad) approach it and reminding that, for all the textbook-ready analysis, Shibuya-kei’s biggest artists could write a damn good song. Due to some sort of copyright kerfluffle, you can’t buy this one, but you can stream it below.
Into The Deep End: Emamouse’s Tiny Orange Slicker For Birds
For months, I had no idea where to start with Emamouse. She’s an artist who has been active for over a decade in Japan, but thanks to sites such SoundCloud and Bandcamp has appeared especially prolific in recent years. Just look at her own Bandcamp page, and try picking a single gateway in. Maybe one of my personal fears was highlighting something and then having it get piled up in a deluge of new material — existing English writing on Emamouse kind of just drops in and feels deeply incomplete (the exception: this interview, which is maybe a good starting point). Point is…with every new release she put out, I thought “this is going to be the one!” until I got all nervous and kept putting it off.
Tiny Orange Slicker For Birds seems like a good place to just jump into the deep end. It’s a small but engrossing release showcasing the simple-tools method Emamouse embraces — closest comparison I can think of to an artist that I have written about extensively: i-fls — and how charming it can be. The title track skips ahead as Emamouse weaves together melodies, while the glassy “Fallen Leaves On My House” goes from sparse to chirpy at just the right pace. Both use a spartan set of instruments, but Emamouse squeezes a whimsy from them that finds rich feeling in simple sounds. The bulk of Tiny Orange Slicker For Birds lacks vocals — usually her singing does pop up — but with one exception, on the most downbeat moment, “Lakeside Of Sorrow,” where a simple barrage of “la la las” ups the drama. From here, just jump in. Get it here, or listen below.