Two Tokyo-based netlabels come together to start 2018 off with a bang — Trekkie Trax and HAKAisDEAD released Trekkie Trax x HAKAisDEAD, which loads up on songs from…well, artists associated with both digi-imprints. Like many compilation albums put out by either netlabel (or by the bulk of dance labels globally), it highlights a diverse array…
Leave it to Japan’s juke scene to deliver an album inspired by Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition. Skip Club Orchestra’s latest — released on New Year’s Eve, making this (I think) the last 2017 collection I needed to catch up on — features 20 songs, all of them hovering right around the three minute mark….
Kansai’s music scene has witnessed all sorts of significant changes over the last decade, from the re-implementation of the fueiho laws to their subsequent phasing out a couple years ago, to the migration of many artists from Osaka to Tokyo because…well, trends in living. Yet the W – Western Japan Compilation made between rave-born label…
Information on Yogen Hayama is scarce, but Simplicity offers up maybe everything one needs to know about the artist. It is, indeed, simple — five songs featuring nearly zero words, constructed from guitar and electronics. This sparse arsenal forces Hayama to get the most out of everything, and the songs on Simplicity deliver straightforward energy….
Producer Nazoyama Meisoun isn’t making outright trippy music, it just happens to have a few zonked-out elements on the periphery. Magic Teapot collects four electronic numbers from the composer and oil painter (check the cover art!), each of them offering up immediate thrills underlined by some wonkier details. “Vintage 4K Monitor” just rumbles ahead, an…