The renewed interest — both domestically and internationally — in city pop has caused a lot of ripples across many genres of music, but it’s also at times distracted from artists whose music sounds good with or without Bubble-era ties. Singer/songwriter UKO definitely takes cues from the aforementioned style — just listen to those horn…
Izumi Makura has had a pretty quick rise up in 2017. Sure, the whisper-rapper from Fukuoka isn’t pulling any Daoko-level ascension, but she’s gone from a pretty secretive artist to one with music gracing fashion shows and commercials. Now, she’s providing theme songs to movies. This is a nice update on her status, but “Eien…
Electronic artist Tominaga hasn’t avoided using her voice in previous releases, but Pain Is Mine features some of the most direct usage of it yet. Primarily, the first two songs. “A Song For Blue Witch” skitters to life, but mostly hangs in the air, allowing space for Tominaga’s stretched-out singing to take up the center…
Tokyo artist atnr creates visual art to go alongside his music, but his Reality In The 21st Century needs no supporting images to gets its ideas across. Released via Illuminated Paths, it’s a set of simple but evocative electronic creations. Some of them are slow burning — “Install” spends about two minutes letting a single…
Alternate title: I’m glad I didn’t start writing year-end content, because here comes an album to disrupt it a bit. Osaka’s Yullippe excels at dark, unnerving dance music. Her third album Selfish&Anchor continues this dive into the shadowy side of the genre, and results in her most cohesive album to date. Which isn’t to say…