Tokyo-based label Diskotopia…read a good Japan Times profile this way…aren’t taking it too easy this summer despite pumping out music just waiting to play alongside an afternoon spent sitting on a beach towel. Matt Lyne, one of the imprint’s co-founders, produces under the name A Taut Line and has a new number online now, called “In This Heat.” Given the title and his role in chilled-out duo Greeen Linez, you’d expect a nice seasonally-appropriate joint. Yet the only summer feeling coming out “In This Heat” is being in a confined space and just being sweltered, sweat dripping down your brow and everything. This track closes in on you, Lyne adding little elements throughout the song but in small ways that don’t burst the doors down as much as make them start to trip out. There is a vague tropical feel and that tight-space feel might just be the grinding of perspiration-soaked bodies together in a club, but I’m picturing being trapped in a jauntier Enchanted Tiki Room during a particularly sweltering day. And it feels great. Listen below.
Lyne’s Greeen Linez project, a collaborative effort between him and Chris Greenberg from Hong Kong In The 60s, also has something most-certainly worth copping out now, an EP. Get it here, and watch the video for “Feel The Pressure” below.
I came across Greeen Linez “Palm Coast Freeway” a bit ago, whenever the excellent folks over at No Modest Bear first posted the summer-tastic clip accompanying the song. I listened to and enjoyed the song, possibly preparing my next-day lunch while enjoying that almost sleazy bass strut out of my speakers. “Great song!” I thought. Then, this past weekend, I met up with my editor Shaun from The Japan Times in Osaka. He mentioned Greeen Linez and revealed a big bombshell for me…half of the group was based in Tokyo. They are associated with Tokyo group Diskotopia, and appear to have a release waiting in the wings. Mind, meet the concept of being blown.
So yeah…this post comes a little late in the hype circle, but big ups to Greeen Linez for producing the perfect soundtrack to rubbing sunscreen on someone’s back in early August. Though this could certainly be filed as “chillwave,” there is a lot of stuff that actually pushes “Palm Coast Freeway” to stranger places than that. That bass, for one, which for some reason reminds me of Joey Greco. Yet also the whole package just strikes me as very…”Nuthin But A G Thang?” The keyboards mainly, but the whole song carries a laid-back, blunted (but, crucially, not lazy!) atmosphere that reminds me of a California summer. I’m so glad this partially hails from Japan, so I have an excuse to write about it. Listen below.
Consistency remains the most undervalued element in modern music. Well, OK, not just “modern” music, this is ultimately an art form dictated by trends more than any other. But in a hyper-reality like the one now, where everything moves so fast, stepping back and taking stock of the bigger picture can be a rarity. So this is all to say…Diskotopia, still doing the job! Their latest release comes from co-founder, one-half of Greeen Linez and (uhh, full disclosure?) fellow writer at Metropolis BD1982. The Arclight EP is an exercise in turning disruption into something movable, starting from opener “Arclight UV’s” synthesizer melody being smashed open by the percussion. “Miracles” breaks out with a limber beat but gets an uneasy edge courtesy of robo-vocals lurking beneath and just all sorts of noises competing for attention. Get it here, or listen below.
I’m not sure anyone can be truly nostalgic for a time that was about three years ago, but 2015 was the year I reminisced frequently about albums. Specifically, the commitment it took to go out and buy CDs back in the far-off time of 2010 (a point when physical releases remained the only way to listen to music in Japan). I’d ride a train for an hour to get to Osaka, wherein I’d spend a few hours stopping by music stores to buy albums that cost, oh, about $25 a pop. It sounds like a Simpson’s joke, but I thought about how this used to be the norm in my life.
Which isn’t to say I miss it — 2015 was the year streaming arrived in Japan in full force, coupled with a looser (uhhh, domestic) embrace of YouTube. It has never been easier in Japan to hear a wide variety of music much cheaper (if not free!). Yet this shift also moves against the album — singles and playlists excel at these formats.
So I’m not sure if making a “best albums” list in 2015 is simply just a nostalgia trip for me when the world turns a different direction. But after wracking my brain to make this list, I think this still works well, as Japan produced plenty of very good long (and short!) players full of great stand-alone songs and doubling as cohesive listens.
30. Yoshino Yoshikawa And Lovely Summer Chan Yoshi Yoshi, Summer!
Yoshino Yoshikawa and Lovely Summer Chan both made plenty of strong material on their own over the past year, but this joint album released near the very start of 2015 highlights just how strong they function together. Yoshikawa’s chiming playroom pop gets an extra dose of sweetness with her voice on top, adding extra pep to the bouncy “Hajimemashite” and extra longing to Yoshikawa’s “Yumetatsu Glider.” The most important result of their partnership, however, is balance, the songs on Yoshi Yoshi, Summer! showing elegance.
29. Beef Fantasy Japanese Recorder EP
It’s fitting that train stations and lines play a central role in the songs Tokyo’s Beef Fantasy creates. Spend enough time in the capital and you’ll realize how central public transit plays in the lives of everyone, whether as geographic marker or as the space where you spend a surprising amount of time just…being. Japanese Recorder centers around trains, whether it be the bouncy funk of “O.K.U.” or the slow-motion disco of “Dreaming Keihin Tohoku Line,” the latter loaded with JR-born samples. It’s an appropriate background for a project taking cues from Shibuya-kei without sounding like a museum piece, loading songs up with samples and blurring genre lines between dance, pop and hip-hop.
28. In The Blue Shirt Toward Morning
I expected everyone on the bill of the Harusaki show at Akihabara’s Mogra to deliver, and they did. I figured after a night of fizzy electro-pop, In The Blue Shirt’s night-closing set would be a nice come down, but the Osaka trackmaker ended up stealing the evening, with an hour-long show moving between energetic bouncers to more reflective songs, all while In The Blue Shirt himself grinned intensely, like he was surprised he was going this bananas.
Toward Morning is the bite-size peanut butter cup of this experience, a trio of songs that start with the reflective title track before getting sweetly manic on “Fool” and just losing it on the sample-rush of “Buttercup.” It’s silly and emotional, and always apt for the dance floor.
27. Izumi Makura Ai Naraba Shiteiru
What made the idol boom of 2009 to about 2014 so exciting was how these groups allowed up-and-coming producers a way to sneak their music to a wider audience. In 2015 that shifted, as idol outfits opt for more legacy names while more adventurous sounds have started flowing out of the burgeoning “women rap” scene.
Fukuoka’s Izumi Makura has been ahead of the curve on both these fronts, having been rapping over music from a wide array of artists for a few years now. Ai Naraba Shiteiru featured some of her most left-field songs yet, Makura delivering her confessional whisper raps over wonky tracks from abstract juke maker Foodman and astral-leaning beatmaker Olive Oil. Rounding out the album were more straightforward sounds, which put the emphasis squarely on her voice, which remains one of the most intriguing in the country today.
26. I-fls Artificial Outsider
Familiarity can be just as important as the thrill of the new. I-fls’ simple Garageband-born music remains the same as it did in 2013 — emotional elevator melodies reveling in the ennui of suburban life. I could spin a wheel at this point to select the collection I’d drop on this list, but Artificial Outsider stood out among them, jumping between longing and playfulness. Like the familiar restaurants and street lights of your hometown, I-fls’ songs offer comfort even at their most melancholy.
25. Poor Vacation Metropolis
Funk seeped into many forms of Japanese music in 2015, whether sneaking into mainstream J-pop or dripping out of the record-store-ordained “new City Pop” trend. Tokyo’s Poor Vacation stayed under the radar while making some of the best indie-pop featuring tight bass lines and sticky-as-glue synthesizers. Hayato Narahara’s solo project conjured up a longing that often got abandoned in similar sounding projects this year on debut mini-album Metropolis, all without losing the floor-ready sound.
24. Madegg New
The cleanliness of Kyoto producer Madegg’s previous albums and EPs didn’t exactly vanish on New, but the young trackmaker was far more eager to shine light on the cracks and wrinkles on his latest full-length. Voices blurred into disorienting swirls while low-end rumbles added a previously unseen menace to songs such as “Dragon,” and even the more uncomplicated techno creations like “National Water” came shrouded in mist. New wasn’t a fresh start for Madegg, but it showed how uneasy moments could be just as beautiful as the clean.
23. Sssurrounddd See You, Blue
First off, if you can find a better romanization for (((さらうんど))) outside of the band’s site URL, holler at me.
Second, See You, Blue is what I imagine something called “new City Pop” would actually sound like — Sssurrounddd map the genre’s genome and then restructure it into something totally different, something that couldn’t be pulled off in the Bubble Era. Sax goes superhuman on the dizzying “Boys & Girls,” while “Siren Syrup” bounces forward on chopped-up vocals and house pianos. It’s reverent to City Pop, but not afraid to push at the edges of what defines the style and stretch it out.
22. Greeen Linez The Calm
The music duo Greeen Linez made just a few years ago recalled the lobbies of fancy hotels and Lifestyles Of The Rich And Famous bumpers, glitzy tunes taking cues from the opulent sounds of City Pop. Hints of the Bubble Era popped up across this year’s The Calm, but the pair expanded even further on The Calm, creating sweltering dance songs that retained a resort-ready vibe but open to new sounds (and eras, at that, as a healthy amount of drum ‘n’ bass pops up across this album, an expansion from last year’s Izu King Street). It’s the most contemplative Greeen Linez work yet.
21. Parkgolf Par
The part of me that likes dumb, sweeping statements in year-end lists wants to call Par the end point for SoundCloud producers, except Parkgolf isn’t retiring or anything. The Sapporo producer takes every sound that has become a stereotype about the music-sharing site — pitch-shifted vocals potentially lifted from R&B, an overload of synths, seeming incorporation of trendy dance styles — and fucks it up into something dizzying and glorious. The closest thing dude has to a Jersey Club banger is called “Woo Woo” and it sounds more like the Jersey Shore soundtrack run through a blackhole. His songs ooze a messy sensuality and Parkgolf splatters them with wild keyboard playing and splashes of bass, making for a very controlled whirlwind. Par stands as one of 2015’s wildest rides, and a reminder that even the things you are most used to can sound brand new in the right hands.
A few years ago, producer YYSHIDD released an excellent bit of squiggly electronic music called “Naomi’s Love Affair.” It channeled the glitzy vibe of ’80s City Pop while also not going overboard with it, sharing more in common with Greeen Linez than anyone else (and all of these artists beat a bunch of people to the current “new City Pop” scene which…well, is a pretty lame marketing push). At some point, YYSHIDD moved closer to shoegaze, which was fine but is probably a genre not begging for anymore representation in the current Japanese rock scene.
“See You (*￣▽￣)ﾉ~~” finds just the right balance between his original sound and dreamier terrain. It is a very relaxing song, a hair under three minutes and a walk around the block at dusk at its most intense. It is guided by guitars, but YYSHIDD adds electronic touches (and some 808 rattling). Great sounds to zone out to. Listen above.
