Rapper Kid Fresino and Seiho teamed up last year for the latter’s “Cherry Pie,” a number that found the prior navigating a track that sounded like a swarm of electronic bees. It was an effective pairing — I’ll go as far as to say that, personally, it is the best Kid Fresino has sounded — to the point where it got slightly reworked for last years Ai Qing, where the buzzing cacophony got scaled back a bit and still managed to be (alongside another Seiho-produced number) the highlight of a pretty uneven listen marred by one real big optics mistake (nobody in the room raised their hand? C’mon). Thankfully, Fresino calls on Seiho once again for “720,” a collab with Nike tied to the titular shoe that manages to rise above the sponcon origins. Seiho delivers a gripping beat that goes from gurgling electronics to spacious ambient passages, and Fresino melds right with it, even delivering some good lines about the end of Heisei that match the rising and falling drama of the music. Listen above.
Good Matchup: Waiai’s “Hohoemi” Featuring Puni Puni Denki
This one’s just simple — sound producer and artist Waiai teams up with fellow electronic creator Puni Puni Denki for a bouncy dance number that’s pure summer breeze. The pair lay down a nice groove borrowing from funk and boasting a bit of a New Jack Swing to it, and the whole thing gets lifted up by Puni Puni Denki’s singing, which goes from a under-the-breath delivery to a more sticky follow-the-bouncing-ball flow come the hook. Get it here, or listen below.
New Uami: “Yakedo”
Uami is one of those artists who post and share so much online that keeping track of what is what can be tough. “Yakedo,” though, is definitely a new one from the artist, and a great glimpse into the sonic realm they’ve started creating. Flashes of Metoronori-style world building pop up over the course of this fidgety number, crafting an off-kilter pop song featuring sudden shifts in tempo, weird moments of decay in the back and total collapse come the final stretch. Maybe it’s all a reflection of one of the more prominent lyrics, “I’m so tired in my bedroom,” this one capturing the feeling of exhaustion and eventual surrender to sleep. But even so, Uami’s singing comes through clearly, and for all the oddball energy, offers something solid to hold on to. Listen above.
New Soleil Soleil: EQ
It’s a little too early to start celebrating the decade in music, but Soleil Soleil’s EQ works as a nice cap to a stretch of time that saw the Kansai electronic scene just flourish. The Osaka producer orbited around parties like INNIT at the start of the 2010s, first releasing music under the name OMEGABOY (now all vanished) before taking on the new name and pivoting towards warmer-climes house music. EQ captures Soleil at their most blissed out, starting from the breezy bounce of “Sunrise,” wherein synthesizer adds a woozy affect to the track, to the total release of closer “Hologram,” which slices up pop-born vocal samples and places them against piano lines and synthesized sax blurts to create an early evening blow out. But the most intriguing bits — and the parts capturing the latter part of the decade best — come via collaboration. “Welcome To My House” finds rapper Sola The Luva making himself comfortable against one of the funkier beats Soleil has laid down, dropping lines like “yeah we break laws” that add a little tension to something that sounds chill rather than crime adjacent. Sola pops up again on “JK Rolling” (uhhhh, Harry Potter reference?) to deliver a more in-his-wheel-house rap over a shuffling beat, joined in the latter half by Kyoto’s Native Rapper (who we will get to later today). It’s a nice mix of ideas that have been percolating in this corner of Japanese music all decade long, synthesized in to one big blast. Get it here.
New In The Blue Shirt: “Cast Off”
In The Blue Shirt’s speciality is digging into the DNA of existing songs and modifying them into something entirely new and totally dizzying. “Cast Off” revisits this formula ahead of a new album, and reminds just how effective it is. ITBS splices up some vocal samples from a song (or songs) I can’t put my finger on…maybe because it is so finely sliced and pitched around that it becomes a whole new tool to play around with. And they go ahead and let these syllables bumper-car off one another as synth notes burst around and a beat pushes everything forward. It’s joyful, language morphed into something that’s just a pure blast. Get it here, or listen below.