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Island Update: Okinawa Electric Girl Saya’s Discord

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I will not pretend to know much about traditional Okinawan music, and cop to having pulled up the Wikipedia page for the central song covered on Okinawa Electric Girl Saya’s Discord release on Terminal Explosion. Despite my lack of knowledge regarding it, there’s something very endearing about the young electronic artist warping a familiar island song into something new. She’s not the first Okinawan creator to play around with folk songs, but her two takes on it are apt for 2019, while also being an extension of an internet music culture in Japan finding creators warping the things they love into their music. The “Discord Mix” matches the Okinawan-style of singing against piano ripples, bass and sliced-and-diced beats ponging around Saya’s vocals, often intercut with samples of her own voice ringing off to create a dizzying number. Better still is the “Ice Mix,” an apocalyptic take on the song giving very little room for Saya’s vocals to come through clearly as everything crunches up. She gives in totally to noise on the final song — here I most note that she is also a member of the idol group Tincy, and she mostly dabbles in noise on the side — which makes for a fine finish, even if her music works best when her voice scampers over it. Get it here, or listen below.

New Pictured Resort: “Daylight Moonlight”

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The other day, I went to the bookstore and looked over the music magazines. The latest issue of Switch is…entirely devoted to Suchmos? Like, save for a little bit of fashion news in the back, every page was looking at the group from every single angle. Call it a potential endpoint for the whole “city pop revival” era in domestic Japanese music — I don’t see Suchmos as villains or even all that terrible as a group (they are hit or miss, but dorkly earnest in a way that makes most of their songs far more intriguing than the hip-cafe BGM of Never Young Beach or Yogee New Waves) but time has proven them as the representative group of whatever this movement of vaguely jazz-influenced rock was. That’s when the page can be finished off.

This is all a longwinded way of saying…Pictured Resort deserves way more love. Their Osaka origins and focus on easy-breezy guitar melodies get them tagged as indie-pop…but twist, guess what community in Japan was channeling the vibe of ’80s Japan first? “Daylight Moonlight” drifts forward, no tension present and only the slightest gusts of melancholy coming in. Yet it has some snap to it too, far from floor filler but letting funk sneak in. It’s far closer to city pop (in spirit) than most of the stuff getting the nod, and a great one to just get swooped up into. Listen above.

New Le Makeup: End Roll

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This narrative writes itself, practically. Le Makeup’s voice had long been buried in his music, then in 2018 it started creeping closer and closer, and now comes End Roll wherein it is the most important element of each song. The three songs here are some of the most straightforward ones Le Makeup has created, with the title track nearly tipping over into piano-guided ballad territory. The Osaka artist is able to avoid the usual trappings of this style by keeping a persistent beat (vital on opener “Spotlight”) or at least letting synthesizer wooze off to give it a seasick vibe (see “Mienai”). But this still marks the most direct Le Makeup has been, and shows what the project would be like in more traditional forms. Get it here, or listen below.

New AAAMYYY: “Over My Dead Body”

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“Unnerving” isn’t quite the right words to describe “Over My Dead Body.” It comes close — and boy, do we love using that one whenever we can — but AAAMYYY’s latest ahead of her debut album Body does much more than just make us feel slightly uneasy while looking at the computer screen. While the edges blur, AAAMYYY focuses the song so it follows a clear build, going from sparse to busy by the time the chorus hits. And she’s splitting the difference between using her own voice as another layer and as something raising above the whole song. When she lets them slowly unfurl on the verses and at the end of the hook, it functions as another instrument, but for the heart of “Over My Dead Body” the vocals jump out and offer something solid to grab on to. Maybe everything feels off balance, but there’s one place to seek shelter. Listen above.

New Chai: “Fashionista”

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Chai can lock in just as well as they can get wild. The quartet’s biggest online hits thus far have been nervy rock numbers that see them zipping from idea to idea, unafraid of a jarring shift. “Fashionista,” from upcoming album Punk, shows off the other side, the one grounded in repetition and gradual change. “Fashionista” revolves around a Blondie-esque funk melody that stomps ahead alongside some vocal scatting and a slightly muffled lead vocal. You get a nice hook, and then go back and…then everything gets a little more hurried. Voices topple over one another, and then everything gets a little looser as guitars and drums get a bit more wobbly as well, leading to a blown-out final segment. Yet despite everything coming to near collapse, “Fashionista” stays upright thanks to a solid grounding. Listen above.