Happy Thanksgiving! Here’s Osaka producer Tomoyu with “All Hope Is Gone,” a rattling number sure to give you plenty of good vibes on Turkey Day. “Unsettling” is a word I love to roll out, and “All Hope Is Gone” delivers that feeling plenty, fueled by icy drum machine patterns and (especially) the way the voices warp into near-unintelligible whooshes. Listen above.
New Maison Book Girl: “Narrow Story”
Change doesn’t have to be drastic to be effective. Maison Book Girl’s “Narrow Story” changes the junior-high-band-room sound up ever so slightly, but manages enough to feel like a total pivot into a new direction. But it really isn’t — Maison Book Girl lean in on a mix of xylophone notes, tag-team vocals and all-together-now vocals to create a dramatic idol-pop number. Few groups have as much mastery over a specific sonic palette as Maison — most of the other examples I can think of mainly release on Wasabi Tapes. But here’s an idol group that has figured out how to make drama work for them, and always make a familiar sound come off as new in their grips. Listen above.
Right Up: Fuishoo’s Morning
Fuishoo is a producer benefitting from the current status of netlabels in Japan. While this corner of Japanese music doesn’t feel quite as thrilling as it once did — mostly as the bigger players grow and become different entities (or focus on different projects entirely — 2018 has seen a greater emphasis on nurturing young artists. That has always been important to the netlabel community, but Fuishoo is one person who has benefitted from both Trekkie Trax’s new :branch project and now Omoide Label’s continued zooming-in on blossoming talent. Morning is a buzzing set of dance numbers, the single best element being their approach to vocals. Opener “ADFFG-2B” features these smudged electronic voices that eventually burst into squiggly synth lines, while the garage bump of “Eat Banana Cookies” pulls off a similarly rippled effect when singing enters the blurry picture. Every song builds on some sort of existing sound prevalent in the Japanese electronic community (see the “kawaii-bass” slap of “Butterfly Steps,” so familiar but so not) but reveals a new perspective on it. Get it here, or listen below.
New Luby Sparks: “Cherry Red Dress”
Just in time to close out the autumn, Luby Sparks have a new EP of mostly maudlin indie-pop perfect for those who get down when the sun sets a few hours earlier. Save for opener “Perfect” and it’s charge-out-the-gates energy, the exquisitely titled (I’m) Lost In Sadness EP finds the group creating slow-burning downers. “Cherry Red Dress” is a highlight, moving in slow motion while running through a list of downtrodden images — dead Junebugs, on the road home! — coming from a moment the protagonist can’t shake. It’s icy, but with that warm memory grazing the side still. Listen above.
New Daoko And Yasutaka Nakata: “Bokura No Network”
Wherein two artists having very strange 2018’s come together. Daoko fronted the biggest song of 2017, bursting onto a huge stage all of a sudden. The downside of that — and especially of said arrival being a ballad not really representing how you’ve sounded up until that point — is it becomes really tough to follow it all up. And so Daoko has tried out all sorts of things since “Uchiage Hanabi,” some hitting and some missing. Overall, she’s doing well — got that Kohaku nod this year — but still is exploring.
Yasutaka Nakata, meanwhile…well, he’s been all over the place this year too, trying out new things for himself, for Perfume, and for Kyary Pamyu Pamyu. I’d argue the last thing he needs right now is more music work, but now he’s teamed up with Daoko for “Bokura No Network.” And as an update on where both acts are at in their career, it doesn’t make much clearer. Nakata provides a pastiche of what he’s done with Kyary, Capsule and Perfume via the blend of twinkly playroom details and crushing electro-pop elements. Daoko ends up sounding…kind of like she’s making a Perfume song, especially come the digi-glazed hook. In terms of offering a clear path either is going on, it doesn’t add much.
But it is a decently catchy number, and one that does place Daoko in new sonic backdrops, wherein she bounces over it fine. She’s become a J-pop chameleon, and here’s another backdrop for her to do her thing against. But really, people longing for older Nakata should probably be happiest. This is a throwback to a bunch of his styles all at once, the end mix being both familiar and new. Not a road forward, but something with a bit of nostalgic charm to it. Listen above.