Make Believe Melodies Logo

New AOTQ: Alone

Posted on by

By releasing two stellar albums of easy-breezy but emotionally twisty electronic music in 2018, AOTQ reminds that you can come up with some really interesting ideas if you just keep exploring an approach that has worked before. The parts making up Alone aren’t all that different from what appeared earlier this year on E-muzak. It’s all Jusco-adjacent creations that use the limits of AOTQ’s instruments as a way to find all sorts of new angles. “Morning Call” sets an upbeat mood well before the MIDI-strings sweep in and the beat gives it a caffeine bounce. “Floppy Disk” is so skippy…but gets out bounced by “Tonic Water” on the very next cut. But for all the chipper moments, it’s stuff like “Night In Taipei,” which slows the formula down and embraces space to create something a little more tender, or the melancholy title track, which imagines what the cereal aisle might sound like if the composer making the tunes was having a really sentimental day. Get it here, or listen below.

New Koutei Camera Girl Drei: “Harbor”

Posted on by

Idol group Koutei Camera Girl has gone through all sorts of mutations over the last couple of years, with the latest version being re-christened Koutei Camera Girl Drei. And with a new name (and different line-up) comes a new release, New Way Of Lovin.’ A lot of “new” there, but this release actually offers the strongest version of the sound this project has been exploring since its start. Whatever the moniker, Koutei Camera Girl merge various strains of dance music — New Way features a “trance version” of “Lonely Lonely Montreal” — with traditional pop-idol singing and rapping (even without the member who does it best). New Way jumps between bleary-eyed ravers like “No Limit Dance” and the scream-along “Slowly World.”

“Harbor” captures them at their best though. It’s a pulsating dance track growing in intensity throughout, while the three members of the group jump from rapping to singing — always finding new ways to express themselves vocally (check the use of bleeps later in the song). This is how to upend idol ideas, not with visuals and songs that sound like every other groups music, but to create something that refuses to gel into a familiar form. Listen above.

New Bicco Beat: “Nostalgic Days”

Posted on by

Seeing as how Japan is currently enjoying a real obsession with nostalgia (and, honestly, seems like this holds true for a lot of places in 2018), the throwback project Bicco Beat releasing a track titled “Nostalgic Days” seems a little too on the nose. But at least they managed to make something on the pleasant side of melancholy, avoiding any of the conservative trappings that nostalgia often carries with it. “Nostalgic Days” moves at a stroll, recalling the most relaxed of early ’80s techno-pop but with a sigh added because…well, those times aren’t coming back, no matter how many dusty synthesizers you buy. A nice dip into nostalgia that doesn’t last too long. Listen above.

Beat By Beat: Isagen’s c.b.a.g. EP

Posted on by

Japanese electronic artists have become far more interested in individual sounds over the last few years. From the experimental headscratchers coming from Foodman or the Wasabi Tapes label, to netlabel adjacent creators like Taquwami or Metome, it’s a good time for fans of individual sounds sticking out. It’s the element that makes producer Isagen’s new EP for Trekkie Trax such a charmer. Space plays a valuable on nearly every song, making the vocal samples and machine beats resonate more clearly on glassy opener “Add On,” while the room carved out on “Child” makes the pitch-shifted voice at its center all the more effective. Most importantly, this approach makes moments of release — like the beat explosion of “Bloom” — hit all the harder. Get it here, or listen below.

New Halfby: “Diamond Head”

Posted on by

Halfby’s island explorations started out high-energy, but in recent years the producer has started slowing things down a bit. Maybe it’s just getting older — Dorian kind of went down the same path — but it has been a nice shift for Halfby. “Diamond Head” offers one of his most relaxed cuts yet, with sweat-soaked guitar notes and an easy-breezy pacing in no rush to get anywhere. Yet just because Halfby’s chilling out a bit more than he used to doesn’t mean he isn’t working interesting details into the edges. As “Diamond Head” develops, parts become blurred, and the vocal samples in particular give this a blazed-out feel all the more inviting. Listen above.