I hate the description “Beatle-esque” as much as the next nerd, but sometimes you just have to face the truth: as long as people come together to make music, a handful of folks are bound to draw inspiration primarily from the 1960s. Three-piece Asunarou are one such band where I might as well pick a…
J.P. DuQuette over at Japanzine counts down his top 10 Japanese album of the Aughts in the publications January issue, available online over here. You got your usual suspects popping up – didn’t Vision Creation Newsun come out in Japan in 1999 though? Wikipedia has my back here – but the real draw to DuQuette’s…
The curiously named Inspire:tion advertise themselves as a “rock-shoegaze-ambient” band, and somehow they’ve found a way to legitimately sound like those three things blended together. Yes, the swirling guitars and precious electronic droplets that are a hallmark of “dreamy” music, but Inspire:tion add enough pulse to their tracks so they never get caught gazing at…
If you are a regular reader of this blog (insert self-deprecating sentence here), you’ve most likely seen me mention the “J-Pop ballad problem.” It refers to the challenge of critiquing a slow, ballad-type tune by a Japanese artist, partially because the central-to-the-song lyrics are in another language, but primarily because it seems like every single…
YouTuber and apparently Internet famous guy (check those stats!) Hyadain recently released the 2009 edition of his annual “Japanese Song Battle.” It’s a six-minute mix of Hyadain covering snippets of popular J-Pop tracks from the recently retired year. The first thing you’ll probably notice about it is the brain-pummeling volume – turn the noise way…