A blog focused on discovering the music landscape of Japan wouldn’t be complete without at least a mention of SMAP. I’ve had the chance to listen to a decent amount of SMAP tracks (and have even more to sort through, though I’m in no rush…) and for the most part they aren’t very good. Since…
The most exciting aspect of Two Sunsets is that it’s indie-pop legends The Pastels first recorded material since a 2003 soundtrack. That’s not a stab at the album in question – Two Sunsets, a collaborative effort with Japan’s Tenniscoats, comes off as a deliberately laid back effort at times bordering on the ambient. It’s a…
I stumbled across Kyoto DJ/producer Handsomeboy Technique looking for remixes of Thieves Like Us’ “Drugs In My Body.” Handsomeboy (a.k.a. Yoshitaka Morino) somehow made the nocturnal strut of the original into something strangely triumphant. Check it out at his MySpace page. He has a new album of remixes available titled Discommunication Breakdown including the “Drugs”…
Two posts about Lullatone in a row, nice. The duo have added some new tiny tunes to their commercial Melody Design library. Enjoyable albeit short stuff but a great change of pace if, like me, you spent the whole afternoon listening to Raekwon on loop. Listen to them here.
Some upfront honesty: Lullatone are my favorite Japanese band going and new releases from them make me giddy to a point where objectivity completely melts away. I’m smitten with their self-described “pajama pop,” a child-like sound melding the conventional (guitar, keyboard) with the imaginative (drumming on bath water, snores). In a decade featuring scores of…