Slow Bounce: Traampooliine

Within the Kansai region, it’s a breeze to find interesting music in Osaka, Kyoto and Kobe. That leaves poor Nara as the odd-one-out of the area’s musical scene…it’s not some barren wasteland of sonic ideas, but you don’t hear much about the stuff coming out of the city and prefecture the same way you do in the above-mentioned cities. So thank goodness for vowel-happy groups like Traampooliine, a Nara group making something that sucks you right into its world.

Band highlight “にっしっし” consists of nothing more than some easy-peasy guitar lines, drums and vocals resembling a muffled Satomi Matsuzaki. It’s nothing complex, but the group delicately shifts tempo in such a way to make it almost hypnotic, that airy voice acting as the air mattress adrift in a sea of rapidly-changing noise. “まもの” engages in noisier horizons, the guitar allowed more loud leeway, but those surprisingly gently words remain…although they even hit a higher register on this track. Listen to them here.