Talking City 1994 is a very talented Osaka-based band, but the individual members are insanely talented too. Soleil Soleil has been creating fidgety dance music of all sorts over the last few years and has probably been the most visible individual player in the group. Yet right up there is the band’s guitarist Ryo Arimura, who makes music independently under the name In The Blue Shirt. He’s been putting out great dancefloor-oriented music over the past year (behind the scenes here: I have wanted to do a post about them, but I kept waiting for, like, a full-length album or EP instead of just one track. Giving in now and just catching up). His latest, “Dreams Made Of Yoshidayama,” is a fantastic cut of sample funk (in a similar vein to SAINT PEPSI or anyone on Keats Collective). It’s a simple trick – unearth an old record, zero in on the tastiest bit, and slice it up into pure sonic confection – but In The Blue Shirt nails it here with this hiccuping number. Bonus points for keeping it brief and making the replay button a must.
Browsing through his entire SoundCloud page is encouraged, but one other highlight from the last month is his “cover” of Bibio’s “Lover’s Carvings,” which turns it into a thumping number (like, seriously, the only real addition are more beats) that flips a headphone number into a floor filler.