I associate a lot of feelings with independent Japanese electronic music — joy, togetherness, escape, ecstasy, lower back pain (owing to a crowd surfer jumping directly onto me at a Pa’s Lam System show…great set, though). But vulnerability isn’t one that has exactly cropped up much in the decade I’ve been following it. Releases and…
Not everything has to be in a rush. Producer Amunoa’s Rusty Door finds the Trekkie Trax affiliate taking things a little bit easier — or at least just turning the tempo down — with their sliced-up-vocal approach to dance music. Opener “Laser Lips” features a steady trickle of stuttering syllables, but Amunoa chooses to let…
Producer Amunoa usually makes swift, sample-skipping tracks that feel like confetti cannons going off. But on “Alright Now,” they go a little bit more inward and try out a more relaxed pace. It opens in a daze, faded guitar notes swirling around before giving way for a beat content to shuffle along rather than burst…
Producer Amunoa excels at turning small moments into anthems. “Smmr” is poised as, well, a summer jam from the frantic artist, featuring a warm disco vibe and some sweltering synth work. The real hook of “Smmr” is the vocal snippet rippling throughout — it sounds like it was recorded through a talk box, but rather…
Calling something “underrated” often feels like a silly distinction, but I do kind of think Amunoa gets slightly overlooked in the Japanese electronic crowd. They are just so good at creating shifty little numbers, and using cut-up samples in a way that makes them stand out rather than blend in. “REM,” their latest, further shows…