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Tag Archives: ELEN NEVER SLEEPS

New Elen Never Sleeps: “My Aquamarine/Spinning Wheel”

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Up to now, Tokyo’s Elen Never Sleeps (sometimes written in all-caps) been making music almost too easily described as “dreamy,” intimate pop covered in a haze that makes the whole track sound like it could vanish into the air any second. Yet he’s accomplished an unlikely feet with his new pair of songs – Elen Never Sleeps retains the dream-like atmosphere while making these two new numbers his most immediate and awake works to date. Both “My Aquamarine” and “Spinning Wheel” show Elen growing as an artist, his best music to date. Oh, and you can download both for free here, making it all even better.

Whereas older Elen tunes sometimes took time to get going and often sounded soft, “My Aquamarine” wastes no times skipping out the gate and boasts a higher volume than anything on the previously released Blue Dogma EP. Despite the changes, the vocals still carry a My Bloody Valentine-like impact, lovely but also obscured just enough to be a bit mysterious. Now, though, the singing meets one of the best melodies Elen Never Sleeps has thought up yet. Even better is “Spinning Wheel,” where the gauzy atmosphere conjured up by the voice and guitar get joined by…something sort of funky. This is the first Elen track that doesn’t sound entirely like pre-sleep wondering, but rather something begging to be dance to. It’s an exciting development, courtesy Elen Never Sleeps best two songs yet.

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Make Believe Mix For October 2011 Featuring Kido Yoji, Canopies And Drapes And Avec Avec

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Uh oh…introducing a new feature, the (hopefully) monthly Make Believe Mix! Sometimes writing isn’t enough to get people interested in great music…sometimes you just got push a bunch of it towards them and say “just listen to this.” Welp, that’s what we are trying here! With this mix, we hope to share great under-the-radar Japanese music to a greater audience. I’ve never done anything like this before so I’m sure there are some screw ups within the actual mix…please let me know, so I can make future installments sound better.

Below is the list of artists appearing in this mix, in chronological order. Click the links to read more about them and find out how to buy/get their music. All artists featured gave me permission to include their music in this mix.

Kido Yoji “Call A Romance” – From the Call A Romance EP out now on KSR. Buy on iTunes or here.

Moscow Club “Pacific 724” – From the 909 State EP, self-released. Download it and more here.

The Moments “Short Trip” – Self-released, available here along with other tunes.

Super VHS “Girlfriends” – From the Girlfriends EP, self-released. Available here.

Canopies And Drapes “Sleeping Under The Bed” – From the Violet, Lilly, Rose, Daisy EP out on Love Action. Get it here.

Elen Never Sleeps “Blue Dogma” – From the Blue Dogma EP, self-released. Get it here.

Avec Avec “Kuzuha No Sunday” – From the Plastic Soul EP, self-released. Buy it here.

New ELEN NEVER SLEEPS: Blue Dogma EP

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In which ELEN NEVER SLEEPS peels back a few of those dreamy layers he’s built his sound on up to this point to let his voice take center spotlight. The Blue Dogma EP isn’t a major shift in the guy’s style, but on this ready-to-download release he’s stripped the backing music and bit in favor of more emphasis on his voice. Now instead of sounding like Wild Nothing, ELEN NEVER SLEEP resembles the more night-centric flights of Jeremy Jay, down to their voices sounding surprisingly similar. The EP as a whole ends up a mixed bag – this vocal-focused approach sometimes leads to the tracks feeling a bit boney and treading water, like on the sleepy opener “Some Surreal Scene.” Yet elsewhere this move pays off, like on the gorgeous title track, which pits ELEN’s at-times high-pitched voice against some chest-thumping drum beats. Overall, the China Blue EP remains the better release, though Blue Dogma (dude likes the color blue) has its moments (another one, by the way, would be the “chorus” to “Lera”). Listen below.

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New ELEN NEVER SLEEPS: “The Golden Minor”

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Pulling off an intimate atmosphere in music isn’t easy, but completely doable in various ways. One could always go for minimalism, using as little as possible to create the feeling of staring someone in the face, like The XX. There is also the sexy R&B route, but that’s not exactly the “intimacy” at hand. ELEN NEVER SLEEPS’ newest track “The Golden Minor” touches on another way, though – the dream-pop route, where the music covers the listener like a blanket and makes them feel safe.

ELEN NEVER SLEEPS washes “The Golden Minor” in warm synths that bless the track with an air of fragility, one swoop of a hand could dissolve the whole thing like a spider web. The vocals drift around in the void, offering a human touch, but “The Golden Minor” ends up a triumph of the enveloping noises around it. It’s deeply gentle, the sort of song you want to tell a secret to. Listen below.

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A Good Place: ELEN NEVER SLEEPS China Blue EP

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It’s super tempting to call Tokyo artist ELEN NEVER SLEEPS “shoegaze,” mainly because dude offered the world a cover of My Bloody Valentine’s “When You Sleep.”

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ELEN NEVER SLEEPS certainly boasts characteristics of that sound, but even his take on the Loveless classic reveals something a bit more complex. There are traces of “hipster R&B” which is just an idiotic way of saying a lot of space for the vocals to do their thing, such as go off into sexy wordless “ahhhhs.” Yet it also brings to mind similarly tough groups to place like Wild Nothing or Twin Shadow, who dabble in big fuzzy distortion but also turn to the 80s for the bulk of their inspiration.

The new China Blue EP further makes the task of categorizing ELEN NEVER SLEEPS even tougher. The title track sounds like it could be a lost cut from Wild Nothing’s excellent Gemini, an overall hazy feel concealing a strong sense of yearning and non-chillwave love of a decade far gone. Follow-up cuts “Crescent Cry” and “Sherry” touch on similar ideas, ELEN’s voice especially prominent as it whisps between the dusk-lit sounds within. Clocking in at under ten minutes, China Blue EP is a quick but gorgeous introduction to an artist way more complex than a simple tag. Listen below.

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