Especia – Secret Jive by tubesoda 1. The first taste of Especia’s major-label debut left me on the fence, but in all honesty my real feelings became clear soon after. I haven’t listened to or watched the video for “We Are Especia ~ Naki Nagara Video” once since that first post. Considering all of the…
Clip art forever 5. Metome Objet It was another solid year for the Kansai electronic music scene, and 2015 looks like it will keep the trend rolling – just look at this Seiho and Avec Avec video! Still, the best-album-out-of-the-region race ended really early in 2014 – Osaka’s Metome dropped Objet just as the calendar…
Note: This will be the final regular update around these parts for a bit…starting tomorrow (hopefully!) we will share MBM’s top 20 Japanese albums of the year. And then we will go on a vacation where posts will be more infrequent. Fittingly, we end with Especia. Osaka idol outfit Especia – who take cues from…
It isn’t necessarily made clear here, but if you follow Make Believe Melodies on Twitter or on Tumblr, you’ll pick up on the fact that J-pop idols are responsible (or, at least represent) for some great music. This outlet…which, in theory, focuses more on the independent/not-mainstream side of Japanese music except, uhhh, when it doesn’t…hasn’t…
Let’s take a moment to appreciate that, in 2014, there is a pop group built around the visual/sometimes sonic aesthetics of Internet micro-genre Vaporwave, and that everyone behind them nails it. Especia have been running with the Vaporwave tag for a while now…one of the biggest thrills of the past six months was seeing them…