And now the final list begins…here is part one of our “best albums” list, featuring our favorite Japanese releases of the year. #30 Wata Megumi Blindman Wata Megumi’s nervy pop has always felt just off, regardless of whether she was taking aim at society as a whole or otherwise. Blindman aims for something more ambitious,…
1. In a moment of pure honest — I kind of hate streaming services. Well, at least as someone maintaining a blog (ha!) in 2016 (ha ha!), as lots of great albums appear on, like, Apple Music, but I feel like I can’t really write about them here, since they seem so inaccessible to most…
Now more than ever, the dreamy escapism of J-pop duo Her Ghost Friend sure would come in handy. Three years after their last album, the duo are back with a new album, out tomorrow in Japan. “Matataki” is the first taste of it, and like the pair’s previous efforts, it’s a soft, string-accented pop number…
Geez, this week is off to a great start. Colorful J-pop duo Her Ghost Friend are back with “Knock Knock,” an extremely playful number that finds producer DJ Obake treating sounds like gooey taffy. From the start, “Knock Knock” drips in samples of birds, scattered sounds and the titular phrase before segueing into a slightly…
Her Ghost Friend occupy one of the stranger niches in modern J-Pop music. They are, distinctively, pop…there are clear, catchy choruses supported by twinkly instrumentation and Shinobu Ono’s lovely sing-rapping. Yet they aren’t quite in that hallowed upper crust of mainstream music, rather caught somewhere between front-row-at-Tower-Records and indie. They’ve released two great albums…a solid…