#10 Wai Wai Music Resort WWMR 1 If total number of plays need to be considered for any favorites list, Wai Wai Music Resort ran away with my 2019. Whether because I needed to concentrate on work or simply wanted a stereophonic sound trip bound for endless summer, WWMR 1 delivered pure breeze. It’s also…
#30 Haruno Filia Vocalid remains one of the most intriguing instruments available in the world today, and 2018 saw plenty of artists — many of them outside of Japan — use it in thrilling ways (check Kira’s The Introduction for one good example). Domestically, Haruno’s Filia stuck around in our minds the most this year,…
J-pop is a mess right now. The biggest challenge at the moment is sifting through everything to figure out just what’s going on, and if you zeroed in squarely on what charts say is doing well, I wouldn’t blame you for feeling underwhelmed. Yet dive into the vast middle and you’ll find all sorts of…
Few artists can point to a co-sign from Hikaru Utada ahead of their major-label solo debut, but Nariaki Obukuro has got it. And if more artists like this are going to creep closer to the spotlight, the widening of the J-pop industry is only proving fruitful. Obukuro co-founded Tokyo Recordings and has worked under the…