Year-end list season has become a kind of exhausting exercise, at least when giving a cursory glance at the social media feeds of music fans, industry types, writers and more. Reaction to bigger rankings tends to be more “sure, fine” then excited, while Resident Advisor even made a big deal about dropping lists all together…
Wasabi Tapes continue to be the go-to destination in Japan for nerve-frying experimental music, and the label’s two newest albums highlight two sides to their approach. PF’s Dreamscape recalls the chaotic sample-deluge of DJWWWW and N. Brennan’s Scary Moments series, with sounds sourced from radio station bumps, movies and video games (MONSTER KILL) colliding together….
Pachinko isn’t a pleasurable experience. This is especially when it comes to the noise those Christmas-tree-bright machines spit out as you try to launch metal ball bearings into Goku’s nose. Anyone who has even walked by a parlor at the moment the automatic doors open know it’s a pounding, crushing aural feeling. Yet that’s exactly…
Half of this entry should be relatively self-explanatory — these are albums that, for various reasons, just missed our final cut. All of them are worth your listening time, and them falling just outside of the top 30 really shows just how much good music came out of Japan. The other, though, is a bit…
Few experiences in Japan are as overwhelming as entering into a pachinko parlor. The noise within is overwhelming, a cling-claning nightmare of electronics and sirens, a noise show for every neighborhood in the country. It’s the sort of thing that’s easy to imagine being just too much — I’ve lasted, at most, ten minutes in…