Japan – cute place right? Experienced exclusively through the “news of the weird” pages/blogs, the country seems like a toddler’s imagination turned real, all Hello Kitty and robots marrying people. The number of cute mascots vying for my attention on my daily commute to work have convinced me that if Pikachu appeared on the national…
Add Puffy Shoes to the list of “Japanese bands about to drop hotly anticipated LPs in 2010.” The cutegaze (shits now trademarked don’t you take it) duo will release Something Gold in June, via Social Alienation. To get the world revved up for this full length, Puffy Shoes has given us “Jacky Jones” with accompanying…
Talk about good timing – around the same day Pitchfork posts an article about the rise of the cassette tape, one of Japan’s young acts making heavy use of said platform post a new song onto their MySpace. Puffy Shoes’, whose debut cassette was distributed by Scotch Tapes, “Lazy Seventeen” highlights the duo’s garage-fuzz sound,…
Is it too early to start talking about “labels to watch in 2010?” If not, I present the cassette-only (OK, they also plan on putting out 8-tracks) label Scotch Tapes for your consideration. They have a heck-of-a-lotta bands on their roster and recently got mentioned on Gorilla Vs. Bear. For this blog’s purposes, Scotch Tapes…
Ian Martin of Japan Post’s 2009-in-review piece has a lot of points worthy of discussion (preview: you can expect something about his section on electropop in the near future), but the best bit comes at the end when Martin lists five bands he could see having big years in 2010. The group from his list…