Reviewed the perfectly enjoyable Style Band Tokyo compilation, featuring the likes of Hotel Mexico and Lillies And Remains, for The Japan Times today. Read it here. As mentioned, it’s a good collection but it also doesn’t shed a ton of light on what Style Band Tokyo really is about. The best discovery was Pop-Office, a…
Well, didn’t see this one coming – Tokyo duo Puffyshoes, previously keen to writing songs about fast food and monsters, have made a 19-minute-long album where the lyrics end up the highlight. It’s slightly unfair to categorize their past work as Fischer-Price-market friendly, as the strongest moments of the lo-fi band’s previous two releases zeroed…
In May, I found myself spending a rainy weekend in Tokyo. Somewhere between trips to Denny’s and the official NHK store to buy gifts for friends, I ended up in Shibuya’s club district, a vast stretch of nightclubs and love hotels staring each other down, intoxicated folks spilling out of both. This district, the name…
If NOKIES! can learn only one lesson from their debut release, I really hope that it’s they are a group that should release solely EPs. The type of energetic, soft-to-loud rock the Osaka group favors works well in the relatively short confines of an extended play, but could easily turn to exhausting fake enthusiasm if…
The Salyu X Salyu project, a collaborative effort between J-Pop belter Salyu and future-savvy producer Cornelius, showcases one of the rarest forms of the “superstar musicians team up” trope. The duo’s album S(o)un(d)beams neither consolidates one another’s strengths into a unified style…see Madvillainy or to a lesser degree the work of Gnarls Barkley…nor do they…