We are inching closer and closer to the release of Seiho’s Collapse, out via Leaving Records on May 20, and Thump has shared another song from the fractured collection called “Exhibition.” Similar to “Peach And Pomegranate” before it, this is a jagged affair building up to a release that bursts the song apart, only for the Osaka producer to reassemble it with new details (animal sounds, bright little piano notes). It’s a solid representation of what Seiho does all across Collapse, which is add a dash of avant-garde thinking to songs that still bounce hard. Listen above.
Tag Archives: seiho
Seiho Pays Tribute To Prince With Ehiorobo On “Adore” Cover
The world is still coping with the sudden passing of Prince last week, and plenty of artists have shared their own tributes to him over the last few days. Over the weekend, Seiho honored his “eternal star” by teaming up with New Jersey artist Ehiorobo to create a woozy cover of “Adore,” complete with mid song sample of Prince himself speaking from an interview. Listen above.
Future Shock: Daichi Miura’s “Cry & Fight”
Now, I’m not a brave enough soul to say the mainstream J-pop scene has undergone a paradigm shift over the last two years — save for the ongoing band boom, the Johnny’s projects and middle-of-the-road idol groups of the country continue to soak up way too much space for music that is an afterthought — but it has gotten a lot more interesting. Thanks fragmentation of audiences! A lot of wonky artists who would be indie-sideshows just a few years ago — seriously, 2010/2011/2012 was just all idols all the time — are starting to make inroads onto national TV and major labels. Again, plenty of garbage still gets way too much attention, but a lot of risks are also starting to get in the limelight (and let’s raise the stakes…J-pop is now at least as interesting as Western pop…I mean, come on).
Part of the intrigue is playing out at the production level. This isn’t entirely new — during the idol-boom days, the best thing to come about was more left-field producers getting a chance to make music for groups (because they were a cheap option for labels) and sort of Trojan Horse their way in to mainstream consciousness. Plenty of great artists got shine because of this…but the flaw in the system was the idol-boom relied on hardcore pockets of fans. They were reaching new ears…but weren’t expanding beyond the die hard types. Tofubeats made plenty of great songs for Lyrical School, but he’s only taken off…on his own. But now producers with ideas you wouldn’t expect from a J-pop major label are starting to get more visible work — Broken Haze helped service Sky-Hi’s “Limo,” and now Seiho is handling production for Daichi Miura’s “Cry & Fight.”
I know only the most basic info about Daichi Miura…he’s from Okinawa, he’s an artist on the rise and his previous singles run from pretty solid to fake-ass Hoshino Gen YouTube-core. I’m writing about “Cry & Fight” because Seiho handles the production. And overall, I like what’s happening here. The opening piano bits are straight out of the David Guetta playbook and not so sure about the trap breakdowns, but I also am not naive enough to know Miura is a pop star on the rise, and he can’t be singing over “Wet Asphalt.” And plenty of Seiho comes through — the nervy tempo changes, the way the hook bends in to itself, the song’s inability to sit still at any point, THAT WATER DROP SOUND. And those tight bass contortions in the final leg, I would not have imagined an Avex song sounding like the inside of Ochiai Soup in 2013.
J-pop in 2016 is…interesting, in every sense of the word. Listen above.
New Seiho: “Peach And Pomegranate”
The first time I ever saw Seiho play — and talked to him at all — came at the very end of 2011, at an EDM party in Osaka. He wasn’t making bass-heavy whiplash music, though, but rather cosmic-leaning stuff that would have slid in well within the LA beat scene. Since, he’s explored many directions — euphoric release, more traditional house, sweltering swerves — and his latest song “Peach And Pomegranate” sees Seiho returning back to space. It resembles, in structure, one of his more ragin’ cuts, as it builds and drops and works in all sorts of twists between those two points, but Seiho deconstructs the process so that only the barest materials are present. The inclusion of nature samples, like birds chirping, underlines this, like he’s putting this together in a zen garden.
It comes off of his new full-length album Collapse, which is out May 20 via LA’s Leaving Records. Listen above.
New Seiho: “Do Not Leave Wet”
I’m not a fan of making excuses for…anything really.* When I see a goofy disclaimer at the top of an article or a blog post, I tend to close the article. That said…I have been really out of it for the past week, and the coming week and a half is going to be equally bad (most likely!). So I don’t know…weirdly enough, all of this stuff is related to work, but not any music writing work, which has helped me break a bit out of a different slump I had over the summer where I…didn’t listen to as much music as I used to? Now, I want to just surround myself with music and drown out all the other things…the one positive of recent stressful times is I’m remembering how important all this is to me.
So…Seiho released a new song a few days ago, in collaboration with something called Tokyo Scene (Powered By Smirnoff). It isn’t as manic as one would expect, but…and again I nudge at the aforementioned stress…it is rather a very laid-back number full of bird sounds and what could very well be three-dimensional squeak toys. It’s what I imagine a vacation in Seiho’s mind looks like, which is to say still very discombobulated and hyperreal, but also pretty chilled out. Listen above.
*in a public forum, but catch me when it comes time to “study for a test” or “go to sleep.”