Good couple of days for folks who like J-pop, but prefer the artists operating in the middle-class zone rather than the upper echelons (which is not to say Nishino Kana lacks solid moments). A few familiar mid-tier faces released new songs (and accompanying videos) over the last two days. One outfit was Sugar’s Campaign, the…
And I thought I’d go on break this week. The duo of Seiho and Avec Avec make music together as Sugar’s Campaign, and their first major-label album comes out this January. And here’s the first single, “Holiday,” which….ahhhhhhh so good. They merge late ’70s city pop sounds (the chorus) with very “now” touches (helium vocals,…
Look, I don’t want to take anything away from Izumi Makuro. She sounds just fine here, rapping in a relaxed way that sounds effortless and certainly isn’t as, shall we say, acquired as other pop-rap outfits in Japan. If anything, it is easily compared to Her Ghost Friend, except with a more hip-hop bend. It’s…
When electronic music producers get together in Kansai, they get down. The best example of this, up until now, was Sugar’s Campaign, a project that brought bubbly beatmaker Avec Avec together with the usually trippy Seiho. Tell the two to create something new together, though, and you end up with party-starting pop indebted to the…
The top of the J-Pop world remains cemented in place so far in 2012 – the best selling albums and singles have been from all the usual suspects of the Japanese music landscape. AKB48, Ikimono-gakari, EXILE, everything Johnny’s…with a few exceptions, the dominant music of 2012 has been pretty much the same as the last…