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New Talking City 1994 (right?): “We Can Ride The Boogie”

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Cool journalistic work on display: I googled “Talking City 1994 SoundCloud” and this song came up! Boom, hire me New York Times. The Osaka outfit (probably, or at least someone associated with them) is responsible for “We Can Ride The Boogie,” which dips into one of the pop music’s finest tracks…Michael Jackson’s “Rock With You”…to take the titular phrase and morph it into a slinky dance number. What’s surprising is how unedited the vocal sample gliding through the middle of this number is – instead of warping it or trying to hide the source, Talking City just let Michael Jackson’s voice flutter out in the open, proudly leaning on one of the world’s most famous voices as the backbone of their song. Less surprising – how catchy this is, how every element clicks into place at, during certain stretches, practically swelters. Oh, and one heck of a great vocal hook. Listen below.

New Talking City 1994: Our Country

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Talking City 1994 are one of those outfits that is constantly releasing new music, uploading new songs to SoundCloud at a very fast clip and forcing anyone interested in them to always be on their toes. It can oftentimes feel like they are just spitting songs out into the online void, without much cohesion. Plenty of good moments, but they can be a band that’s easy to skim by.

Which makes Our Country so surprising – this is presumably an EP created from some tracks they posted online over the last few weeks, yet taking in this four-song set at once reveals Our Country to be a unified and exciting release from the Osaka band. Talking City 1994 have been a slippery outfit from the get-go, when they didn’t believe in the space key, as the last time they felt this connected was on their weeble-wobble debut I Can Feel Your Soul. They’ve changed drastically here, though – Our Country is sparse, slow and dusty. It opens with the trudging doo-wop (featuring harp notes, whoa!) of “Frost Heaving,” which showcases one of the most winning changes the band has embraced – their vocals no long sound spastic, but slower and more Spencer Krug-like (Wolf Parade, Sunset Rubdown, Moonface). They also seem more romantic here – “The Course Of Love” is a sweet, intimate number while “Two Of Us” actually channels Bill Withers “Just The Two Of Us” but with a Talking City 1994 twist. Our Country is a wonderful left turn from this group, and a reminder of how much potential they have. Listen below.

New Music Round-Up: i-fls, Yoshino Yoshikawa, House Of Tapes, Talking City 1994

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Too much good music has popped up online over the last few days…better round it all up, fast.

– The ever-productive i-fls has a new album out soon, but for now enjoy a song that won’t be on his latest full-length, the “Tanabata greeting track” “You Made A Constellation.” It shimmers and whirs, i-fls capturing a whole lot of wonder and nerves in just over two minutes.

– Yoshino Yoshikawa deals in what he calls “ultra pop,” which is a sort of hi-definition, always-buzzing take on pop. It’s pretty glorious if you are into music being broadcast in high definition (I am), and he’s got a great new song called “I Feel You, I Love You” to check out. It’s high-energy fun, complete with manipulated singing.

– Want something a little more crushing? Welp, here comes Nagoya’s House Of Tapes with a new track that feels like being caught in that trash crusher from Star Wars. One interesting development though – between all those bone-shattering beats, he’s added in vocals, which somehow make the whole track even more unnerving.

Last, Osaka’s Talking City 1994 have a pleasant, bouncy new track for you to listen to. The strings that pop up at the end are an especially nice touch for them.


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New Talking City 1994: Roll Dance She Take EP

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Late last week, we wrote about how Osaka’s Talking City 1994 had a new song called “Shine” available on their SoundCloud page. Turns out “Shine” was a preview of a new EP the off-kilter released over the weekend, called Roll Dance She Take. It’s only three songs long, but the tracks here do show the band setting off in new directions. As hinted at by “Shine,” Talking City 1994 are trying to sound more locked-in, more capable of creating something borderline funky. The title track is one of the tightest things Talking City 1994 have ever done, the bass lines being especially prominent and the vocals less frantic than on everything they put out in 2012. They haven’t turned into masters of sonic fidelity – the synths still sound endearingly cheap, especially the ones opening up “Shine” – but Roll Dance She Take finds them edging to something more polished. Listen here.

Busy Busy Week Catch-Up Post: Talking City 1994, Miii And Kenie_T

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This seemed to have been the week when a bunch of really talented Japanese artists went and released great new music all at once. Keeping up with all of it could be tough, but for the most part we touched on everything we wanted to. Except for the following three songs, two from acts we’ve been enjoying for some time and one new one that we will be keeping an eye on from here on out.

– Lost in the year-of-the-end list-o-mania back in December – Osaka’s Talking City 1994, who released a very strong EP of disjointed but catchy synth rock. Earlier this week, they released a new song called “Shine,” which finds the group getting into a slinkier disposition. It’s a funky number that seeks out a good groove and then electric-slides its way to the end, with only the vocals and a few synth additions in the back adding an element of unease to the song. Fingers crossed they put even more out in 2013.

– We long ago established that Tokyo producer Miii isn’t just a brostep-only producer, as he routinely branches off into all sorts of sounds. Still, the opening to newest track “I Was Blue” shocks because, for an entire minute, the only sound present is a mournful piano. It’s eventually joined by a skeletal beat and some minor-key twinkles, but this is Miii at his most minimalist, as he lets the ivories dominate the sonic and emotional center of the song. It’s also tagged as “emo,” so I hope Miii is doing OK!

– Last, a new artist certainly worth keeping an eye on – Kenie_T. He’s friends with mus.hiba, who Tweeted about Kenie_T’s new song “Computer Romance” at the beginning of the week. Like mus.hiba, Kenie_T dabbles in Vocaloid sounds, most clearly evident on his older track “Find The Spring” available here. Yet “Computer Romance” pulls an interesting trick – after an opening that brings to mind the two songs on Moscow Club’s 2012 Bradbury EP, Kenie_T covers the songs in synths, turning it into a bright pulsing wonder. He breaks up all the synthesized swooning with a harp-like twinkle affect, and in the second half he introduced the Vocaloid voice…buried in the cascade of electronics. That digitized voice sounds celestial under all those synths, and the track as a whole is quite gorgeous.