Take cues from your idols long enough and you might just outlive them and sound unique all your own. Kyoto’s New House have made no secret that a lot of their sonic cues come from American outfit Animal Collective, and their sophomore album Kaleidoscopic Anima continues to find the outfit exploring the campfire-side, howling, semi-psychedelic…
One of the trickiest things about covering Japanese bands is comparing acts in Japan to Western artists…most of the time, it ends up being misguided, a lazy way for writers to create a connect-the-dots situation that makes it easier to describe the group’s sound. Or just be a total cop out…Kyary Pamyu Pamyu as Japanese…
Call And Response Record’s new compilation album Dancing After 1 AM didn’t need a hook to grab our attention. The 18-track album (full disclosure: released by our friend Ian Martin) features new songs from some of the best rock artists going in Japan. She Talks Silence contribute a shadowy guitar number, while The Mornings jerky…
It took me a few listens to even hear any hint of the New House track on this, HNC’s “remix” of “He Howls” off of that Tokyo band’s Burning Ship Fractal from earlier this year (remember that album?). The original version of “He Howls” is a plenty-good song, a squiggly highlight from an inconsistent album…
It has been two-and-a-half years in the making, but finally this March Tokyo outfit New House will release a debut full-length on Second Royal records. It has a math-tastic title (Burning Ship Fractal, the Wikipedia page almost made me faint from numbers), really bad cover art (at the top, yeesh) and as of right now…