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…
First Station To Station of 2012, rejoice rejoice! Been a long time since we have journeyed into this sketchy sonic territory, but Music Station doesn’t disappoint this week, giving us a surprisingly wide variety of J-Pop (and K-Pop!) to sample and eventually stick our tongues out at. Let’s get the rust off. Ikimono-gakari “いつだって僕らは” [youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGttchG98RI&ob=av3e”]…
[youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1Lrj9kmxJM”] Few bands manage to tightrope between pop success and artistically sound music as well as Tokyo Jihen do. New single “Sora Ga Natteiru” once again finds the group laying out a technically monster pop joint…see the soaring chorus which all but cement that status…while doing enough to seem like they work off the grid…
Just like the song list, I intend to share 25 albums almost surely overlooked by the West that I really enjoyed in the past year. Of course, I missed just as many great albums and a year from now I’ll probably regret/want to expand this. Yet these 25 albums definitely deserve your attention. 25. Hideki…
20. Your Gold, My Pink “Adolescence” Back in May I saw Your Gold, My Pink play the Nara Street Style Music Festival, going into their late-day set absolutely jazzed to see what they could do live. An hour later I wanted to hightail it to the McDonald’s across the street to drown my disappointment in…