Another 12 months down, and that means it is time to have some fun and go extra-long for year-end content. Japanese music generally felt either too focused on celebrating the fading days of the Heisei era or on crowning new J-pop superstars for the next generation — or giving us truly left-field viral hits like…
Toyomu’s radical re-works — especially that one — are always going to be the immediate image of the Kyoto artist for a lot of people. But “Maboroshi” shines because it channels all the other elements that have been present in Toyomu’s original music, synthesizing them into one squiggly track. Traces of his Brainfeeder-loving early days…
#20 Cicada Formula It’s easy to recreate the past, as no shortage of Japanese bands borrowing from ’80s city pop and ’90s acid jazz have shown in recent years (and, really, globally…this is all Daft Punk’s fault). Cicada’s earliest work slid in nicely to this safe but oftentimes overly familiar space. But Formula decided to…
In a little over a week’s time, Toyomu (mandatory “it is actually all caps, TOYOMU, if you want to know”) shares his debut EP, Zekkei, featuring all original material. This is kind of misleading — more like his first without using any samples, or at least samples he made himself — but the end result…
Oh how the tables have turned…as mentioned the other day mid rant, I’ve yet to listen to Hikaru Utada’s Fantome. Nobody wanted my pitches about it…so I didn’t really have a reason to run out and get it (and it’s not like J-pop-leaning Twitter wasn’t incessantly talking about it or anything). So…yeah, still not sure…