Music and stuff. But mostly just music.
An eerie, crackly beat and deep bass with a spooked and plaintive vocal. Reminds me of Tricky’s side project Nearly God, from about 15 years ago. A tune to get lost in.
I notice that the King Midas Sound album Waiting For You is in The Wire magazine’s top 10 for 2009. And Kevin Martin (The Bug) is one of the band members. He’s gone up in my estimation.
A very fun cut-up of an old orchestral piece over a chugging disco beat. Halfway through, the original main theme plays unaccompanied for a few bars. I laughed when I recognised it. Then there’s an amusing Beatbox Saboteurs moment when the beat comes in under the original. Nice.
Source: On the Wire
This is understated and great. The vocals are spoken by a woman in a deadpan English accent over a crunchy lo-fi metronomic rhythm. ‘Hello. My name is Elmo. I do this live show to sell my promo.”
Live Show is the standout track on OMO’s album, The White Album. It’s worth listening to, but not quite as good as that other White Album.
Source: On the Wire
This is a band that makes a worthwhile electronic/rock combination. Tracks like Girl make me want to jump out of my skin. The new single Back on my Feet is in this vein. Big big sound, fast with drums and guitars and vocal histrionics. Strings, too. And adrenaline, lots of adrenaline.
Hilarious. Perhaps in response to the hundreds of Japanese artists singing in heavily-accented English, Freezepop have come up with a lovely pop tune, sung sweetly in Japanese with a heavy English accent. That’s really all you need to know about this track, except that it’s very cute and a fine and hummable song even without its considerable novelty value. Ee dess yoh!
Ai Otsuka’s big hit is as sweet and fresh and zingy as its titular cherry. I may be the thousandth person to say this, but at least I am the first to use the phrase “titular cherry” while doing so. It’s been re-released on her hits and remixes album LOVE is BEST, with the emphatic capitalisation.
Source: Japanator Radio 113
Shonen knife are a great straight-ahead guitar pop band with female vocals. They sing in English as well as Japanese. I have a remix CD of theirs, which is one of my favourite CDs — there’s a juddering Alec Empire remix, and the Bis remix of Wind Your Spring is as absolutely mighty as you would expect.
Shonen Knife released an album, Supergroup, this year. Japanator Radio played a few Shonen Knife tracks to mark the occasion. The album’s title track is a nice Ramones-y number — there’s also another track called Ramones Forever, so it all starts to make some kind of sense. Their cover of The Carpenters’ Top of the World seems a bit flat compared to the stellar original though.
Source: Japanator Radio 106
I heard this band first on last.fm, and recently heard a few more of their songs on Japanator Radio. Jaunty! Lightweight! Quirky! It’s that Shibuya sound that I just can’t get enough of. Love Giraffe for example — cute, sweet and fun, and that’s just the title! Then there’s Red Car, which is much more sophisticated — it reminds me of Miss Kittin. And their version of Erik Satie’s First Gymnopidie strikes just the right balance between eccentric, and very eccentric.
Their earlier album Pull the Rabbit Ears is not quite as good, really. Except for the title and cover, which are awesome.
Source: Japanator Radio 106
I like Micro-Escopio’s brand of melodic chiptune techno electronic fun. And “The Road to Masada” in particular has the most insanely catchy and memorable little hook I have heard. The only awkward thing about having instrumental tracks like this running through your head is that you can’t sing them — whistling and humming are the only realistic options. Luckily, this track is fairly easy to whistle, except for the harmonies at the end. Still, sounds great to me.
This is just so catchy. I love the Raveonettes’ sound, all reverbed wall-of-sound guitar and OTT ’50s-style vocals. I can’t resist this opportunity to reminisce about seeing the Raveonettes play at the Fuji Rock Festival in 2003. Nice to hear that they’re still going strong and their studied Scandinavian cool is intact.