Borrowed Scenery
I liked Yosi Horikawa’s Vapors so much that I named it the best Japanese album of the year in 2013. He seems to have spent the past six years refining rather than rethinking his MO, which involves sculpting field recordings into rhythmic soundscapes as fecund as a rainforest at midnight. Spaces is totally out of step with current trends, and some of these tracks wouldn’t sound out of place on a Buddha Bar compilation – until you listen closer, and discover all the life that’s teeming on the surface.
Kukangendai – Palm
I liked Yosi Horikawa’s Vapors so much that I named it the best Japanese album of the year in 2013. He seems to have spent the past six years refining rather than rethinking his MO, which involves sculpting field recordings into rhythmic soundscapes as fecund as a rainforest at midnight. Spaces is totally out of step with current trends, and some of these tracks wouldn’t sound out of place on a Buddha Bar compilation – until you listen closer, and discover all the life that’s teeming on the surface.
Ideologic Organ
Calling a band “tight” isn’t really a compliment unless they’re doing something interesting with it. I used to feel as indifferent about Kukangendai as every other technically prodigious math-rock band since Battles, but the group have evolved dramatically since decamping to Kyoto. On Palm, it’s like they’ve transcended the metronomic riffing of old and entered the quantum realm. If you thought everything a guitar band could do has already been done, listen to this.
Koeosaeme – Obanikeshi
Orange Milk Records
This is what your brain looks like on Twitter, I guess. Koeosaeme’s second LP for Orange Milk is aural chaos of the most engrossing kind, blending the meticulous sound design of post-club music with a more concrète sensibility that chucks acoustic instruments into the blender alongside the digital gristle. It comes close to replicating the uncanny shock of hearing James Ferraro’s Far Side Virtual for the first time, and I’ve found myself returning to it far more than is probably healthy.
Hoshina Anniversary – Nihon no Ongaku
Orange Milk Records
This is what your brain looks like on Twitter, I guess. Koeosaeme’s second LP for Orange Milk is aural chaos of the most engrossing kind, blending the meticulous sound design of post-club music with a more concrète sensibility that chucks acoustic instruments into the blender alongside the digital gristle. It comes close to replicating the uncanny shock of hearing James Ferraro’s Far Side Virtual for the first time, and I’ve found myself returning to it far more than is probably healthy.
Youth
Along with Sugai Ken, Meitei and Foodman, Hoshina Anniversary is part of a recent crop of producers who’ve been weaving traditional Japanese influences into their work without succumbing to the stuffiness that this generally entails. While previous releases on imprints like Boys Noize have aimed squarely for the dancefloor, his debut full-length inhabits a more eldritch zone, where shakuhachi, koto and taiko blend with unruly acid synths that seem to have become self-aware.
YPY – Be A Little More Selfish
EM Records
More polyrhythmic antics from Koshiro Hino. While his previous YPY album for EM Records was a more abstract affair, this time he hews to a straight 4/4 pulse. You could drop the sinuous “Guilty Pants” during a peak-time set, although the epic slow-burn of “All Wounds” – incorporating Richard Skelton-esque strings by cellist Yuki Nakagawa – is the real standout. I’m also digging the intricate percussion zoetrope of “Resom Plants”: nowt like a bit of birdsong to send a track soaring skywards.
Karavi Roushi – Kiyosumi Kurokawa
Super Lights
As Red Bull asked last year: “Whatever happened to hip-hop sub-genre cloud rap?” If you still go weak around the knees when you hear an early Clams Casino track, this diaphanous debut from Karavi Roushi might tickle your fancy. Roushi has a good ear for melody and doesn’t lean too hard on the AutoTune, but it’s the production by Hydro Brain cohort Aquadab that makes this such an appealing prospect, dragging trap beats into a relaxation spa of pearly ’80s ambient synths.
She Luv It – s/t
Mouse
When I saw this Osaka ensemble for the first time a couple of months ago, I managed to brain myself on the vocalist’s bass while headbanging in the front row. Listening to their debut album, this seems like an entirely appropriate reaction. Tagging She Luv It as “hardcore” does a disservice to the sonic leviathan of their three-guitar, two-bass lineup. And while there’s plenty of blast-beat-driven moshpit bait here, the best bits come when the band opts for monolithic sludge riffage instead.
Kenmochi Hidefumi – Footwork
Kujaku Club
Though it’s been nine years since Kenmochi Hidefumi last released a solo album, the producer has been hiding in plain sight as the musical mastermind behind Wednesday Campanella. Footwork is a push-and-pull between floor-ready juke rhythms and lush orchestral textures, redolent of the tasteful permutations of its namesake genre that came in the wake of the first Bangs & Works compilation (Machinedrum, anyone?). It’s still danceable, but go easy: these surfaces are so polished you’re liable to slip up.
Wednesday Campanella & Oorutaichi – Yakushima Treasure
Warner Music Japan
Speaking of Wednesday Campanella, they’ve taken a more pastoral turn since 2017’s Superman, so this hook-up with Oorutaichi makes sense. Yakushima Treasure blends Japanese folklore with luminescent electronica, and Kom_I pushes her vocals in interesting directions, going full minyo in places. There’s an accompanying YouTube doc that probably adds some context, but it’s nicer to sit back and let your imagination do the rest.
Sakanaction – 834.194
Victor Entertainment
If 2019 is remembered for one thing, it’ll be the spectacle of star players fluffing a clear shot at goal. First Suchmos, now Sakanaction, whose long-gestating follow-up to 2012’s self-titled LP is a 90-minute epic of meh, like being stuck on a long car ride with only one tape to listen to. Bassist Ami Kusakari seems to be having fun, but the overall mood is torpid, and even a few bright spots on the second disc can’t disguise the fact that the best tracks are singles that have been knocking around for five years now.
Fumitake Tamura – Tamura 000
Black Smoker Records
It’s no overstatement to say that Fumitake Tamura is the only person who could release a CD in a clear jewel case with zero artwork for ¥3,000 and still expect me to buy it. Building on his psychotropic production work for last year’s Dooomboys album, he plunges even deeper into the haze on Tamura 000. There are still vestigial traces of beat music here, but the tracks are thick with humidity and dubbed-out to the nth degree: the ideal soundtrack for zonking out to when it’s too hot to see straight.
Graf Three – Give Everything and Live
Self-released
While musicians often form new bands in order to explore different approaches, Satoru Iwakami just seems to want to play as many Jesus Lizard tributes as possible. No bad thing, in my book. Compared to his work with the similarly inclined Sassya (whose sophomore LP dropped earlier this year), Graf Three has a greater sense of drama, and bassist Kazuhiro Kamei is a lot more fidgety than the former’s Megumi Noguchi. The band’s debut EP is taut, pissy, and as bracing as a kick in the shins.
Okinawa Electric Girl Saya x Ax – Chastity
Terminal Explosion
There’s a post-grad thesis waiting to be written about the unlikely convergence between the noise and idol-pop scenes. Following a path blazed by Tentenko, Okinawa Electric Girl Saya tries to keep one foot in both worlds. While recent live vids show her belting out Buck-Tick covers, this hook-up with Kyoto industrialist Ax (plus guests including Foodman and CRZKNY) is pretty convincing: punchy and varied, while offering enough dirt to keep full-bore noise bores happy.
EM Records
More polyrhythmic antics from Koshiro Hino. While his previous YPY album for EM Records was a more abstract affair, this time he hews to a straight 4/4 pulse. You could drop the sinuous “Guilty Pants” during a peak-time set, although the epic slow-burn of “All Wounds” – incorporating Richard Skelton-esque strings by cellist Yuki Nakagawa – is the real standout. I’m also digging the intricate percussion zoetrope of “Resom Plants”: nowt like a bit of birdsong to send a track soaring skywards.
Super Lights
As Red Bull asked last year: “Whatever happened to hip-hop sub-genre cloud rap?” If you still go weak around the knees when you hear an early Clams Casino track, this diaphanous debut from Karavi Roushi might tickle your fancy. Roushi has a good ear for melody and doesn’t lean too hard on the AutoTune, but it’s the production by Hydro Brain cohort Aquadab that makes this such an appealing prospect, dragging trap beats into a relaxation spa of pearly ’80s ambient synths.
Mouse
When I saw this Osaka ensemble for the first time a couple of months ago, I managed to brain myself on the vocalist’s bass while headbanging in the front row. Listening to their debut album, this seems like an entirely appropriate reaction. Tagging She Luv It as “hardcore” does a disservice to the sonic leviathan of their three-guitar, two-bass lineup. And while there’s plenty of blast-beat-driven moshpit bait here, the best bits come when the band opts for monolithic sludge riffage instead.
Kujaku Club
Though it’s been nine years since Kenmochi Hidefumi last released a solo album, the producer has been hiding in plain sight as the musical mastermind behind Wednesday Campanella. Footwork is a push-and-pull between floor-ready juke rhythms and lush orchestral textures, redolent of the tasteful permutations of its namesake genre that came in the wake of the first Bangs & Works compilation (Machinedrum, anyone?). It’s still danceable, but go easy: these surfaces are so polished you’re liable to slip up.
Warner Music Japan
Speaking of Wednesday Campanella, they’ve taken a more pastoral turn since 2017’s Superman, so this hook-up with Oorutaichi makes sense. Yakushima Treasure blends Japanese folklore with luminescent electronica, and Kom_I pushes her vocals in interesting directions, going full minyo in places. There’s an accompanying YouTube doc that probably adds some context, but it’s nicer to sit back and let your imagination do the rest.
Victor Entertainment
If 2019 is remembered for one thing, it’ll be the spectacle of star players fluffing a clear shot at goal. First Suchmos, now Sakanaction, whose long-gestating follow-up to 2012’s self-titled LP is a 90-minute epic of meh, like being stuck on a long car ride with only one tape to listen to. Bassist Ami Kusakari seems to be having fun, but the overall mood is torpid, and even a few bright spots on the second disc can’t disguise the fact that the best tracks are singles that have been knocking around for five years now.
Black Smoker Records
It’s no overstatement to say that Fumitake Tamura is the only person who could release a CD in a clear jewel case with zero artwork for ¥3,000 and still expect me to buy it. Building on his psychotropic production work for last year’s Dooomboys album, he plunges even deeper into the haze on Tamura 000. There are still vestigial traces of beat music here, but the tracks are thick with humidity and dubbed-out to the nth degree: the ideal soundtrack for zonking out to when it’s too hot to see straight.
Self-released
While musicians often form new bands in order to explore different approaches, Satoru Iwakami just seems to want to play as many Jesus Lizard tributes as possible. No bad thing, in my book. Compared to his work with the similarly inclined Sassya (whose sophomore LP dropped earlier this year), Graf Three has a greater sense of drama, and bassist Kazuhiro Kamei is a lot more fidgety than the former’s Megumi Noguchi. The band’s debut EP is taut, pissy, and as bracing as a kick in the shins.
Terminal Explosion
There’s a post-grad thesis waiting to be written about the unlikely convergence between the noise and idol-pop scenes. Following a path blazed by Tentenko, Okinawa Electric Girl Saya tries to keep one foot in both worlds. While recent live vids show her belting out Buck-Tick covers, this hook-up with Kyoto industrialist Ax (plus guests including Foodman and CRZKNY) is pretty convincing: punchy and varied, while offering enough dirt to keep full-bore noise bores happy.
Cutting Edge
The hit rate for rock albums released on Japanese majors is so low that Not Wonk stand out almost by default. Invariably tagged as punk in domestic media, the Hokkaido three-piece spend most of Down the Valley chasing the ghosts of ’90s alt-rock, propelled by frontman Shuhei Kato’s Buckley-indebted warble. They have a habit of surprising you repeatedly in the course of a single song, which cuts both ways, but there are enough peaks here for me to confidently state Not Wonk: not bad.
Universal Music Japan
I’ve long stopped expecting anything more than sophisticated cabaret pop from Sheena Ringo, and this collaboration-heavy effort spends far too long in the big-band comfort zone that’s defined so much of her post-Tokyo Jihen output. That said, there are a few moments where you’re reminded that this is the same experimenter who made Kalk Samen Kuri no Hana: witness the operatic bombast of the opening and closing tracks, and “Elopers,” an unlikely synth-metal duet with Atsushi Sakurai.
Presto!? Records
Calling the bluff of every vaporwave producer out there, Tasho Ishi lards his debut LP with references to Japanese Shit That Westerners Know, from Satoshi Nakamoto to Initial D to the Park Hyatt Tokyo (you remember Lost in Translation, right!?). Sonically, it’s mostly eldritch corporate muzak, but he has a crafty way of interpolating everyday sounds and scraps of banal conversation into the mix, reminding you that while most schmucks just dream of Tokyo, he’s actually living it.
φonon
Unless I’m mistaken, the “pad” of the title refers not to Bonnounomukuro’s home, but to his trusty MPC sampler. Rather than go all Prefuse 73 on us, the Kansai-based producer uses his weapon of choice to conjure a gloop of viscous textures and overlapping rhythms that only occasionally cohere into a discernible groove. The blasted sonics of “Footlooser by Your Side” recall Actress, but the album as a whole is more garish than that, like gazing over the landscape from Annihilation at sunset.
Companysha Ltd.
It feels too easy to compare this sax/guitar duo to Kaoru Abe and Masayuki Takanayagi, but that’s the first reference in the liner notes, so I’ll go with it. Like a Reiwa heir to Gradually Projection, We Oscillate! keeps things mostly lower-case, and the charm is in the editing. Rather than a longform set, Yamada and Kurosawa deploy specific techniques in a series of vignettes, with titles like “#10 (circular breathing + contact mic)” that only hint at the wonders within.
