So that’s 2019 done with, then. As we prepare to embark on a decade that will probably be even darker and dumber than the previous one, here’s my final round-up of the year’s notable Japanese releases (which, as ever, I’m defining as artists based in Japan, regardless of nationality). I’ll be posting a best-of list in early January, because I imagine everyone will already be feeling nostalgic for the 2010s by then.
Note: you can read the previous editions here, here and here.
Self-released (Bandcamp)
This trio are one of the few Japanese groups keeping the ’90s post-hardcore tradition alive, though they’ve whittled it down until there’s only gristle and bone left. Steered by drummer Piro, they have a canny way of letting the rhythm slacken and then pulling it suddenly taut, heard to good effect on this live recording. It’s a welcome addition to a slim discography, and proceeds go to relief for Typhoon Hagibis, which hit the band’s native Koriyama hard last October.
Horo (Bandcamp)
As the press materials drily explain, the fact that Tochigi native Maiko Okimoto’s music clicks with techno crowds is “a happily incidental result and not a structural design.” With references to quantum physics and Buddhist philosophy, the two EPs compiled on Retrocausality set their conceptual sights high, but the music more than delivers, balancing hypnotic polyrhythms against an all-encompassing abyssal dread. Plunge too deep into some of these tracks and you might never come back.
Toys Factory
They’ve won over the metal fans, but the shady handling of founder member Yui’s departure was a a reminder that Babymetal are still very much an idol group. On Metal Galaxy, the duo are joined by a surfeit of guests, few of whom bring much to the table. It’s a very mixed bag, fascinating in its sheer ugliness. That said, drum’n’bass banger “Elevator Girl” is a winner, and “BxMxC”—a bona fide trap jam, inexplicably left off the international release—charts new heights of ridiculousness.
Hotcha/Music Mine
If you believe everything you hear during drunken conversations at gigs, Surfers of Romantica were the Kanto region’s answer to Boredoms, albeit one who never rehearsed and left scant recorded evidence of their brilliance. This compilation of offcuts, remixes and greatest misses doesn’t do much to resolve the debate, but if an hour of strung-out dub experiments, lo-fi noodling, 8-bit whimsy and tar-soaked Butthole Surfers detritus sounds like your idea of fun, it’s a worthwhile diversion.
AWBD/LR2 (Bandcamp)
Having spent the last few years acting like the coolest band in Tokyo, Tawings finally step up to the mark with this long-gestating debut album. Tawings is caught between the brittle, Liliput-ish post-punk of their early days and a glossy, more expansive dream pop, while the cutesy drum-machine jam of lead single “Poodles” could almost pass for Chai. At just eight tracks, it sounds like a solid audition tape for a gig at the Twin Peaks Roadhouse, just not always like it’s the same group playing.
Musical mystery meat from the φonon label. Madam Anonimo was apparently part of the late-’60s avant-garde, and used to perform with Kaoru Abe. On il salone di Anonimo, Jun Morita crafts productions around her idiosyncratic takes on songs immortalised by Edith Piaf, Maria Callas, et al. The music frequently evokes the Looney Tunes nightmares of Scott Walker circa Bish Bosch, while “The End” (yes, that one) summons the ghost of Nico’s Desertshore. Bewildering, utterly singular stuff.
Sony Music
Nariaki Obukuro leans into the Frank Ocean comparisons on his second album, right down to the surprise release. Unburdened by the weight of expectation on his debut LP (and its celebrity co-producer), Piercing has a mixtape looseness to it, songs blurring into each other, with seemingly throwaway interludes (recorded on an iPhone?) providing connective tissue. It’s an exquisite, free-associating ode to heartbreak—no prizes for guessing the subject, but he’s movin’ on just fine without her.
Shochy (Bandcamp)
Back to a four-piece again after the gamelan fusions of 2013’s Gamel, OOIOO still manage to squeeze a few surprises out of the rock-band format. The first half of Nijimusi is pretty damn appealing: new drummer Mishina is a constant source of invention, pushing the (poly)rhythms to Rock In Opposition levels of trickery. But a sense of over-familiarity creeps in later on, peaking when the band revisits past glories in the superfluous greatest-hits medley of “walk for ‘345’ minutes...”
Sonoris
Released just late enough to miss out on most Best of 2019 lists, this is a monumental work, though far more inviting than some of the other box sets I’ve got sitting on my shelf at home. Spread across 4 CDs, it’s subtle music that demands to be listened to at full blast. At times it feels like wandering home through a tundra after watching a Merzbow gig without earplugs, at others like roaming the empty corridors of the spaceship in High Life. A great nuclear winter record.
Less Than TV
On their first full-length since 2010’s Psychobass, Groundcover whip up the kind of punk-noise-dub racket that might appeal to On-U Sound devotees. While the aptly named “Slash and Mash” primes listeners for a splattershot assault, the band’s more chaotic impulses are constantly kept in check by an implacable rhythm section. The more interesting tracks are the ones that play on this tension; when they ease into laidback instrumental dub mode, you could be listening to almost anyone.
RareNoiseRecords (Bandcamp)
Typically bracing stuff from this heavyweight trio, performing in an atypical configuration on their second album together. Haino plays bass—apparently the one instrument he hadn’t used on record before—while Merzbow unleashes toxic spurts on guitar, and Pandi seems to be drumming for three people at once. Against the odds, it coheres into the kind of rock ecstasy that even Mojo readers might be able to enjoy.
Soft Architecture (Bandcamp)
The former face of seapunk, Lily Kobayashi has since relocated to Kyoto and turned her back on the dancefloor and dolphin GIFs. The influence of RPG soundtracks and IDM’s rhythmic clatter is still evident in Chamber Music, but it finds her moving away from the pop vividness of her earlier work towards a darker, grungier and more introspective sound. Though it’s clearly a transitional album, there’s plenty here to suggest that—short-lived subgenres be damned—she’s in it for the long haul.
Höga Nord Rekords (Bandcamp)
I’m never sure whether to applaud or despair at these Tokyo krautrock disciples, longtime affiliates of the equally derivative Kikagaku Moyo. The title track had me marvelling for the first minute at how perfectly they replicate the airtight groove of Ege Bamyasi-era Can, then wondering for the next six whether they were going to take it anywhere. Psych slow-burner “Nishi No Jiku” is better, like a slightly more rocking Khruangbin, and Jamie Paton’s Martyn Ware-ish remix is a nice bonus.
An’archives (Bandcamp)
The melancholic strains of enka have always lurked in the background of Japan’s psych-noise underground, so this split release by two trios of scene veterans is delivered from the heart. On the Itakura/Isohata/Henritzi side, acoustic renditions are buffeted by rising tides of noise, though Itakura’s vocals are an acquired taste. RQRQ play things straighter, with elegant guitar work by Mitsuru Tabata. Truth told, it’s rather nice.
EM Records (Bandcamp)
Not sure if NTsKi’s current hiatus from live performance suggests she’s rethinking her plans for world domination. She closes out 2019 with a release both as insubstantial and pleasurable as the one she dropped at the start of the year, hooking up with fellow Kansai oddball 7FO for a breathy digi-dub take on Brenda Ray’s 1981 lo-fi oddity. Bim One Production supply the better of the two accompanying remixes, adding some rhythmic skank and low-end ballast to the weightlessness of the original.
