Sambomaster - Sekai wa Sore Ai to Yobundaze

A quick post for this morning. Like a lot of people, the first time I heard this song was when watching the Densha Otoko tv series (it's the ending theme). I'll write more on these guys later, but I will say that I do like their melodies and arrangements. Very fun. Also, I like how they look like a bunch of regular guys that just decided to form a band, and aren't a trio of pretty boys like a lot of other music acts out there. If you want a basic rundown on what Sambomaster is about, just check their Wikipedia page. Here's the video for the song. Great stuff for starting off the day, I think. Good energy, and makes me want to get off my behind and do something with my day.

De De Mouse

Recently, I started getting into De De Mouse's work with it's unique, experimental sound. What makes it so good is how it manages to remain accessible while trying to do something new. A lot of experimental acts tend to make a mad dash for deep in left field, and create something that can be very difficult to listen to, but De De Mouse has this underlying pop sensibility that makes his tunes a ton of fun to experience.

The synths often have a nice, lo-fi, old school quality that sort of reminds me of the period when these instruments were transitioning from analog to digital. The melodies sound like something from a television soundtrack, with and innate ability to create strong mental images while listening. There is a very otherworldly quality to his music that is hard to articulate well. All the while, he makes liberal use of some very interesting vocals that sound like sliced up middle eastern samples.

He's put out quite a bit of stuff in the last couple of years, with a pair of albums and an EP. Very little of it appears to be available on iTunes, so if you want to get any of it, you'll need to look to Amazon Japan.

It's hard to describe De De Mouse's music beyond what I've already said. Just swing by his MySpace page, or check out some of his videos. Really neat stuff.

Rei Harakami

It's hard to narrow it down to a few words when describing the feeling of Rei Harakami's music. Whimsical, relaxing, and melodic come to mind, but it feels like there are a whole lot of other adjectives that are necessary yet difficult to recall. If nothing else, Harakami puts out great tunes for listening to on the weekend when (hopefully!) your time is your own.

Between the smooth melodies, and absolutely great instrumentation chalk full of pads, bells, and organs (plenty of other stuff too, but these stand out the most), I find Harakami's works extremely absorbing. Listening to his music makes me want to hop on a bicycle and lazily bike around the outskirts of Kyoto or something in autumn. He's one of the first artists that I've listened to in quite some time where I feel absolutely compelled to track down all of his work, though that may prove to be a challenge as you'll read below.

He's put out a number of EPs over the last 10 years, as well as contributed to his fair share of soundtracks, and has been collaborating quite a bit with other artists (most notably Coldcut). The one HUGE challenge, though, is tracking down his music. Harakami does have all of his tracks available on the Japanese iTunes shop, but that means people outside Japan can't get the songs. One of the few remaining options, short of making a quick transoceanic flight, is to order the physical CDs from a place like Amazon Japan, in which case it may be better to buy a bunch of CDs at once to make the pricey international shipping fee more worthwhile. Other than that, maybe you'll be lucky to have a Book Off in your city (or know someone in LA, New York, or Vancouver who can check), and you could be even luckier to actually track one of Rei Harakami's albums down.

So, is it worth all the effort? I think so, but you can give his stuff a listen over here, and decide for yourself.

YMCK

Happy Friday, folks! As we head into the weekend, lets kick things off on a cheerful, jazzy chiptunes note. There are plenty of artists out there that make nifty music inspired by the sounds of old 8-bit video game consoles, but my favorite of the bunch is definitely YMCK. Based in Tokyo, the trio consists of Midori on vocals, Yokemura handling music, lyrics, arrangement, while Nakamura works on the videos.

The group formed in 2003, and have released three albums in that time: Family Music (2004), Family Racing (2005), and, most recently, Family Genesis (2008). I was actually pleasantly surprised to see that one of Japan's biggest record labels, Avex, was willing to take a chance on them for their latest release.

What I like about YMCK in comparison to other chiptune acts is how they combine the video game vibe of their music with something a little more jazzy through their vocals. It's like combining Pizzicato 5 with an old Nintendo game console from the 80s. A very neat mix of sounds. However, I do find that their sound is drifting more towards straightforward pop arrangement-wise with Family Genesis, albeit with chiptune instrumentation.

One thing that is really cool about the band is that they've made a VST plug-in that is freely available for download from their official website, so anyone interest in writing some chiptunes of their own can go ahead and give it a shot. I've tried it, and the sounds are quite good. The only difficulty that I've run into is that I haven't figured out how to force my tracks to run in mono instead of stereo when using Ableton Live, so I get a lot of noise in the right speaker a lot. Once I get that under control, I'll be very happy indeed. ^_^

So, in the meantime, I hope you all get your weekends off to a good start, and if you want, check out some of YMCK's music over here. If you really like it, you will be able to find their Family Genesis album on the US iTunes store as of July 29 of this year, but it may take some wrangling to track down their older stuff. USAGI-CHANG, the band's former label, has the albums listed in their catalog, but they don't ship overseas, and recommend using Amazon Japan or HMV Japan instead, both of whom I also think may not ship overseas. If you decide to track down these older albums, something most definitely worth doing, you may have your work cut out for you. Best of luck!

Fantastic Plastic Machine - Luxury

I'm going to try and focus one post per week, or every second week depending on how motivated I'm feeling, to a particular album that I really like. To kick things off, I thought I'd pick the one that helped get me interested in Japan's electronic music scene in the first place: Luxury by Fantastic Plastic Machine (originally released in 1998).

This is the second full-length album released by the artist, and whereas his debut featured a lot more bossa nova, and 60s kitsch, this one started to flow more into the realm of dance music with hints of house popping in now and then. Luxury very much feels like a bridge between his early, retro-esque works, and his more poppy, contemporary pieces found on recent releases.

Electric Lady Land is a stand out track for me on the album for its catchy melody, and slightly disturbing lyrics about a girl that is ready and waiting to do whatever her master wishes. Then again, it's also following a similar persona as that found in your typical maid cafe, so maybe it's not that out of line so long as it's understood that it's a fantasy. Someone synced up the song with some anime on YouTube if you want to check it out here.

Lotto is a track with a much more futuristic feel to it combined with something I would expect to hear in a game show, all with someone cheerfully singing along in German. It's a very good example of how this album is shifting FPM's sound from old school stuff, to something a little more in the here and now. There's an instrumental, slightly remixed version of it here.

Another favorite of mine from Luxury is You Must Learn All Night Long. It's got this really great rolling beat to it, with loud horns blaring in with a funky guitar, all with kids singing over top. It's a very happy song, with a whole lot of presence. People also seem to like to mention the cover of the Eurythmics' There Must Be an Angel on the album. Personally, I don't mind the song, but I don't find it stands out as much as the other songs that I've already mentioned.

If you get the chance, try and track down this album. It is well worth adding to your collection. It's combination of 60s lounge with more modern dance music is both fun, and interesting. Before you go, here's one more reason to give Luxury a listen, the album's lead off track, Theme of Luxury:

Cornelius - Fit Song

Cornelius has a lot of really great videos for his songs, but Fit Song (released on the album Sensuous in 2007) stands out for me. The music has a somewhat minimalist vibe to it, staying quite simple throughout the song, making for an interesting departure from much of Cornelius' earlier works, where he would take a much more poppy, melodic approach. Here everything is comparatively subdued, and going in a much more conceptual direction.

The imagery in the video is what seals the deal on this song for me. It takes a camera slowly moving around an apartment, with all of the various things inside of it coming to life (no humans here with the exception of some images of Cornelius on the TV). The video almost seems to display an eco-system of inanimate objects, as sugar cubes, matches, toothbrushes, and a bunch of other stuff come to life. What I like about this is that these objects all act like they're their own species, with some moving around in herd-like patterns, while others take on almost human-life qualities (like the magnifying glass, and the wrestling figurine). At the same time, there's a neat contrast between some types of objects following geometric patterns in their movements, while others have a more free-flowing, organic style to how they move about.

In any case, it's a really neat video that is well worth checking out. Here it is below:

Makoto

Last post was on a bit of a laid back, jazzy note, and today I'm continuing with the jazziness, but kicking up the tempo a bunch. Makoto is a drum n' bass / nu-jazz artist out of Tokyo that has been doing his thing for about a decade now. A lot of his earlier work can be found on various compilations from Good Looking Records, while releasing complete albums in more recent years.

He has a pretty gigantic backlog of tracks over the last 10 years, especially when you factor in remixes and collaborations. I like the way he plays such frenetic beats off of some soothing melodies in many of his tracks, especially when he has someone singing. It's a really nice contrast. Check out some of his stuff here.

nica

nica is a group I stumbled across last year. They have a light, ambient, jazzy sound that is great for relaxing to. Formed in 2006, the Tokyo-based group consists of nine members: Toshiaki Hamada on bass, Janis Crunch and Hiroko Harakawa providing vocals, batch and afro-heaven on rhythm, gutch on the drums, Ryodo Yamamoto playing piano, and Haruka Nakamura and Hirohide Tsuchisawa on guitar.

If you're looking for something soothing to listen to after a long day, these guys should be at the top of your list. Their music gives me a lot of mental images of walking around at night, with all of the city's hustle and bustle swirling around me, or just enjoying a quiet, private bit of rest.

They aren't signed to a label, and haven't had any luck in determining whether they even have an album released independently or otherwise. That being the case, we'll just have to make due with the selection of songs that they currently have posted on their MySpace page. My personal favorites there are "4 worlds" and "under the sun". Awesome stuff!

Here's the link to their page.

Ken Ishii - Butter Bump

(Note: Ken Ishii = Electronic Music)

The mechanical, grinding tones often found in Ken Ishii's music have helped his tracks to stand out over the years. It's especially interesting as he is able to do this in a way that doesn't wear down on the listener. With these sort of tones, I find a lot of songs gradually numb my ears as they go on, but Ishii finds a way to balance these tones so that I'm not left exhausted and looking for something else to listen to after a couple of tracks.

One of my favorite songs from him is Butter Bump, released in 1997 on his album "Metal Blue America". It has this continuous, driving low-end grind that is played off a treble-y echoing bit that skitters across the top of the song at regular intervals, all while throwing in a bunch of industrial elements. It's a top notch song, and the video is pretty neat too with its constantly changing images, and futuristic motif. You can check it out below. It's definitely worth a listen if you are into electronic music.

UFO and Flash PaPa MENTHOL

So, I snapped up some old school, Japanese electronic pop music yesterday from a band called Denki Groove (that would be "Electric Groove" in English). The albums that I got were UFO, and Flash PaPa MENTHOL, with the first being a collection of original tracks, and the other a remix album for the band's Flash PaPa LP.

Both CDs came out in the early 1990s, so they have a retro sound as far as electronic music is concerned, but also with quite a bit of tracks that sound like they would be something that one might expect to find in a video game, at least melody-wise moreso than the instruments being used. I wish that I could understand Japanese better, as Denki Groove's lyrics have a tendency to be silly fun with a liberal dose of potty humor tossed in.

The most appealing part about there music for me, though, is how the band bounces back and forth between more traditional electronic elements (for their time), and more tangential stuff. So far, I've only tracked down some of their older stuff, and am on the hunt for some of their newer stuff. In the meantime, he's a Youtube link where the video has Denki Groove music in the background if you want an idea of the band's sound:

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