expect delay
I won’t pretend it gets a lot of traction in the way of page views, but I really do enjoy discovering new acts from around the world who never, ever would have gotten on my radar if I was still on the hamster wheel of music PR like I was in a previous life. Instead, […]
Having made their recorded debut with the appropriately transitional Lush cover a couple months ago, Miki Berenyi Trio have offered up their first taste of original music with “Vertigo”, which previews a full-length album the details of which are still forthcoming. Of the track, Berenyi says: ‘Vertigo’ is about anxiety and the efforts to talk […]
Robin Guthrie popped up on socials last week and offered an update on his happenings just on time for Bandcamp Friday, OK, so, um, I have a bunch of new releases coming up in 2024, the first of which is at the factory getting manufactured right now. I’ll be the first to let you know, […]
“Influenced by Kinoko Teikoku” is basically a J-gaze subgenre – or maybe a synonym – and one of the current leading lights of that style is Hammer Head Shark, a Tokyo quartet especially good at their forebear’s combination of sonic aggression and angsty vocals, with a healthy dose of snotty youthful rebellion added for good […]
Despite being probably the heaviest rotation artist for me in the past year and having discovered them through my investigations of Japanese dreampop, I’ve not written anything about Hitsujibungaku because, well, I don’t really think of them as dreampop. As I mentioned in my 2023 wrap up I’d grant you adjacent, maybe, as Moeka Shiotsuka […]
From the relatively familiar to the new , Hokkaido’s Plums, who despite being wholly un-Googleable, have put out a number of excellent EPs of fuzzy power pop since 2019, including a new one just this past February in Life. At least those exist on streaming, and they’ve got a YouTube channel so folks can stumble […]
The first post from Tokyo proper – Kon’nichiwa! – should be the band that kick-started this whole J-pop/J-gaze obsession that’s been going on hereabouts for over a year, and is in no small part one of the reasons I’m here right now (don’t tell my family) – the dear departed For Tracy Hyde. I’ve celebrated […]
Nagoya duo Blurred City Lights are one of the newer Japanese dreampop artists to have caught my ear, with their debut album 天使のいない街で (In A City Without Angels) one of the genre highlights of the year so far. Though quite fresh-faced and with an unabashed bedroom studio aesthetic, they’ve crafted a debut that demonstrates both […]
On paper, this should have been a huge deal – a collaborative album between the musical mastermind behind alternative godheads Cocteau Twins and frontman for shoegaze legends Ride – but Universal Road, the 2015 release from Robin Guthrie and Mark Gardener, didn’t seem to make much of an impression on anyone. Part of it was […]
If you thought you’d somehow missed out on Daughter’s tour to support last year’s Stereo Mind Game, don’t fret – you didn’t. Aside from a single in-store performance at London’s Rough Trade last year to mark the album’s release, the trio haven’t played a live show since November 2017. And while disappointing for fans, it’s […]
