Artist: My Little Airport
Song: Victor, Fly Me to Stafford
From album: The Ok Thing to do on Sunday Afternoon is to Toddle in the Zoo
Genre: Fluffy Charm-pop
[buy this album] [Website]

I have never heard songs that sounded more like postcards. Here we have short short little stories written on charming, pretty little songs that are penned and sent out with obvious love. They sing in English, French, and Chinese; and they show us darling little views of darling little houses from the sky. I’m sure lots of people have heard of them, but I thought I would share anyway. There’s always that one…

Via metafilter, here is some grand landscape photography indeed, from Leping Zha. I very much enjoy the sense of balance he employs in composing his shots. It’s like the different rocks and trees are really one big family, helping and supporting each other, and complementing each other’s differences.

[Link]

Artist: Boat
Genre: From smileyface-bulletpop to smooth summerock
[Label site (jp)]

BOaT then
Song: Kill Kill
From album: Soul, Thrash, Train [buy]

The cutesy vocals and catchy hook in the first part of this song make me think of a sitcom theme song. Pretty soon it turns into an outro for rolling credits; and then around 1:35 the actors and crew and the band doing the song finish their work for the day and break loose from the studio to run wild like gleeful gorillas all over the city. Then 25 seconds later, with all of that out of their systems, they meet at a quaint cafe on the edge of town and have a nice relaxing cup of tea.

BOaT now
Song: Roots of Summer
From album: Roro [buy]

This is from the band’s latest release and feels like a kind of a friendly compilation of warm red and orange summer feelings into a long reflective goodbye. If you listen to these songs in this order they actually seem to fit rather well. I guess I’m really tired, but I can’t seem to find a link to buy this cd… so if someone knows of a site that will ship overseas, please let me know. Thanks!

Artist: Macdonald Duck Eclair
Song: The Eyes Just Like a Fawn’s
From album: The Genesis Songbook
Genre: “Lolli,pico’tte,macin’rock” (In their own words!)
[Buy this album] [MDDE site]

This song is a soap-bubble machine gun; a sugarcube firing-squad. With hardcore electronica and French electropop among their influences, what they create is an interesting hybrid of airy vocals nestled in what are often “fierce” electronic elements. Though their components may seem to be rather at odds with each other, they somehow pull it off and come up with more than the sum of the ingredients.

Artist: World’s End Girlfriend
Song: We are the Massacre
From album: The Lie Lay Land
Genre: Surreal sound storyland
[Buy This Album][Label Site][Interview]

What a fabulous weekend media treat! World’s End Girlfriend is a musical portrayal of a place in its creator’s imagination. These songs are moments and locations that exist in it. Here thrive in sonic form: a gate made of moths, dark friendly forests, an endless midnight garden waltz, a lunatic celestial circus, moments of dissonance, serenity, and a perfect harmony. From beginning to end this 80 minute album is forceful, beautifully vivid, and wrought from pure inspiration. So without much further ado off we go:

VIDEO – Scorpius Circus (LIVE)
From gentle swell to ferocious tempest, this song ebbs and flows with emotional currents. In my opinion this song is much better live. And for a live version of a mostly electronic song to surpass the original without the use of any synthetic elements is, to me, both amazing and gratifying. This is definitely their jewel. (11:13 min 37 megs)

VIDEO – We are the Massacre
The video version reveals a vision simultaneously violent and tranquil; a gorgeously tragic and moving lamentation. WARNING: contains black and white clips of sometimes graphic movie violence. (5:46 min 31 megs)

Please be sure to check out the label site and download songs from their other artists, I find them to be uncommonly good as a whole. It’s also extremely rare for a Japanese label to give away so much for free! So if you like what you hear please support the artists and their forward-thinking label, and buy their excellent music. Have a great weekend!

Here’s an interesting concept via the always fascinating Bldgblog. It’s yet another definition for art and another unlikely medium: apartment blocks, offices, run-down buildings. I’m not sure how likely the physics are for something like this, but I would be willing to bet that if you were able to make structurally-sound ap-art-ments, you could get the whole art-student demographic in the city to line up at the leasing office.

[Link]

Artist: Hermit
Song: Sunny Day
From album: Frequence Eater
Feels like: Waking up tired on a sun-bleached morning.
[buy this album] [Label site (jp)]

Dripping with languor, this song makes me think of waking up and reaching for a bedside guitar before you even open your eyes. You brush the strings, halfway still dreaming. A ray of over-bright sunlight sneaking through the curtains catches facets of floating dust which lift, and drift, and fall. Under these circumstances you happen to think that they might as well be stars.

Artist: 9mm Parabellum Bullet
Song: Talking Machine
From album: Gjallarhorn
Genre: Wakeuprock
[buy this album] [9mm Site (jp)]

Well, after a couple slow songs I thought that I should post something upbeatish, and this song fits the bill nicely. This is a song that moving flatbed-truck-concerts were made for. It keeps on trucking trucking, dancing down the road. People stop, and people turn their heads, and people start to bob their heads, and people start to move. Soon there’s a bubbly wake of people energy following along as the truckcert parades through the city, echoing off of skyscraper windows.