Artist: Hikaru Tanimoto ?????
Song: Thanks to Music!!
From album: Thanks to Music!!
Genre: Guitaristry
[Buy CD][Website]

This Hikaru Tanimoto fellow seems to be riding his song like a furry dog-dragon thing à la The Neverending Story (It’s the innocent glee and over-excitement that evokes the comparison.). He seems almost too joyful and excited to be playing it himself; yet, empirical evidence suggests that he really is.

At first it’s hard to believe that all the sounds are coming from one kid and one guitar. You hear it pouring out in thick layers like cake-batter, and he’s upending the bowl, licking his lips. He seems giddy with almost surprised love for each note that appears as he flys by them. It’s a joy so devoid of self-consciousness, a delight, not in the fact that he plays music, but in the idea that music itself exists.

I thought it refreshing.

Artist: Rocket K
Song: Super Drunken Christmas
From album: DEPARTURE OF THE GROOOVIE DRUNKER
Genre: PunkDistortion
[Buy CD][Website]

I’m going to post this in the past so that it seems more date-appropriate, better late than never eh.

I hope everyone had a nice holiday and new year and all that. Mine was good, though busy and probably not super drunken enough… ah well.

So I searched my library for something season-esque and this is what I came up with. It’s Rocket K, it’s super distorted, super drunken, and probably somewhat super Christmas in its own way.

Artist: Envy
Song: Left Hand?????
From album: All The Footprints You’ve Ever Left And The Fear Expecting
Genre: Epic-core
[Buy CD][Website]

This is Envy, whom I have mentioned previously. This image is from the same photographer, another dynamic slice. I’m not sure what to say about such a staple of Japanese melodic-abyssal-shoegaze-core except that they are worthy of the often carelessly-slung descriptor, “epic.”

Not just in adjective form, but in the original noun form as well. In historical epics all the feelings and understandings of a culture, all their thoughts about the world and mankind were condensed, redacted, and molded into a narrative structure that attempted to approximate the outlook of the society. It seems that much the same object and process are evident in Envy’s records. Tumult and anguish show their faces, but so do awe and quiet serenity and a proliferation of emotion that seems to evidence a near-total self-investment.

Artist: Radwimps
Song: ???????????????????
From album: ??????????????
Genre: Poppunkcore
[Buy CD][Website]

I don’t have much time on me, but here, have a fun video of a little girl destroying a city with a whiffle ball bat. Her energetic, catchy soundtrack could very well fit in on one of our “edgy” American radio stations.

Artist: Apogee
Song: ???? (Yakan Hikou [Night Flight])
From album: ????
[Buy CD][Website]

This video “Night Flight” blends Apogee’s silky synthpop with a nicely edited milieu of cosmical and mythological yet whimsical imagery; and to quite a charming effect.

Not much pop catches my ear these days, but this song and video have something special. The album link is to their first full album “fantastic” which has a newer version of the song. The original is from their single of the same name.

Artist: Toe
Song: Everything Means Nothing
From album: The Book About My Idle Plot on a Vague Anxiety
Genre: Instrumental Subsequent Rock
[Buy CD][Website]

I should have posted Toe a long time ago; they have stood out as one of the best Japanese instrumental bands I’ve heard since I started looking. They have an unfading talent for constructing glittering twilight braids of melody that twinkle and flow in swaying coils.

I’ve also been pleasantly surprised by their website, and most especially by the photography section which strikes me as containing some of the absolute finest band photography I’ve seen anywhere. Foremost among these are the photos by Yoshiharu Ota which are worth a post in themselves. The photo-viewer on Toe’s homepage is big and beautiful, the photos saturated with color and movement; and it has a nice elegant interface too, whose concept I might appropriate and adapt for myself at some point.

So, I’m sortof back now, and I’ve got this nifty new video player with me. It has been in the works for a while, being built up from scratch, and will probably be refined a little more before it’s fully implemented. Please feel free to mess with it, try to break it, give me feedback, and let me know if it does anything odd. It fits the scheme more, and it’s now extra-simple to plug stuff into so it’ll be easier to do videos in the future.

I realized recently that I have been doing this for over a year now and have made an average of around 1.3 posts per week. It’s neither here nor there, but I think I’ll try to increase that to at least 2 per week on average in the coming year, starting now.

Artist: 101A
Song: Aerial
From album: one day
Genre: Spacegoth
[Buy CD][Website]

101A’s albums remind me at different times of a strangely wide range of artists –anyone from Hooverphonic to Switchblade Symphony– but through it all they are propelled by very personal emotional engines and a nebulous sense of inevitability.

This song sounds like some kind of shadowy epiphany after long gazing into the depths of the cosmic ocean from our insignificant shores. Something of mixed inspiration and abandon, awestruck resignation. It seems a natural reaction to a sudden realization of an enormous and hopelessly infinite beauty.

Artist: Muddy World
Song: Lilac
From album: Finery of the Storm
Genre: Pinprick lightstorm
[Buy CD][Website][Live Video]

Muddy World is my first treasure find from Mixi, the Japanese myspace equivalent. These guys make music that sounds somehow extremely different. It’s hard to explain, something about the sound of the instruments makes it seem that the notes are coming from ethereal counterparts not entirely rooted in the musical world of our experience.

Maybe I’m just overreacting; maybe I winced when I saw the name beginning with Mudd and the discovery that they were excellent made the relief more palpable. In any case, this album is great, fiery in that hazy way that feels like it’s floating in steam, and very, very talented.