Artist: Eksperimentoj
Song: Solaris
From album: Compilation “Class – Plan B”
Genre: Stormy Nightrock
[Buy this album][Site]

Eksperimentoj is a new project that brandishes the marvelous vocalist, Eugene Wakamikoto. And how can you not love a Japanese band with an Esperanto name?! I guess no one here went to their show on Sunday, but I thought I might as well post the only song I have of theirs, it’s from this compilation, and it’s good. I’m very much looking forward to what these guys have in store.

I can’t help but imagine this song as a nighttime storm out at sea. Rather, it’s being played from high in a tumultuous sky, in the eye of the tempest. It’s the sound of watching the ocean swells and breaks, the churn and the boil. It starts as just a minor undulation in black and white, growing as tenebrous clouds gather and whirl. Soon it’s an outpouring of nature’s emotion from the depths of her murky stomach. It rushes and rolls, out there in that tarry blackness; that endless void that’s so alone but so deadly real.

Artist: Sleepy.Ab
Song: Traveling Fair
From album: Traveling Fair
Genre: Indiesilk Wanderweb
[Buy this album][Site]

Sleepy.Ab make songs from blends of common elements that end up rather hard to classify. In a given song they can be anywhere from singer-songwriter-esque acoustic, to a mellow indie-gaze-tronica with splashes of recorded sound. The vocals are sometimes droning, sometimes mournful, but always seem to be sung with feeling.

This particular song, also the title of the album, is like a slow wandering waltz down quirky crooked lanes. Maybe it’s that hour before sunrise when the world is picturesque and filled with potential. Maybe you just walk along in half a daydream through deserted thoroughfares on your meandering way to wherever you want to be.

You can listen to clips from their other songs, and see a couple music videos on their site.

Artist: Natsumen
Song: Atami Free Zone (Live)
From album: NEVER WEAR OUT yOUR SUMMER xxx !!!
Genre: Brassy (which can also mean adventurous!) Jazzrock
[buy this album][Website]

Recently I’ve been a real sucker for sax and violins; and what this album lacks in strings it makes up for in brass with some appreciable attitude. In some ways, “Atami Free Zone” is like watching these instruments in their natural environment: the golden savannah. (What am I saying!?) In any case, we watch them as they tumble and butt heads and frolic around an often simple melodic landscape. They can be rebellious and sometimes rude, but are full of youthful vigor. Sometimes they rest in the shadows of that famous “only tree in sight” while the guitary breeze stirs waves of long grass, and sometimes they jump up for no particular reason and run together towards that mother of all suns as hard as they can.

Anyway… here’s some trivia for those that might care: Natsumen’s 2 guitarists, “Aine” and “AxSxE”, are both previous members of the now defunct band Boat from a couple posts back; and in this excellent live record, their song: “Natsu no Mujina,” is a great cover of Boat’s instrumental song: “Akiramujina”. So there you have it. I also think their “sound introductions” in the biographies section of the website is a pretty neat idea.

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!

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.